From Zero to $15,000
It’s kind of crazy to think about what has happened in the past year. It was about a year ago that we launched our adoption website to share our Marshall Islands adoption journey with anyone who would listen. At that time, we had a few forms to complete, some images sourced from the internet and a strong belief that God was calling us to jump into this adventure.
Now, as we sit here a year later, this thing is more real than ever. We began last January with $0 in adoption fund. We were firmly convinced that God would provide the provision for us to bring home this child. And he has done just that. Every time we’ve had to write a check, the money has been there. We haven’t had to stress about it and we haven’t had to go in debt. To date, thanks to contributions from family, friends and even complete strangers, we have raised over $15,000!
We still have a long way to go, but we are well on our way to making this a reality. We have completed the home study process and have filled out all of the paperwork required by USCIS (immigration). Now, we will begin preparing our dossier – the file that will be sent to the adoption authorities in the Marshall Islands. This is a process that can be daunting, but we aren’t really stressed about it. I guess the long journey we took to get to this point has helped us realize whose truly in control!
As we begin 2012, we do so with as much resolve and enthusiasm as we had last January. We are committed to this adoption that we feel is ordained by God. It is our prayer that by this time next year, we will be posting pictures of our newest edition. A huge thanks to everyone who is praying with us and to those who have helped to take us from $0 to $15,000 in the past year!
It’s a Long Story (Part 9) – A Lump in Her Throat
This is Part 8 of a multipart post. Click here for Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5, Part 6, Part 7 & Part 8
There is no such thing as a “simple” or “normal” adoption. The only constant is inconsistency, especially when dealing with government agencies and court systems. And yet, it is these agencies and these systems that find homes for countless abused, neglected and abandoned children every year.
We jumped into the system with both feet – knowing that we were in for a ride, but not beginning to grasp just how wild it would be. In fact, we were about to be blind-sided with news that would shake us to the core – news that was completely unrelated to our adoption process, but completely related to our entire lives.
Several weeks earlier, Melody had gone in for a routine dentist appointment and had gotten some routine x-rays. What showed up on the x-rays was frightening. She had an enormous mass on her jaw that had grown so large that it had eaten away at the bone and would require major oral surgery. The good news was that the mass was not cancerous. The bad news was that she would loose multiple teeth and have to endure a painful surgery and recovery process.
When you get a diagnoses like that, you thank God that it wasn’t worse…then you weep over how bad it still is. This diagnosis, which came during a routine visit, gave Melody pause regarding another medical condition that she had been ignoring. You see, she had known about a nodule on her thyroid for some time. To her, it was no big deal. The women in her family were prone to these kinds of nodules and they were rarely any cause for concern.
But something was eating at Melody (besides the alien body in her jaw). Even though the mass in her jaw wasn’t cancerous, and even though it was highly unlikely that the jaw thing and the thyroid thing were related, she knew she needed to get the thyroid checked out. And so, sometime in October (post-dentist, but pre-Lucy) Melody had a visit with a specialist to check out her thyroid. No big deal – run a few tests, get a clean bill of health, be told to keep an eye on the nodule – whatever. Except that wasn’t how our story would go.
In the midst of our daily visits to Lucy’s temporary home in the NICU in Galveston, Melody missed her follow-up appointment with the thyroid doctor. No big deal. We could reschedule when life settled down a little bit. After all, if there was bad news, they would call from the office to get her in there. They didn’t…but there was.
Just days after we first visited Lucy in the hospital, Melody got her diagnosis. She had thyroid cancer. That lump in her throat was a literal lump and it left us gasping for air. When anyone hears the “C-word”, the whole world stops. Suddenly, you begin viewing life differently. And for us, in our current situation – a cancer diagnosis on top of a major oral surgery and a new baby – our world was WAY upside down.
