Thought you might like to follow this story of a family trying to adopt from Uganda who eventually had to move there to be his foster parents for 3 years before they'd be allowed to adopt him... long and amazing story and lots more to read on their blog... http://oneroofafrica.blogspot.com/
Boy, has this rekindled my desire... Lord, Here I am, send me!
October 23, 2008
The Story.
So. Why are we here? Why have we established an internet presence under the name "One Roof?"
I'm glad you asked. It's a long story, so pull up a chair, obtain a mug of your favorite hot beverage, and read on.
My name is Adam Palmer. My wife is Michelle. We have four biological children, named Emma, Noah, Dorothy, and Charlotte. And we have a son in Africa that we've been trying to adopt since July of 2005. This is him, back when we started:
And this is him now:
It all began, as these things often do, at church. Our church supports an orphanage in Jinja, Uganda, called Amani Baby Cottage. We sent a team that summer on a short-term missions trip to Uganda, which included a few days of help and love at Amani. Someone brought a video camera to document the trip, and they showed the video on a Sunday morning.
Both Michelle and I were moved as we watched these precious children, their hope-filled smiles lighting up the screen. Yes, they were orphans, forgotten by much of the world, but we still sensed their destiny and knew that, given a loving family, these kids could really thrive. The paternal instinct within me leapt up, and my heart cried out, "I want them all!"
My brain then went on the defensive: "You can't take them all, but you can take one."
Unbeknownst to me, at that very same time, Michelle was sitting next to me, thinking the exact same thing. The thought pestered our hearts: "You can't take them all, but you can take one." We talked about it after church, and, within hours of being exposed to these precious orphans, we succumbed.
That afternoon, we looked up the Amani website and filled in our kids as to what we were considering. Noah, the only boy, four years old at the time, began jumping up and down, pointing at the photos of the kids on the site, saying, "Let's buy a boy! Let's buy a boy!"
We were on the phone with Amani Baby Cottage the next day.
We got the information we needed and found out that adoption through Uganda is actually fairly inexpensive as far as international adoptions go, and that the process should go fairly quickly. We were matched with a little 14-month-old boy named Francis, and we began doing everything on our end that we needed to do (getting a homestudy done, filing the appropriate paperwork, driving down to Oklahoma City to get fingerprinted, etc.) and, in March of 2006, we got the call: we were going to court to get our boy.
After much deliberation, we decided that sending the whole family was cost-prohibitive. We'd raised enough money from friends, family, and anonymous donations from church members to get at least one of us there, and, since we don't have money coming out of our ears, decided that Michelle should be the one to go, since she's a stay-at-home mom and would be spending the most time with Francis. With about a week's notice and absolutely zero travel experience, Michelle winged her away across the world to meet our little guy for the first time.
It was a long pair of flights (Chicago to London, about eight hours of layover, then London to Entebbe, Uganda), but the flying was over soon enough and, much to Michelle's delight, she was surprised at the airport when she saw our adoption coordinator, Holly, holding Francis. The tears began to flow as Michelle clutched our son to her chest. The bond was immediate. It was a natural mother/son moment, as natural as the first times Michelle had held any of our biological children.
From that moment, Michelle and Francis were inseparable. They went to court shortly afterward and were told that guardianship was essentially in the bag--they just had to come back in a week to get their ruling. They passed the week seeing Jinja, visiting Amani frequently to hold the babies, and just generally getting acquainted with each other.
The next week they went back to court and were told it would be another week. No big deal--just waiting on some paperwork that needed to get filed. It was fine. I was at home having a blast with the other kids, eagerly anticipating the arrival of our new guy, and we were okay with putting in another week if it meant bringing Francis home.
The extra week went by much in the same way the first week had done. And then the ruling was put off again. Another week.
And then, when Michelle went back to get the ruling, she got the greatest shock of our adoption process so far.
The judge denied our guardianship.
The reasons for his denial are murky, so it's tough to go into here, but we honestly don't believe he was malicious in his decision. In our opinion, he was doing what he felt was best for Francis and for all the future children of Uganda.
