Ades Family Announcement

Soooooo, we have some fun news… we are adopting our next child.

Yes, that’s right – we decided to adopt from Ethiopia and we couldn’t be more excited! There are so many children out there who need a family to be a part of and to love them. We feel we could be that loving family to a child, and we had been considering this option to add to the family even before our beautiful daughter, Rachael, was ours.   We also feel honored that a family, if not a country will trust us to raise one of their own. 

We were just officially APPROVED by the Gladney Center for Adoption, our adoption placement agency (You can follow our timeline on the sidebar of this page if you’d like).  We hope to get our approval from USCIS (US immigration) soon, and soon after we will officially be on “The Wait List.”  Of course, the Ethiopian government will have to approve us as well, but that is further down the road, and possibly many bumps away.  

Next question – Why Ethiopia?   We just fell in love with the country, it’s beautiful culture, and in our research we found that these Ethiopian children are loved from the beginning and are likely to be nurtured well in the orphanages they end up in. The orphanages typically run like large families, with one caregiver/nanny to 2 or 3 infants- they often wear the babies on their backs. Just some facts if you’re interested:

There are 12 million orphaned children by one or both parents on the continent of Africa mostly due to the AIDS pandemic, now becoming known as the “Continent of Orphans”. In Ethiopia alone, there are a ½ million homeless children not able to be sheltered by extended families. I read, There is No Me Without You (Melissa Fay Greene) while we were deciding, and that book sealed the deal for me.  She notes in her book that there simply are not enough adults to parent all of these orphaned children. 25 million people are infected by HIV/AIDS and only 10% have financial access to the anti-viral drugs that we in America could get so easily if we were infected.

If you have a book club – this is a great read. Of course, we have to take classes and read lists of books to finalize the adoption, but this we do gladly!  Also, if you’re book list is as long as mine, but you want to check out just a little smidge of the book without having to read it - this is a great website: http://www.thereisnomewithoutyou.com/

So this is an exciting journey for our family!! – one often filled with bumps, but also lots of blessings!

Thanks for checking the webpage/our blog! Check in periodically for updates. We’ll also send out an email to remind you to check the blog when we have big news to share. 

                Much love,

                Laura, David and Rachael