I remember the drive to Galveston when Melody finally broke down and said, “I can’t do this. We need to just walk away from this baby. She’s going to be better off in another family.” Now, that is an understandable statement from someone who has just been diagnosed with cancer, but Melody’s situation was unique. You see, thyroid cancer is rarely fatal. In fact, the treatment is not even that tough compared to most cancer treatments. Melody would have to undergo surgery to remove her thyroid and would receive one fairly heavy dose of radiation, which would kill any remaining thyroid cells. There were few short-term side-effects of the treatment and the only notable long-term difference would be the synthetic thyroid medication that she would have to take daily for the rest of her life – an inconvenience, but not incapacitating.
In short, Melody’s life would be back to “normal” by the time Lucy was 6 months old. As her husband, I knew this, and I tried every way I could think of to “talk her down off the ledge.” We didn’t need to walk away from this baby, because there was no better home for her than ours. We would get through this bump in the road and we would be OK. I was more than capable of handling whatever came up while Melody was recovering from surgeries and radiation treatments. It was all going to be OK. After all, God had sent us a text message!
But, as hard as I tried, I was only aggravating the situation. I had no words that could get Melody to see past that moment. It turns out, that wasn’t what she needed at all. What she needed was a quick call to her friend Amber. The words Amber spoke soothed the soul and took away all the pressure of having to make a decision. She said, “How long will the baby be in the hospital? A couple of weeks? So, you’ve got time. You don’t need to make a decision right now. You shouldn’t make a decision right now. Give it a little time.”
So that’s what we did. We gave it time. We continued to visit Lucy and, over a couple of weeks, we became her mama and papa. When you, the first-time parents, are the only ones that can get your premature baby to drink from a bottle, you know the connection has been made. No cancer, surgery or court system was going to take that away.
To be continued…
It’s a Long Story (Part 8) – God’s Text Message
This is Part 8 of a multipart post. Click here for Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5, Part 6, & Part 7
When you’re completely reliant on God, a strange thing happens. For all of the anxiety caused by realizing that you have no control, there is a peace in knowing that everything is in his hands. The circumstances surround the adoption of our little Lucy were extraordinary and ordained by God. Only he could have orchestrated the way she came into our lives and only he could sustain us through the process that was to come.
It was a day like any other. I was on my way to work when I got the call. “We got her.” That was all I had to hear. Those three words from my wife would forever change my life, and I knew it. I was literally speechless. Silent. Couldn’t find a word. The next thing I heard was Melody saying, “Are you still there?” I was…and I was stunned. All of the waiting and longing and paper pushing had come to this. We got her.
The “her” we got was a newborn baby girl who we had heard about only two days earlier. Through a set of circumstances that were WAY outside of the norm, we had learned of this little girl, born 5 weeks early and drug-exposed, who was in need of a home. That afternoon, she would meet us for the first time, on her fourth day of existence.
She was born on a Monday, we heard about her on Tuesday and by Thursday, we were holding her in the intensive care unit. It would still be a couple of weeks before we could take her home – which was fine because we had to get over the shock! Born over a month early and under 5 lbs, she was certainly at risk, but it was obvious to everyone after a couple of days that this little girl was a fighter.
She fought off her mom’s drug addiction, fought off jaundice and, unfortunately for her nurses, fought LOUDLY when she didn’t want to go to sleep. Our very first introduction to our baby was when she was throwing a fit. As the nurse handed her to us, she pronounced, “She’s a yeller.”
For the next 14 days, Melody and I would make the hour and fifteen minute drive from our home in Southwest Houston to the hospital in Galveston. Once we got to the hospital, we could only spend about an hour with our little girl before we had to leave again. Then, we would make the long trek home – sometimes stopping along the way for food and sometimes being too overwhelmed by the enormity of our situation to even consider eating.
In that 14 days, we would acquire (with the help of friends, family and co-workers) all of the clothes, furniture, toys, safety devices, blankets and diapers (well, some of the diapers) that we would need to welcome this tiny human into our homes. We would also receive incredible words of encouragement from those who loved us – words that would help us in those days and well into the future.