Be that as it may, however, we were faced with a decision. We were obviously going to appeal the ruling and take it to a higher court, but what should Michelle do in that time? If the appeal was going to be soon, should she wait in the country? Or should she leave Francis and come back to the States to wait it out over here? If she came back, she'd have to leave Francis, a child who'd already had to deal with being abandoned. If she stayed, she would be leaving our other children without a mother for an extended (and unknown, though likely lengthy) period of time.
Ultimately, Michelle came back, her hands empty and her heart broken. The rest of us were disappointed, naturally, but Michelle had spent a good four weeks bonding with our son, and leaving him in Uganda was beyond a disappointment to her--it was devastating. The only thing that kept her going was the knowledge that our appeals court date would be set soon and she would be heading back to be reunited with Francis and, this time she would bring him back with her.
Three months later, in late June, we got the call: our appeals court date had been set, and it was in one week. One. Week. We hurriedly got everything together for Michelle to make the trip again, and, with anticipation, looked forward to this second trip.
Two hours after she got off the plane in Uganda, Michelle was in court with Francis (who recognized her immediately), and the hearing went well. The appeals court judge saw that Francis and Michelle had a mother/son bond, and that he truly loved her and she him. It looked like we were going to get a favorable ruling.
But the problem became: when would we get that ruling? We thought it would be in a couple of weeks, but two weeks after appearing in court, there was still nothing. And this time, our time apart as a family was less than desirable. I had started a full-time job, so I wasn't able to spend nearly as much time with the kids as we had during the first trip. And since the ruling could come at any time, Michelle pretty much had to sit on her hands and wait. Her accommodations were much different, so she wound up spending all of her time basically in a room with a lovable--but overactive--toddler.
After three weeks of waiting, the writing became apparent on the wall: this was going to take a long time, and we couldn't afford a moommy-less existence at home for much longer. We began to look at options to get Michelle home, but since it was peak tourist time, the first flight available out of Uganda wasn't for another two weeks.
Five 1/2 weeks after she left home for the second time to bring Francis to his family, Michelle returned for the second time, again empty-handed. When she left Uganda the first time, she was able to leave Francis as he slept, hoping that he would understand why his mommy wasn't there when he woke up. This time, though, she had to take him back to the orphanage just before bedtime, and she heard his plaintive cries as he was taken back to a familiar room and put back in his familiar bed.
Michelle left much of her heart in Uganda that second time around. She came home, back to the States, back to this part of our family, but she wasn't the same. It hurt too much to leave him. And it hurt too much to wait for the ruling that would come unannounced.
It was a long wait. Nine months of waiting, actually. But in March of 2007, we finally got the word: we'd been granted legal guardianship! Uganda recognized us as Francis's parents! It was a time of joy, except...
The ruling had a little hitch in it. There was a provision in it, one little sentence, that stated we had to appear in Ugandan court three years later to finalize our adoption. They'd granted us guardianship, and now we only had to foster Francis for three years to prove that we really wanted him as our son. After that foster period was over, we had to appear in court one more time to finalize and then everything would be okay.
The hitch: the United States would not grant a visa for Francis as long as that provision was in there. As we understand it, this is the case in all international adoptions--an unbendable rule to prevent, I guess, excessive fees and gouging from other countries. That's just me editorializing, though. Regardless of the reason, the law remains: no visas granted unless the child can come into the U.S. and stay in the U.S. as long as the child wants to.
So, what to do? We petitioned the court to please remove that little line from their ruling so that we could, as they say, "take up the child" and bring him home. But the court didn't want to change their ruling, and was offended that we'd even suggest such a thing. That would make them look weak, which was no good. We could've appealed again to the Ugandan Supreme Court, but we were gun-shy about whether that would actually work, we were pretty much out of money, and Michelle was pregnant with our fourth biological child and couldn't really make the trip.
We decided instead to pursue a loophole in the U.S. law called Humanitarian Parole, basically asking the government for special permission, on humanitarian reasons, to allow Francis into the country without a visa. We began corresponding with our senator's office to see if anyone in Washington could help us out, and got the wheels into motion.
