An Unintended Advertisement

A week ago Friday I was writing some thank you notes and the girls got out pens and wrote on some notes, too. They said they wanted to send them to a particular woman in C. I got out the MLJ staff picture and they showed me which woman they were talking about. While I couldn’t understand what they were saying, I could begin to understand how much they loved and admired this woman. I have since found out (from writing Sonja) that this woman visited them each week and connected with them to make sure they were doing alright in the foster home. While the girls were talking about her, Zoe started pretending to spray perfume in a way to tell me that they wanted to send her some body spray (like they have). I thought that sounded great and cleared it with Sonja.

So, we went to the store earlier this week and bought a few small gifts for this woman and for Marie. The girls were so excited! They also bought a little matchbox car for a boy they talk about a lot who must be a biological child (about Isaiah’s age) in their foster home. We sent a package of gum and some suckers for him, too. It was such a joy to get to do this with the girls. It is an incredible blessing to hear them start to tell us (in their limited English + charades) about their lives in C. In addition to this woman and Marie loving them a ton while they were in foster care, the girls told us that Marie’s mom took them to the movie theater to watch a Jackie Chan movie. How hilarious – and wonderful – is that?! They made sure that I wrote in Marie’s card that they love her and to tell her mom hello also. My heart is overflowing with deep gratitude for all of the in-country staff, the foster family and others who provided so much love and care to our children. It is unbelievable, really, to see the effect it has had on our kids.

Which leads me to say (again, I am sure) that I. LOVE. OUR. AGENCY. Now that our kids our home and our girls have given us glimpses of how well they were treated once they were matched with us . . . I feel indebted for life to our agency’s in-country staff. I am nearly positive their care, along with the kids’ foster family (which was due to the in-country staff) is what is allowing us to not have any bigger issues than we are having. I think it is an understatement to say our kids were very loved and well-cared for. Yes, MLJ costs a few thousand dollars more than a lot of the other agencies doing C adoptions. But, when you are shelling out tens of thousands of dollars for an adoption, it is critically important to find an agency getting the job done well. And it is absolutely worth it to pay a little more when it means paperwork will be done correctly and your kids will have excellent care. I would pay a few thousand dollars extra in a heart-beat to use MLJ if we had to do it again.

I also want to mention that there is no perfect agency. There are going to be bumps in the road with every agency. That is part of this thing called adoption. One of the first things our program director told us right after we started the process was that an adoption agency is only as good as the in-country staff working with them. And – OH MY WORD– is it ever true! The in-country staff, along with Sonja, make MLJ an excellent adoption agency for adopting from C. I’ll conclude my advertisement now. :)