Perhaps no words helped sustain us through the grueling 19 months to come more than these words, which came via text message from Melody’s uncle:
“I was just praying for Melody and sensed a major breakthrough regarding your baby.”
Those words, we realized later, were texted to us on the morning of November 9th, just moments after our little Lucy was born. In those initial moments of her life, only God knew that she was ours, but he sent us a message – a text message – that would forever remind us that what he ordained, he would see through to the end.
To be continued…
It’s a Long Story (Part 7) – R-I-S-K
This is Part 7 of a multipart post. Click here for Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5 & Part 6
John Wimber, the founder of the Vineyard movement of churches used to say that “faith” is spelled “R-I-S-K”. After our failed Salvadoran adoption, our will was broken, our hearts were broken and our bank account was broke! Neither of us could really envision a way that we would have a child any time soon. Of course, God had a plan that we hadn’t considered, but it would require us to take a huge risk that would impact the rest of our lives.
We got word of an agency at a local church that works with Texas Department of Family and Protective Services (DFPS) and county Child Protective Services (CPS) to find homes for children who have been removed from unsafe homes. Once again, we felt God stirring our hearts in a way that was undeniable, but the questions that loomed over us were many.
Entering into another adoption process would be scary enough, but what about all the unknowns? We had originally decided that we weren’t interested in domestic adoption because of the possibility of the birth parents showing up one day and attempting to become part of our child’s life. Every CPS adoption is a domestic adoption. We were certainly not interested in an “open” adoption where we would have contact with the parents. Some CPS adoptions are open and many require parental visits for some time before the finalization of the adoption.
There was the issue of race to consider. While we had worked through some of our own issues regarding having a child who looked different from us (Salvadoran) children of darker skin tone had to be considered when CPS entered the equation. Melody and I were personally comfortable with a child of any skin tone or ethnic background, but having grown up in the still culturally segregated South, we knew that an African American child would raise eyebrows back home.
And what about money? We had begged our friends, family and neighbors for every penny they could spare to help fund the Salvadoran adoption and all of that money was gone. How much would an adoption through this process cost us? Oddly enough, that is where we got our first answer – and it was a good one. Adoptions through CPS cost next to nothing. Yeah, that’s right, zilch. They are state-funded (because it is cheaper for the state to find a home for a child than to raise them for 18 years).
The race issue was one that we quickly put to bed when we determined that we were not only open to a child of any color or background, but that we would simply ask God to bless our family and to turn the hearts of any friends or family members who might have doubts about our “colorful” make-up. In short, we decided that, though there may be challenges along the way, we were willing and able to work through those challenges as a family.
The risk of domestic adoptions and open adoptions was literally something we simply put in God’s hands. We asked him to do what was best for our future child and we determined to go along with whatever situation God placed us in.
It is an incredibly difficult thing to put what amount to the rest of your life in the hands of government officials, but over the course of the next couple of years, we would do exactly that. However, we had faith that there were hands even larger than the state and federal government who were directing our path and the path of countless others. It was our faith in God that allowed us to take this incredible risk – to step out into the unknown world of CPS adoption and just pray that it would all work out.
To be continued…
The Fundamentals of Giving
Have you ever had someone enter your life who challenged you to be more? Someone who, by their nature, caused you to rethink your own priorities? In our lives, there’s a girl named Megan.
In many ways, Megan is a typical teen. She’s spending time this summer at camps and conferences and family vacations. In between all of those, she’s finding time for some extra school work (she happens to be a brilliant student). Then, on top of that, this teen girl has decided to change the world…you know, in her free time. Now, she wouldn’t put it that way, but that’s the way I see it.
A couple of months ago, Megan started a fundraising effort called Fundamentally Fundraising and chose our adoption as her first official fundraising effort under the newly-minted name. We aren’t, however, the first recipients of Megan’s big-hearted efforts. Megan has also built a relationship with some friends of ours at His Cherished Ones in Nakuru Kenya. Even before officially launching Fundamentally Fundraising, Megan had already completed two fundraisers for His Cherished Ones and provided a playground for the organization’s babies and some games and toys for their older boys. In short, what Megan put her mind to, she accomplished.