And this is where we made a decision that we now regret--we put the Humanitarian Parole on hold. We were about to have our new baby, and we had some other, non-adoption things going on in our world, including some challenges with another one of our children, and so we made the difficult decision to delay applying for Humanitarian Parole.
Honestly, we were almost in a place of cynicism, feeling that, since we'd been stymied every time before in our attempt to bring Francis home, there was no guarantee that this would work, either. Our hearts, over time, and in an attempt to protect ourselves, were being hardened, though we still loved our little guy.
Also, Francis was getting older and older. At this point, he was 3 1/2 years old, and he was getting less and less adoptable. As we understand it, children are only allowed to stay in an orphanage until the age of 5, at which point they graduate to a new facility and, for the most part, become orphans for the rest of their lives. After all, who would adopt a full-on kid when there are babies in the country that need adoption as well?
We didn't want that to happen to Francis and, looking at our ever-more-dire situation, made the incredibly difficult decision to release our guardianship of him. We knew that he was a bright light at the orphanage, and that more than one couple had made inquiries about adopting him--we didn't want him to miss his chance at a family because our case was mired in red tape.
We contacted Amani and began to discuss the possibilities of releasing Francis's guardianship. They put us in contact with their lawyer, who told us to write up our story so that he could take it to the court and explain why we were relinquishing our guardianship. I wrote it up, sent it off, and we didn't hear anything further.
But in March of 2008, we found out that another couple whose adoption was tied to ours had applied for Humanitarian Parole and had received it. They actually got it. Something went right.
Since we hadn't heard back about relinquishing our guardianship, we contacted the orphanage to see if we were still Francis's guardians and to find out if we could still apply for Humanitarian Parole. Turns out that our initial story write-up was too long and that the lawyer had edited it and emailed it back to us--an email we never got. The release had not proceeded and we were still guardians.
We got our application submitted in record time, and got back on the phone with our senator's office. Michelle stayed in close contact with them as they received the application and got it into the processing department.
On September 13, 2008, we received the letter in the mail. We just knew it would be the answer we'd hoped for. Michelle gathered the children around, opened the letter, and read that... we were denied.
Denied.
We did not receive the Humanitarian Parole. We don't know why.
And so, having exhausted all our options, we began to face the realities of the situation: we could either move to Uganda and wait out our fostering period there, or we could again pursue the release of our guardianship of Francis so that he could be adopted by someone else. We even knew of a precious missionary family who had already volunteered to take him.
Michelle and I had a lunch where we talked it over, and we both agreed that the only thing keeping us from going to Africa was money and a clear directive from God. It was such a huge life change for our entire family--we didn't want to make the decision lightly. If we were going to go, we wanted to be sure it was something we were supposed to do. But whatever happened, we needed to make a decision soon.
A few days later, Michelle got a phone call from some good friends of ours, offering us a sizeable amount of money to pay for airfare and a little bit more. "We just don't think it's right for a family to be apart like that," she said, "and we want to give you this money so you can move to Africa and be with your son."
That was on a Friday afternoon. That night, Michelle attended a women's retreat sponsored by our church, and, in the middle of it, the speaker made her stand up. This woman had no idea what we were going through, no idea that we'd just hours before secured funds to move, and she pointed at Michelle and said, "This isn't your home; you were made for the nations. Pack your bags, you're going."
I don't know what you believe about God and Jesus and all that stuff, but I'd say that's a pretty clear directive.
It took me about a day to come around, but I eventually got on board, and we made the decision that weekend: we're moving to Africa.
And so that's why this website exists. Because we're going.
Because we're finally taking the steps we need to take to get our family under one roof.
And because we want you to go with us.
As you've read, this has already been a crazy journey, and it's only going to crazier. This website will be our story hub on the internet. We hope to post stories, photos, and videos as we undertake this mammoth, and slightly insane, task. And as we do that, we hope you'll send us notes of encouragement, your prayers, and, if you are so moved, any donations you might want to make.
