Hear the Gillman's Story - The adoption of 2 children from Ethiopia
Changed and Blessed!
We had been married only a few months when the thought of adoption crossed our paths. Close family members had just returned from China where they spent 
time with children who were orphaned and their caregivers. After hearing their story we considered adoption but quickly put it out of our minds because of the cost. Over the next four years adoption would lay in the background of our minds but it seemed like such a far stretch for us so actions never followed our thoughts. God blessed us with a daughter by birth and with the hustle and bustle of a child adoption rarely came up. When our daughter was three and we were feeling the urge to add another child to our family adoption once again crossed our minds. We still struggled with the costs but decided to learn more. We researched adoption agencies and ordered information packets from several of them. We debated, prayed, continued to educate ourselves, and prayed some more then came to the conclusion that God was moving our family to adopt. We had no money set aside to walk this journey but decided to just put one foot in front of the other because if adoption was His plan for our family He would provide the funds needed. While it is easy for me to write those words today it was one of the hardest leaps of faith we have ever taken.
In January of 2007 we were accepted into our agencies El Salvador program and like all families adopting we began with the home study. During this part of the process families are asked to determine the age, potential gender, preferences of the child they wish to adopt. This was an easy decision for us. We had an abundance of baby girl items from our daughter, and had concerns about adopting older children. We would choose to adopt an infant girl. Our home study was complete and we moved forward with compiling our dossier for El Salvador. We submitted our documents to immigration as part of that process and our approval read that we could adopt two children. We did not have any desire to bring home two children at the same time so we did not act on the approval and kept our request to one. In October of 2007 our dossier was submitted to El Salvador and we began the waiting phase.
Right away we began to dive into learning the El Salvador culture. If we were going to welcome a child from El Salvador into our home we wanted El Salvador to become a part of who we were. Our journey was short lived in learning the Central American culture because in December of 2007 El Salvador’s adoption processes began to have problems and we found ourselves facing an endless wait time. Our agency guided us through our options. We could stay with El Salvador and face an extremely long wait, maybe never bringing a child home or we could switch countries. Our agency asked that we make a decision within a few weeks. We were confused. How could God bring us to this point to only close a door? Why would He ask us to go in one direction only to stop us in our tracks and send us in another? We were unsure of what to do and felt paralyzed in the process. We prayed, consulted believers who could help us process our options and finally began to move one foot in front of the other. Our family would transfer to the Ethiopia program during January of 2008 and begin the process all over again. By April our documents were on their way to Ethiopia. Our request was still that of an infant girl, however, we were still approved for two children.
For the next ten months we waited for our referral, however, during that time the Lord began to move in our hearts. As we learned more about Ethiopia we discovered the massive amount of orphans within the country. God reminded us of our approval for two and nudged us to change our request. This was an extremely large stretch for us. We could barely afford to adopt one let alone two. We would be entering the world of adopting an older child – again areas we had great concern in but after praying we felt led to change our request and paperwork to include a second child up to the age of four years. Several months went by with silent waiting until God again nudged us. We were approached with the idea of adopting two older children rather than considering an infant and older toddler. Setting aside our fears of adopting older children we decided to simply try to walk through the door. If it was not what He had for us He would surely close it. We approached our social worker with the idea and due to her beliefs of not adopting out of birth order she would not approve our request. We left that as a closed door and stayed with our current request. After several more months we again were approached with the idea of adopting two older children. At this point our hearts simply wanted to do God’s will no matter how hard or difficult it might be so we set out to try and walk through the door again. A new social worker was now before us and after questioning us intensively regarding our ability to handle situations such as breaking birth order, artificial twinning and raising older children who had been adopted in general to our surprise she granted approval for us to move forward. We once again changed our request and within a week to Lord presented us with two children! Eight months later (August 2009) we landed in Ethiopia to meet them in person and bring them home to be part of our family.
Our journey was long and it stretched us farther than I ever thought we could be stretched but we saw God move in mighty ways. He provided funds at just the right time, He drew us closer to Him and closer to each other, our daughter who journeyed this process with us offered her heart to Jesus, and two children once alone in this world were no longer fatherless. I still can’t tell you why our journey was so long or why we started out with El Salvador and ended up in Ethiopia. What I can tell you is that He knew exactly the two children who should come into our lives and He knew exactly what we would need to walk through in order to be ready for those two children He had in mind. I could provide you a lot more detail regarding our adoption but the ending would be the same with or without that… it would still be this: We have been changed! We have been blessed!
Visit our blog to see our full story and follow our journey as we continue to come together as a family.
The Gillman Family