We had been trying to have children for 6 years, we had no luck getting pregnant & the one time that we did I had a miscarriage at 8 weeks. After that I began to do some soul searching & began to pray & ask God what he had planned for my life. Well, as you may have guessed adopting was his plan.
A co-worker of my husbands just happened to mention one night at work that her daughter had just adopted a baby from Guatemala and she had gone through an agency in Murfreesboro called Heaven Sent Children. This peaked my interest because I had already been researching agencies and adoption on the Internet. So I called Heaven Sent and had them send me their info to get us started.
When we made our decision on what country we wanted to adopt from we began our home study and the very long paper work process. Be prepared, this process seems to take forever! We started in September of 2003. The following May 2004 we saw pictures of our little girl Miriam. She was six months old, but the pictures of her were at three months old. By July we got to see her up to date photos at eight months old. I fell in love with her instantly. By the end of July we were signing the paper work that would make her our daughter. That was very exciting!!!
Then we ran into some roadblocks. See adoption is not real high on the government's priority list, so when they get your paper work it just kind of sits there. We actually had to get our Congressman involved to get things moving along again.
We finally got our travel clearance in May2005; we left for
India on May 4th. No sugar coating it; the flight was awful!!! It was a 24 hr
flight with 4 plane changes, one eight hr layover in an Indian airport with
no air conditioning, nothing to drink & no where to go to the restroom.
When we finally arrived in India the car that was suppose to be waiting for
us at the airport to take us to our hotel was not there. So we hired a cab to
take us to our hotel, when we got to the hotel they did not have our reservations
had no idea who we were. Anyhow to make a very long story short after we panicked
and had a breakdown we got back in the cab went to the orphanage & got everything
straightened out.
Then finally we were taken to see our little girl in person
for the first time. We spent about three hours with her the first day, and even
though we were very tired & jetlagged and Miriam had no idea who we were,
it was the most exciting day of our lives. We spent 7 days in India before we
returned home on May 13th. The return flight had even more plane changes &
was worse than the flight over there.
Coming home with our little girl was the next best day of our lives, we were finally a family and there are no words to explain that feeling. Since we have been home Miriam has blossomed from a shy scared baby to a very curious and extremely happy little girl. See smiles at everyone and everywhere we go people tell her how pretty and beautiful she is. God has truly blessed us with an Angel.
Even though the process was long, hard and extremely trying at times, I do not regret it one bit. I would recommend adoption to anyone interested and to anyone who can't have children, it is truly a blessing.
"To conceive a child is an act of nature, To adopt a child is an act of God, To raise a child is an act of Love".
Andrea and Ryan Gagovoski