Please pass this link on to others. And keep checking back. And if you have any questions, please don't hesitate to send them to oneroofafrica (at) gmail (dot) com.
Thanks for reading. There will be (much) more to come.
I'm glad you asked. It's a long story, so pull up a chair, obtain a mug of your favorite hot beverage, and read on.
My name is Adam Palmer. My wife is Michelle. We have four biological children, named Emma, Noah, Dorothy, and Charlotte. And we have a son in Africa that we've been trying to adopt since July of 2005. This is him, back when we started:
And this is him now:
It all began, as these things often do, at church. Our church supports an orphanage in Jinja, Uganda, called Amani Baby Cottage. We sent a team that summer on a short-term missions trip to Uganda, which included a few days of help and love at Amani. Someone brought a video camera to document the trip, and they showed the video on a Sunday morning.
Both Michelle and I were moved as we watched these precious children, their hope-filled smiles lighting up the screen. Yes, they were orphans, forgotten by much of the world, but we still sensed their destiny and knew that, given a loving family, these kids could really thrive. The paternal instinct within me leapt up, and my heart cried out, "I want them all!"
My brain then went on the defensive: "You can't take them all, but you can take one."
Unbeknownst to me, at that very same time, Michelle was sitting next to me, thinking the exact same thing. The thought pestered our hearts: "You can't take them all, but you can take one." We talked about it after church, and, within hours of being exposed to these precious orphans, we succumbed.
That afternoon, we looked up the Amani website and filled in our kids as to what we were considering. Noah, the only boy, four years old at the time, began jumping up and down, pointing at the photos of the kids on the site, saying, "Let's buy a boy! Let's buy a boy!"
We were on the phone with Amani Baby Cottage the next day.
We got the information we needed and found out that adoption through Uganda is actually fairly inexpensive as far as international adoptions go, and that the process should go fairly quickly. We were matched with a little 14-month-old boy named Francis, and we began doing everything on our end that we needed to do (getting a homestudy done, filing the appropriate paperwork, driving down to Oklahoma City to get fingerprinted, etc.) and, in March of 2006, we got the call: we were going to court to get our boy.
After much deliberation, we decided that sending the whole family was cost-prohibitive. We'd raised enough money from friends, family, and anonymous donations from church members to get at least one of us there, and, since we don't have money coming out of our ears, decided that Michelle should be the one to go, since she's a stay-at-home mom and would be spending the most time with Francis. With about a week's notice and absolutely zero travel experience, Michelle winged her away across the world to meet our little guy for the first time.
It was a long pair of flights (Chicago to London, about eight hours of layover, then London to Entebbe, Uganda), but the flying was over soon enough and, much to Michelle's delight, she was surprised at the airport when she saw our adoption coordinator, Holly, holding Francis. The tears began to flow as Michelle clutched our son to her chest. The bond was immediate. It was a natural mother/son moment, as natural as the first times Michelle had held any of our biological children.
From that moment, Michelle and Francis were inseparable. They went to court shortly afterward and were told that guardianship was essentially in the bag--they just had to come back in a week to get their ruling. They passed the week seeing Jinja, visiting Amani frequently to hold the babies, and just generally getting acquainted with each other.
The next week they went back to court and were told it would be another week. No big deal--just waiting on some paperwork that needed to get filed. It was fine. I was at home having a blast with the other kids, eagerly anticipating the arrival of our new guy, and we were okay with putting in another week if it meant bringing Francis home.
The extra week went by much in the same way the first week had done. And then the ruling was put off again. Another week.
And then, when Michelle went back to get the ruling, she got the greatest shock of our adoption process so far.
The judge denied our guardianship.
The reasons for his denial are murky, so it's tough to go into here, but we honestly don't believe he was malicious in his decision. In our opinion, he was doing what he felt was best for Francis and for all the future children of Uganda.
