Rain, Coffee and Adoption

There is nothing better than a lazy rainy Saturday morning with a hot cup of coffee in hand, writing about something I love...adoption. I wanted to take the moment to share more about Gladney and the adoption process with them. We originally heard about Gladney through our awesome friends, Matt and Catherine who were in the process of adopting a child from Rwanda through them. They had nothing but awesome words to say about Gladney as an organization. They had heard about Gladney through others in their church that had adopted through them. Nothing but good words about an adoption agency was something we had been searching for for years. Before we were blessed with the random act of God in our private (not agency assisted) adoption of Josiah, we had researched agencies and talked with people who had first hand experience with those agencies and always came up with negative experiences with the local agencies we had researched. We realized quickly that choosing the right agency was half of the battle in this entire process. I mean, after all, $20,000-$40,000 and your hearts are on the line. So this time around, we decided to check out Gladney Center for Adoption, though it was all the way in Fortworth, Texas!

Luckily, we had family who lived in Texas at the time (they have since moved back to VA...talk about good timing!). So we were able to make it a long comfortable trip to Texas. We stayed with my aunt Bobbi for five nights and she so graciously showed us around Texas. Our trip was amazing! Good food, town festivals, the Stockyards, I sat on a long horn! And most importantly, we had an amazing time at the Gladney orientation. The orientation was a full eight hour day filled with non-stop information about the step by step process of adoption through them. We heard from the CEO, financial director, legal director, caseworkers, social media director, real birth moms and real adoptive parents who have all recently been through the process with Gladney. Our heads hurt once the day ended... but in a good way. :) They truly made our trip to Texas worth it. We left with a huge binder of information to take home to read over and mounds of paperwork to fill out if we indeed wanted to begin the process with them. After the long eight hour orientation, we sat in a local Texas burger joint with my aunt and we excitedly told her about every detail of the orientation. I can not tell you enough how amazingly awesome it was to have family there to process it all with immediately after. She was a support to us in ways that I don't think she will ever quite realize. God was all over our entire trip, from amazing air fair deals to having family in town. All of our questions about the agency and about the process were answered and we had a definite confidence and peace with Gladney. After a lot of prayer and about a month of saving, preparing and paperwork, we are in it with Gladney for the long haul!