And so it has been with her fundraising efforts for our adoption. We got the good news yesterday morning that Megan had reached her initial $400 goal and is now launching a new initiative to raise an additional $550 for us. It is humbling and encouraging to see Megan invest so much of herself into helping others – and into helping us. At an age where most kids are begging mom and dad for the latest gadget, movie or clothes, Megan is asking her mom to help her set up a website. She’s asking her friends, neighbors and everyone she comes in contact with to buy jelly and jam, to have her babysit or to do any number of things – not for herself, but so that she will have money to give away.
Her selfless attitude has made me think: What will I do as a parent to instill that kind of selflessness into our children. After all, I know that Megan did not develop her generous heart in a vacuum. Partially because I know her parents (and their own generous acts) and partially because I know the selfishness of human nature, I have to conclude that this attitude is one that has been inherited from, and encouraged by, her parents.
And so, Megan has entered our lives and she has challenged us to be more – more than good parents with good kids. She has challenged us to be parents who give ourselves away and who teach our kids to do the same. What an incredible honor it would be if one day our own teenage daughter said, “Papa, will you build me a website so I can raise money for an orphanage in Kenya?” Yes. Absolutely. Without a doubt.
Thanks Megan! (Oh, and everybody be sure to check out the Fundamentally Fundraising site and click that “Donate” button!)
-Adam
It’s a Long Story (Part 6) – That First Drop
This is Part 6 of a multipart post. Click here for Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4 and Part 5
You know how when you top that first hill on a roller-coaster, you feel the exhilaration, anticipation and then sheer panic of the first drop. Well, adoption is a little like that…over and over and over again. For Melody and I, our “first first drop” happened with our adoption from El Salvador.
As I said in a previous post, we knew that God’s hand was in this adoption. We knew that God was stirring our hearts and opening our minds regarding what our family would look like. We knew that something big was in the works. What we didn’t know is that God had no intention of us adopting a child from El Salvador (at least not yet…we always keep those doors open!)
For the next several months – almost a year – we would pursue the Salvadoran adoption. We filled out all the paperwork, did the background checks and home study and wrote several very large checks to our adoption agency. But things started to go south quickly.
The short story is that neither the agency nor the Salvadoran government knew what they were getting themselves into when they opened up the country for international adoptions. They were in over their heads and families were starting to get impatient. We had been told that there were countless numbers of orphans that needed homes and yet there were a dozen families who had submitted their dossiers (all of the official documentation needed by a foreign government in order to refer a child for adoption) months earlier and there were no referrals coming out of the country.
The adoption forums started lighting up with complaints. Some questioned whether the agency was trying to scam people (absolutely not the case) or if they were incompetent (again, the answer is “no”). In the end, I think these were good people with good hearts trying to do a good thing and, perhaps, believing everything they were being told by Salvadoran officials.
Anyway, one day in the late summer of 2008, Melody and I reached a critical point in our journey. Another big check was due to our agency. Knowing the long delays experienced by other families, we had to choose to either write that check or withdraw from the program. I remember saying, in a moment of frustration, “I’m not giving those people another dime!” Eventually, I calmed down, but Melody and I made the decision (rationally and prayerfully) to withdraw from the Salvadoran program.
What that meant for us was “square one.” We were back to the beginning. We began to wonder if perhaps we weren’t supposed to have any kids. Maybe God wanted us to remain childless. And yet, all of those conversations about having a multi-ethnic family and embracing the culture and heritage of our children still echoed in our heads. Indeed, God did have something for us, but in that moment, it felt like he had walked away and taken our dreams with him.
To be continued…
Love Coffee? Love Us? You’re Gonna Love This!
For all of you who are following our adoption journey, I wanted to let you know about a great new way that you can help us raise funds for our adoption while feeding your addicition…er…habit…um…beverage consumption choices. (You can quit at any time, right?) We have partnered with JustLoveCoffee.com to be able to sell you their kickin’ coffee and raise money to bring our little island baby home!
