Our Adoption Story: How It All Began

"If you have a heart for adoption, don't let fear stand in the way." - Doug Chapman
Noli and I have been talking about adopting for so long that at some point I thought it was never going to happen. And although we both agreed to adopt even before we got married in 2007, we kept putting it off for later. Why? Because we had reservations. I feared that the child we would adopt would be sickly or would have been traumatized that we could not be capable of caring for him. Noli was worried of finances.

So we prayed harder. Yes, harder. Sometimes we ask for us to get pregnant, and sometimes we ask God to direct us if ever he wanted us to grow our family through adoption. I think we may have confused God at some point.

A few months before our annual vacation back to the Philippines, we agreed to go and inquire at the Department of Social Welfare and Development (DSWD). Now we only have one prayer, for God to guide us in this decision.

On January 5, 2015, we walked in the office of DSWD Region IV-A. We were greeted by a very friendly and accommodating young man and we were introduced to a social worker who handles adoptions. We were given a list of requirements while the social worker explained that one of the requirements was a Certificate of Attendance to pre-adoption. Our hearts sank when the social worker gave us the schedule. We would not be able to attend because Noli would be heading back to Doha in 4 days.

So.... she gave us the seminar, complete with a power point presentation right there. I kept saying to myself ‘Thank you, Lord. Thank you, Lord. This is really for us.’ So we went home with the Certificate of Attendance.
Local adoption requirements checklist. Download here.

After Noli left to go back to Doha, I worked on getting our authenticated birth and marriage certificates, and NBI clearances. The rest, we had to get while in Doha.

By March 2015, almost all of our documents were complete. So I made an overseas call to the social worker who gave us the pre-adoption seminar. She was so accommodating that she gave us her personal mobile number!

We learned that in order to file the application, we must first be both residing in the Philippines. And that would mean giving up our jobs. So we added another prayer; for discernment if we should pursue our plans to adopt and move back to the Philippines or not.

Read more of our adoption story in my next post! Like us on Facebook or you can follow me by email or on Google+

You can find more information about local adoption here and international adoption here.

I made a pretty checklist for myself so I can monitor the documents we still needed to get. You can download one for yourself here, for free!

I would love to hear your adoption story! So do leave a comment.

And if you have any questions about adopting, feel free to leave it in the comments. I will try to answer your questions to the best of my abilities.