I can't even begin to tell you how many people have emailed me, sent me facebook messages and called/texted to ask me what they should do about beginning to adopt from Haiti. I have responded to a few, but most of them have gone unanswered. Not because I'm being mean or don't care to answer them, but I just didn't know what to say to them. Keep in mind I am not an adoption case worker. I don't work for an agency. I am just a mom that has two kids from Haiti, cares about Haiti and has spent the last 2.5 years trying to get her kids home.

Here is my answer to the question should I adopt from Haiti?

Not now.

The truth is that adoption from Haiti before the earthquake was a miserably long process and now it is unthinkable to think they could just pick back up and start processing adoptions.

The buildings are gone.

The papers are gone.

The country is destroyed.

There is no infrastructure

There are ethical ways that adoptions must be done in adoptions and until they can verify that a kid has no parents it is unethical just to ship them off to America to be adopted into a better life. 🙂

I read on adoption.com that all Haitian adoptions are stopped. I read on God's Littlest Angels website that they are not taking applications until the government opens up adoptions again. This website listed Haiti as not open now. My friend Christine wrote a great post about adopting from Haiti. This is my favorite line from her post, “The children of Haiti deserve our effort, our voices, our understanding … and our patience.” Go read her post, it's much better than mine!

So all this to say, if you feel as though God has stirred something in your heart about adoption from Haiti since the earthquake I would encourage you to do a few things. #1 Pray about whether you feel as though you should wait on Haiti (which might be a long time) or whether or not God has put this in your heart to help the orphans of the world and not necessarily Haiti. God could have used this tragedy to do something in your heart about adoption. There are millions upon millions of children in need of homes. Maybe God is moving you to adopt a child from Ethiopia, Russia, Rwanda, India, Uganda, or maybe even right here in the US out of the foster system. #2 Use this time to prepare your heart and family for adoption. Adoption is hard and taxing on the whole family. Prepare for this. Read books about this. Talk to others that have walked this road. Search for agencies that meet your standards. #3 PRAY for Haiti. God has stirred your heart for this country and the truth is that it will take YEARS and YEARS for this place to get back on its feet, if it ever was to start with. There are amazing people there that are serving the Haitian people diligently. Maybe God is leading you to support their ministries. Maybe God is leading you to sponsor a child through Compassion International.

So, those are my very uneducated opinions about starting an adoption in Haiti. I do not know of one agency that is taking applications. I would guess that they won't be for a while. I'm begging you to think of possibly taking that desire that God has given you and search other countries that have orphans that are in need of families to love them and raise them.

story wiating

Jamie Ivey