The Beginning of Our Journey

The beginning of this long journey started almost 20 years ago.  My wife and I after doing mission work in Haiti decided that after we had children, and they were a little older, we wanted to adopt a child from Haiti.  We realized that there was so much need in Haiti, and even though we could not help all of the orphans we were working with we could help at least one.  Just like the little boy and the starfish.  We felt we could give that child a Christian home with Christian brothers and sisters and all the love that he/she was missing out on. 

We went on to have three biological children who are all teenagers now.  The oldest is a girl named Darby, the middle child is a boy named Wilson, and our youngest child is a girl named Madelyn.  These kids are great and were also excited about us adopting another child to bring into our home.

I continued to go to Haiti yearly to conduct medical mission teams and work with a small orphanage there in Port-au-Prince called Sonlight Childrens' Home.  The time was finally right in 2007 and a child was born January 6th, 2007, and his story moved us.  He was found by the director of the orphanage in a bucket with his placenta still on him covered in ants.  His birth mom had obviously thrown him away.  We were moved to give him a better life than the start of his, and we started the process of adoption.  Our family was so excited.

We worked on all of the paperwork, which is massive and finally finished everything in April of 2007 and sent it for translation and legalization.   We got the dossier finished and it arrived in Haiti June 5th of 2007.   We were so excited.  He went for his medical exam on June 28th of 2007 and passed with no problems.  He got sick on June 30th 2007 and I tried to treat  him over the phone with the director of the orphanage there in Haiti.  He got so sick that by the late afternoon of that Friday she took him to the ER there in the city because he had blood in his diaper.  He needed an ultrasound and the ultrasound operator came out and gave the orphanage director her money back and told her that she was going home and did not have time to do this for her.  The medical staff told her that he was just an orphan anyway.  He continued to get worse over that weekend and she tried to get help from other places but by the time someone would take care of him he was too sick to be helped and died.  He had intussusception and could have been easily treated and corrected here in the United States if found in time.   We mourned for a long time and chose not to proceed with adopting a child at that time. 

They had a little grave stone made for him and sent to Haiti.  It was put in the little graveyard at the orphanage.  We gave him our last name, unofficially.  Notice even the date of death was wrong carved in the marble.  This was definitely a tough time on our journey.  Finally, after the earthquake in January 2010, stories from my medical mission trip melted our hearts.  If I was asked once, I was asked dozens of time to take babies home with me who were unable to be fed because one or both of their parents had died, and no one could feed another child.  My wife and I sat, talked, prayed, and finally it was time again to try adopting.   That story will be for another post.