As I mentioned in my introductory posts about our family and adoption experiences, the idea of adopting from Haiti was something that just kind of fell into our laps. We’d been planning to adopt one or two children from Viet Nam, but through an interesting series of events, we found ourselves starting at our Lulu’s picture and accepting her referral as well as that of her newborn baby brother, whom we’d not yet seen. Shortly thereafter, we learned that they had a sister, roughly age three, who was part of the sibling group. This was a surprise to us, but after prayerful consideration, we decided to go ahead with our plans and adopt all three children. Not long after that, we received the sad news that the middle child could not be adopted because her birthfather could not be found and therefore couldn’t consent to the adoption. It was obviously difficult news to hear, but I’d felt the Lord preparing me before we even got the official word, so I wasn’t too shocked when it happened.

Our adoption coordinator sent us profiles and pictures for several other children, many of whom we strongly considered adding to our family. We also considered just adopting Lulu and Jackson, and in fact, lots of people thought we were nuts to consider otherwise. After all, in their minds, the sibling group of three was a special circumstance – we were sort of obligated to “take them all” for the sake of keeping them together. We didn’t HAVE to adopt three children now that the middle child couldn’t be a part of our family.

But the feeling that there were really three children for us persisted, so we continued to look at information about other waiting children, discuss them and pray about them. Then one day, just before our first visit trip to Haiti to see Jackson and Lulu, our coordinator off-handedly mentioned there was a baby girl with albinism who’d recently come to the orphanage. Immediately, something sparked in my mind and I felt a connection to this little child, but in all the chaos getting ready for our trip, we didn’t take the time to really think or pray about it. When we got to Haiti, we looked for her in all of the orphanage sites but never found her. (We later learned she was in foster care.)

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