Prior to leaving they told our pastor about what they were about to do. He gave them an opportunity to speak to the congregation of our church in order to raise money for the library they were going to build at the orphanage, Hogar de Esperanza. They raised $2000 that Sunday, and they left the following week for Trujillo.
When they returned from Peru a month later, they gave a Powerpoint presentation to the church to show us the projects they were able to complete while working at the orphanage. They also showed some pictures of some of the children that needed families. One of the pictures was of three little girls. Now, we have three biological sons, and due to my wife's painful pregnancies we were not going to have any more biological children. We had discussed the possibility that maybe in a few years we might adopt a baby girl, but it wasn't on our minds at this time. But suddenly without having any clue of what was going to happen to me that day, I found myself thinking, among other things, that "those girls could be my daughters". I was also thinking about my nephew, whom my sister and brother-in-law had adopted as a baby from Peru some sixteen years earlier, and how it would be cool for him to have Peruvian cousins.
(This is the picture I saw at church)
That particular Sunday, my wife, Andrea, was at home with one of our three boys who was sick. I had serious doubts that this little spark of an idea I was having was really going to blossom into anything. However, on a whim I decided to have, Bill Glick, a member of the church tech team e-mail the picture of these girls that I had just seen so that I could show my wife when I got home.
Upon arriving at home, I reminded Andrea about that couple that had gone to Peru, and told her how they had just come back and had showed the church what they had accomplished. I then, sort of half jokingly, said, "How would you like to double the size of our family?" I showed her the picture, and to my surprise she was totally open to the idea, and told me to investigate it further. My oldest son, who was 8 years old at the time, came in while I was showing the picture. We asked him what he thought of the idea of adopting these girls as his sisters. Once again, to my surprise, he was very open to the idea, and thought it was a good thing to do. My middle son, who was 5 years old, said he didn't want any sisters at all, but we kind of discounted that as what any 5 year old boy might say. Our two year old didn't have an opinion. :)
So, the next thing we needed to do was figure out was what we should do next. Having never adopted before, we had no clue. I decided to contact the owner of Hogar de Esperanza, Dave Miller. Dave is an American business man with a BIG heart. He built the orphanage after seeing the many street kids begging for food on his many trips to Peru. Dave told me I should contact some other families who had adopted from the orphanage, and then we should come down to the orphanage to meet the girls to make sure this is what God wanted us to do.
We took his advice on both counts. I was able to get some good information on how to get started with the adoption process, and what we should expect as far as time and money from the contacts that he had given me. Through the advice of one of the families I spoke to, I went ahead and started the application process for the adoption agency with Villa Hope. And after some investigation and some help from people at church we found a local agency to do our Home Study (more on these subjects later). We also ordered tickets for our flight to Peru which would be at the end of February, 2006. This would be the first time either my wife or I had traveled out of the country.
Obviously, we needed passports. Here I will depart from my story to mention to anyone considering international adoption that you might want to start work on getting a passport if you don't already have one. You'll find that as you gather documentation for the adoption, that a lot of documentation is time sensitive. Peru has strict requirements on how old certain documents can be. Most of them can be no older than 6 months, and some can be no older than 3 months. We needed our passports right away because, not being independently wealthy, we didn't want to invest in too many of the fees for the home study or the adoption agency until we had met the girls and made sure this was the right thing to do. So, we wanted to meet them as soon as possible so we could get the process started. We got our tickets for late February because we needed 6 to 8 weeks to get our passports. You will need birth certificates to get a passport if you have one lying around use that instead of ordering new ones. You need to hold out on new birth certificates until you get your home study done and some other documentation completed, so that your birth certificate age is within that 6 month range.
Back to the story...
We arrived in Lima, Peru late on February 25th, 2006, and took an 8 1/2 hour bus ride on Cruz Del Sur bus lines to Trujillo on the 26th. We arrived late that night, and we were met by David Miller at the bus station. We were quite relieved to have arrived safely since our Spanish was very limited, and we were international travel novices. Having arrived in Trujillo late on the 26th, we would have to wait yet another night to meet the girls. When we woke up on the morning of February 27th, we were given a tour of the orphanage by David Alenskis who was a "year long" American volunteer at the orphanage. We were filled with anticipation to finally meet the girls. Of course, we didn't want the girls to know that we were specifically looking at them for adoption because we didn't want to get their hopes up in case things went badly. So they didn't know who we were when we happened to cross paths on our tour. It was a bit anti-climatic when they said "hola", and walked away. However, within ten minutes, David Alenskis told us that our lawyer from Villa Hope was there, and asked if we would like to meet her. Of course, we were a little shocked. We weren't quite sure who our lawyer was. It was just a nice coincidence that Maria Elena Baldassari the Peruvian lawyer for Villa Hope and Anne Baldwin, the Executive Director for Villa Hope from Alabama happened to be visiting Hogar de Esperanza on the same day that we arrived. They heard we were there and wanted to meet us. We talked about the girls for an hour, and then we all took a tour together of the children's casitas (the 4 dormitories housing the girls and boys). Maria Elena being there turned out to be quite fortuitous for us. Because she speaks both Spanish and English, and because she has a great gift with working with children, she was able to break the ice, and bring all the children out of their shells. This enabled us to quickly bond with all the children, and really started off our week long visit on the right foot.
