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In the June 16, 2007 issue of “Church News” is an adoption story that touched my heart. The Ozair and Rosicler Ribeiro family of Brazil already had three biological children when Ozair, a fireman, helped rescue a premature infant boy who’d been abandoned in a sewage ditch. The baby spent 45 days in the [...]

In a previous post, I wrote about meshing the China my mind imagined and the real China I’ve come to know and love. I struggled with the poverty I witnessed in our daughter’s home province, but determined that I would do something to help.
When the time came for us to visit Haiti, [...]

When our family vacations, we typically either pay through the nose for large family suites at hotels, or we book two rooms (always hoping for adjacent rooms but rarely getting them) and deal with the inconvenience of having our family and belongings split up.
Last week, however, we stayed in a rental vacation home [...]

In my last post, I wrote about “comedienne” Chelsea Handler’s comments about Angelina Jolie’s adoptions – specifically why she chose to adopt internationally, and why she changed her Vietnamese son’s name to Pax. (Did ya notice how I put “comedienne” in quotes? Yeah. That’s because she’s not so funny.)
Anyway, for some time [...]

Adopting internationally has changed me in ways I hadn’t anticipated. When we first decided to adopt from China, I had a very limited understanding of how everything would work and how I would be affected. Understandably, I suppose, I thought only about the child we would be adopting and how blessed our family [...]

Did you happen to catch tonight’s “Late Show with Jay Leno?” If you did, then you probably caught guest Chelsea Handler’s comments about Angelina Jolie and her adoptions, not to mention her [obnoxious] racist innuendo about Asians being bad drivers and Vietnamese being good at doing nails.
If you didn’t see it, I’ll summarize and [...]

I came across this Townhall.com article today and it got me thinking about our presidential candidates and what stance they might have on adoption. I’ve been focused on other issues that matter to me, like affordable health insurance, abortion, humane immigration reform, stem cell research, etc. But it dawned on me that in [...]

I-600A – Advance Processing for Orphan Petition
If you’re in the middle of an international adoption paperchase and haven’t yet filed your I-600A, now is the time to get that puppy sent in! On July 30th, fees will increase from $545 to a whopping $750, and biometrics fees will increase by $10 per person from [...]

In part one, I talked about how hurtful it can be to have adoption nay-sayers in your life, and in part two, I discussed ways we can remind ourselves that we’re doing the right thing, even in the face of negativity.
This section is all about talking through those unsolicited, negative comments!
If you’re like me, you’ve [...]

In part one, I talked about how troubling it can be when others view adoption negatively and choose to tell us about it. Negative comments are hard to take from any source, but at least for me, are particularly hurtful when they come from people at church. In this post, I’ll discuss some [...]