Be that as it may, however, we were faced with a decision. We were obviously going to appeal the ruling and take it to a higher court, but what should Michelle do in that time? If the appeal was going to be soon, should she wait in the country? Or should she leave Francis and come back to the States to wait it out over here? If she came back, she'd have to leave Francis, a child who'd already had to deal with being abandoned. If she stayed, she would be leaving our other children without a mother for an extended (and unknown, though likely lengthy) period of time.
Ultimately, Michelle came back, her hands empty and her heart broken. The rest of us were disappointed, naturally, but Michelle had spent a good four weeks bonding with our son, and leaving him in Uganda was beyond a disappointment to her--it was devastating. The only thing that kept her going was the knowledge that our appeals court date would be set soon and she would be heading back to be reunited with Francis and, this time she would bring him back with her.
Three months later, in late June, we got the call: our appeals court date had been set, and it was in one week. One. Week. We hurriedly got everything together for Michelle to make the trip again, and, with anticipation, looked forward to this second trip.
Two hours after she got off the plane in Uganda, Michelle was in court with Francis (who recognized her immediately), and the hearing went well. The appeals court judge saw that Francis and Michelle had a mother/son bond, and that he truly loved her and she him. It looked like we were going to get a favorable ruling.
But the problem became: when would we get that ruling? We thought it would be in a couple of weeks, but two weeks after appearing in court, there was still nothing. And this time, our time apart as a family was less than desirable. I had started a full-time job, so I wasn't able to spend nearly as much time with the kids as we had during the first trip. And since the ruling could come at any time, Michelle pretty much had to sit on her hands and wait. Her accommodations were much different, so she wound up spending all of her time basically in a room with a lovable--but overactive--toddler.
After three weeks of waiting, the writing became apparent on the wall: this was going to take a long time, and we couldn't afford a moommy-less existence at home for much longer. We began to look at options to get Michelle home, but since it was peak tourist time, the first flight available out of Uganda wasn't for another two weeks.
Five 1/2 weeks after she left home for the second time to bring Francis to his family, Michelle returned for the second time, again empty-handed. When she left Uganda the first time, she was able to leave Francis as he slept, hoping that he would understand why his mommy wasn't there when he woke up. This time, though, she had to take him back to the orphanage just before bedtime, and she heard his plaintive cries as he was taken back to a familiar room and put back in his familiar bed.
Michelle left much of her heart in Uganda that second time around. She came home, back to the States, back to this part of our family, but she wasn't the same. It hurt too much to leave him. And it hurt too much to wait for the ruling that would come unannounced.
It was a long wait. Nine months of waiting, actually. But in March of 2007, we finally got the word: we'd been granted legal guardianship! Uganda recognized us as Francis's parents! It was a time of joy, except...
The ruling had a little hitch in it. There was a provision in it, one little sentence, that stated we had to appear in Ugandan court three years later to finalize our adoption. They'd granted us guardianship, and now we only had to foster Francis for three years to prove that we really wanted him as our son. After that foster period was over, we had to appear in court one more time to finalize and then everything would be okay.
The hitch: the United States would not grant a visa for Francis as long as that provision was in there. As we understand it, this is the case in all international adoptions--an unbendable rule to prevent, I guess, excessive fees and gouging from other countries. That's just me editorializing, though. Regardless of the reason, the law remains: no visas granted unless the child can come into the U.S. and stay in the U.S. as long as the child wants to.
So, what to do? We petitioned the court to please remove that little line from their ruling so that we could, as they say, "take up the child" and bring him home. But the court didn't want to change their ruling, and was offended that we'd even suggest such a thing. That would make them look weak, which was no good. We could've appealed again to the Ugandan Supreme Court, but we were gun-shy about whether that would actually work, we were pretty much out of money, and Michelle was pregnant with our fourth biological child and couldn't really make the trip.
We decided instead to pursue a loophole in the U.S. law called Humanitarian Parole, basically asking the government for special permission, on humanitarian reasons, to allow Francis into the country without a visa. We began corresponding with our senator's office to see if anyone in Washington could help us out, and got the wheels into motion.