It’s really pretty simple. Just go to www.justlovecoffee.com/mosleys and check out their selection of coffees. For those of you who are into roasting, they also offer green (un-roasted) coffee beans so you can be the master of your own roast! So, if you’re into coffee and into us, this is a match made in heaven.
We’re looking for some other similar opportunities for you to be able to give a little and get a little. If anyone knows any good ones, let us know. Until then, happy coffee drinking!
It’s a Long Story (Part 5) – Adoption Attempt #1
This is Part 5 of a multipart post. Click here for Part 1, Part 2, Part 3 and Part 4
Adoption Attempt #1
It was October of 2007 when Melody and I finally had “the talk” about adoption. That’s when we realized that both of us wanted to explore the idea of adoption, but that each of us was afraid to bring up the subject. However, once we began to talk about it, things moved fairly quickly. After discussing what we were and weren’t willing to do (at the time, we were very restrictive about the amount of risk we were willing to take), we decided that international adoption was our best route.
As “first-timers”, we were under the impression that international adoption, though expensive, held far less risk than domestic private adoption and certainly less risk than a foster-to-adopt arrangement. Of course, over the past 4 years, our eyes have been opened to the fact that adoption in any form is an incredibly risky venture! So, having narrowed our options down to going the route of international adoption, we set out to find an agency.
We were referred to a very well-respected adoption agency who had completed countless numbers of successful adoptions and after receiving their information in the mail, we were ready to sign up. Of course, that’s when the reality set in that we had no idea how we could pay for an international adoption. However, we felt like this was a path that God was leading us down (we still believe that, though it didn’t lead where we thought it was going to) and we chose to enter a program to adopt a child from El Salvador.
To be honest, part of the reason we chose El Salvador was because it was the least expensive international program offered by our agency. And yet, there was something that God was placing in our hearts during that time. We were beginning to come to the realization that our first child would not look like us. He or she would have brown skin and would come from a different cultural heritage. For us, this was a huge step and one that we probably wouldn’t have made without being confronted with the financial realities of international adoption.
So, once we had chosen the country, we set off on what has been dubbed the “paper pregnancy”. Over the next several months, we would fill out a ton of paperwork, have to request records from every government agency that had ever had any contact with us, seek references from friends and family and, of course, raise (and hand over to our agency) thousands of dollars. It was a leap of faith on par with anything we had ever done in our lives, and yet we knew that God was in it.
Again, we didn’t fully understand exactly how God planned to use this little adventure in our lives, but we knew he was there. Stay tuned for the next installment to hear just how quickly things can fall apart and, just as quickly, come back together again!
To be continued…
It’s a Long Story (Part 4) – Texas-bound!
This is Part 4 of a multipart post. Click here for Part 1, Part 2 and Part 3
Texas-bound!
In the summer of 2004, Melody and I relocated to Houston, TX. To be precise, we moved into an apartment in Stafford, a suburb on the southwest side of town. This was a big leap of faith for both of us, but perhaps more so for Melody. You see, a few months before our move, I had come down for a visit and interview with Vineyard Music (the record label I would be working for). I got to spend a week getting the lay of the land, searching for apartments and getting a taste of real Tex-Mex. Melody, on the other hand, had to move to Texas sight unseen. I’m not sure who was more apprehensive the first time we stepped into the apartment that I had picked out on my solo journey!
Just two days after we moved in, I headed out on a business trip to the northeast and Melody was stuck in Texas to try to figure out life and to make new friends. Fortunately, new friends found her! I remember getting a call while I was out of town. It was Melody calling to inform me that she had met these really cool people named Oscar and Shelah and that when I got back in town, we were going to their home group. I really wasn’t in a place to argue, having left my wife in a strange place all alone. So, I agreed and when I got back into town, I got to meet Oscar and Shelah and a group of people who we quickly grew to love and who are our friends to this day. They have been through thick and thin with us and understand our journey as well as anyone.