And this is where we made a decision that we now regret--we put the Humanitarian Parole on hold. We were about to have our new baby, and we had some other, non-adoption things going on in our world, including some challenges with another one of our children, and so we made the difficult decision to delay applying for Humanitarian Parole.
Honestly, we were almost in a place of cynicism, feeling that, since we'd been stymied every time before in our attempt to bring Francis home, there was no guarantee that this would work, either. Our hearts, over time, and in an attempt to protect ourselves, were being hardened, though we still loved our little guy.
Also, Francis was getting older and older. At this point, he was 3 1/2 years old, and he was getting less and less adoptable. As we understand it, children are only allowed to stay in an orphanage until the age of 5, at which point they graduate to a new facility and, for the most part, become orphans for the rest of their lives. After all, who would adopt a full-on kid when there are babies in the country that need adoption as well?
We didn't want that to happen to Francis and, looking at our ever-more-dire situation, made the incredibly difficult decision to release our guardianship of him. We knew that he was a bright light at the orphanage, and that more than one couple had made inquiries about adopting him--we didn't want him to miss his chance at a family because our case was mired in red tape.
We contacted Amani and began to discuss the possibilities of releasing Francis's guardianship. They put us in contact with their lawyer, who told us to write up our story so that he could take it to the court and explain why we were relinquishing our guardianship. I wrote it up, sent it off, and we didn't hear anything further.
But in March of 2008, we found out that another couple whose adoption was tied to ours had applied for Humanitarian Parole and had received it. They actually got it. Something went right.
Since we hadn't heard back about relinquishing our guardianship, we contacted the orphanage to see if we were still Francis's guardians and to find out if we could still apply for Humanitarian Parole. Turns out that our initial story write-up was too long and that the lawyer had edited it and emailed it back to us--an email we never got. The release had not proceeded and we were still guardians.
We got our application submitted in record time, and got back on the phone with our senator's office. Michelle stayed in close contact with them as they received the application and got it into the processing department.
On September 13, 2008, we received the letter in the mail. We just knew it would be the answer we'd hoped for. Michelle gathered the children around, opened the letter, and read that... we were denied.
Denied.
We did not receive the Humanitarian Parole. We don't know why.
And so, having exhausted all our options, we began to face the realities of the situation: we could either move to Uganda and wait out our fostering period there, or we could again pursue the release of our guardianship of Francis so that he could be adopted by someone else. We even knew of a precious missionary family who had already volunteered to take him.
Michelle and I had a lunch where we talked it over, and we both agreed that the only thing keeping us from going to Africa was money and a clear directive from God. It was such a huge life change for our entire family--we didn't want to make the decision lightly. If we were going to go, we wanted to be sure it was something we were supposed to do. But whatever happened, we needed to make a decision soon.
A few days later, Michelle got a phone call from some good friends of ours, offering us a sizeable amount of money to pay for airfare and a little bit more. "We just don't think it's right for a family to be apart like that," she said, "and we want to give you this money so you can move to Africa and be with your son."
That was on a Friday afternoon. That night, Michelle attended a women's retreat sponsored by our church, and, in the middle of it, the speaker made her stand up. This woman had no idea what we were going through, no idea that we'd just hours before secured funds to move, and she pointed at Michelle and said, "This isn't your home; you were made for the nations. Pack your bags, you're going."
I don't know what you believe about God and Jesus and all that stuff, but I'd say that's a pretty clear directive.
It took me about a day to come around, but I eventually got on board, and we made the decision that weekend: we're moving to Africa.
And so that's why this website exists. Because we're going.
Because we're finally taking the steps we need to take to get our family under one roof.
And because we want you to go with us.
As you've read, this has already been a crazy journey, and it's only going to crazier. This website will be our story hub on the internet. We hope to post stories, photos, and videos as we undertake this mammoth, and slightly insane, task. And as we do that, we hope you'll send us notes of encouragement, your prayers, and, if you are so moved, any donations you might want to make.
Please pass this link on to others. And keep checking back. And if you have any questions, please don't hesitate to send them to oneroofafrica (at) gmail (dot) com.
Thanks for reading. There will be (much) more to come.