It was while in that home group that we first started talking about adoption. Doug and Bethany Myers, good friends who were part of that group, were in the midst of completing their home study to adopt a child. Initially, Melody and I both agreed that we weren’t interested in adoption. We didn’t like the risk associated with it and we really wanted a baby “of our own” (oh, how far we’ve come!). However, over the course of several months, our attitude toward adoption began to change.
We had a friend in the church who was and is a top fertility specialist and we began working with him to try to have a baby. But the further down that road we went, the more we were convinced that it just wasn’t for us. We have a lot of friends who have gotten pregnant through IVF and other methods, but it just didn’t seem like what we were supposed to do at the time. And so, with IVF off the table and a very small chance that we would ever conceive without help, there were only a few options left. We could simply pray for a miracle baby – a pregnancy that happened in spite of the doctors’ findings – we could decide to never have children, or, the third option, we could adopt a child.
As is so often the case with Melody and I, we both began to feel like God was moving us toward adoption, but each of us was afraid to tell the other. I’m not sure how many months that went on, but eventually one of us (probably her) brought it up and we discovered that we were in agreement. We were going to adopt. But from where?
Well, that’s probably another blog post in and of itself, so for now, I’ll say…
To be continued…
Hiccups, Roadblocks and Off We Go Again!
In the world of adoption, hiccups and roadblocks are the name of the game. Whether adopting domestically (like we are doing with Lucy) or internationally (like we are doing for our second child), the process is so complex and involves so many people, agencies and organizations that something is bound to go wrong. For anyone who has adopted or is in the process, these frustrations are just part of life. The quicker you learn to accept them, let them roll off your back and move on, the better off you’re going to be.
And so, it comes as no surprise that before we even really got into the new adoption process, we had a hiccup. A few weeks ago, we got a rather disturbing email from our agency telling us, fairly bluntly, that the adoption program from RMI had been put on hold and encouraging us to look into their other international adoption programs.
Unfortunately, that was not an option for us. As we have mentioned elsewhere, we feel compelled by God to adopt specifically from this country – to adopt a Marshallese baby. And so, the prospect of adopting from anywhere else just isn’t an option for us. We were incredibly frustrated – not so much with the adoption agency, but more so with God. Why would God lead us down this path and then shut the door in our faces? We prayed for direction and that whatever God was doing would become evident to us. We prayed that some other door would open up. (Keep in mind that, to our knowledge, this was the only agency that was approved by the Marshallese authorities to provide adoption services between the two countries.)
As I went for a drive to pray and clear my head (I was not in a good place!) Melody stayed home and jumped on the internet. By the time I got home, she had found an unadvertised pilot program that was being conducted by Lutheran Social Services (LSS) of Minnesota. The program information was available via Google search, but not really visible on their website. Nevertheless, we decided to contact them and see if the program was still active.
It turns out that God had, indeed, opened another door for us. Not only was the program active, but it had moved out of the pilot stage and was open for new applicants. Not only that, but they had just finished working with LSS of Austin to complete an RMI home study for a family there. So, we contacted LSS of Austin, who informed us that they have social workers here in Houston who could complete our home study and that they would love to work with us.
After a couple of other conversations, we decided to take the plunge and dive back into the process with this new agency. The people we spoke with were incredibly helpful, responded quickly and really seemed to have things together. So, off we go again, with a new agency. We lost the initial $300 application fee that we paid to the former agency and had to pay a $250 application fee to the new agency, but in reality, that was a small price to pay.
As you can see if you visit our progress tracker or donation page, there are a few changes to the process and fee schedule, but the overall cost will be about the same and the process is very similar. The one big difference is the timeline for when payments need to be made. Under the new agency, we will need $17,500 prior to referral, which is a few thousand dollars more than before. Once we have approval from the new agency, we will begin our home study with LSS of Austin and will be reliant on our friends and family for some great referrals!
Thank you for joining us on our journey and for sticking with us through the hiccups that are bound to happen along the way.