Adoption 2.0

Today, Joleen and I announced to our churches that we are going to adopt a second child.

Once again, we are adopting an infant from Korea. We are requesting a girl. We are using the same agencies, Adoption Horizons (our local agency and caseworker) and Americans for International Aid and Adoption. We’re expecting AIAA to send our paperwork to Korea this coming week.

While the timing is hard to nail down exactly, we’ve been told we can expect to receive a referral (info and photos of a baby) in approximately 3-5 months. If the child is at least 5 months old at the time of referral, we could expect to travel to Korea about 2-3 months later. That could put a trip to Korea somewhere between October 2009 and January 2010.

We invite you to follow along as we begin another adoption adventure!

7 thoughts on “Adoption 2.0”

  1. Hey! I just checked in to see what was happening with this journey of yours. How exciting to see an update. I’m thinking of you and praying along with you as things unfold for this new baby! Love, Trish

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  2. Hi Willis Family. I haven’t been on the website lately, and thought I’d see how things were going. How exciting you decided to adopt a second child! 🙂 Congrats!

    It sounds like Ethan is growing and learning so much. I hope everything else is going well for you all.

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  3. Like Rachel I haven’t been on your website for awhile. Great news and congratulations. Our family continues to grow – just got number 20 great grandchild April 30.

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  4. We were a career Army family and our boys were 3 and 10 when we adopted a baby from Korea. Her name was Joo, Eun-Joo which means Silvery Pearl and she was unbelievably precious! Some years later we were stationed in Korea where I became the Director of the Orphanage Outreach Program on a voluntary basis. I visited over 200 orphanages, some with dirt floors. During our last 2 years there we adopted 4 more girls. They were adopted individually at the ages of 5 years (she had been abandoned on the streets of Seoul, population 8 million, and she had burn scars up her arm), 10 years (her Korean Father was an alcoholic), 11 years (both her Korean parents had leprosy and living in a leper village where I visited them often; they had no fingers, their legs had been amputated due to frostbite, the disease had eaten their noses away and their bottom lips hung down on their chins), and the last one adopted was 15 years old and in the 10th grade (I first met her as a room mother in the orphanage and we became friends; she was bipolar and had no money for meds so she was often arrested during her manic states and put in a mental hospital for a mandatory 30 days where she was kept doped up until released, then it started all over again because she had no meds).

    My daughters ALL completed college and are living very happy, productive, Christian lives. My biggest regret in life, bar none, is NOT ADOPTING MORE CHILDREN. I encourage everyone to please, PLEASE consider adopting Korean kids, even those in their teens. If not Korean, then adopt any kids from anywhere or check out http://www.AdoptUSKids.org.

    During our years in Korea we had kids visit for the weekend from different orphanages all but 4 weekends out of 4 years. Once I went to Sang Rok Christian Children’s Home (prearranged) and said I’d take as many boys as would fit into my Toyota station wagon. That weekend we had 14 boys, plus our family of kids as well as the 6 year old we’d been legal guardians to for some years already. Every weekend we baked cookies and cakes, I taught them to play my favorite game – Backgammon, and we always went to church together, sitting near the front where the congregation could see them all…in the hopes that exposure might get some adopted.

    I don’t mind saying at night on that particular weekend the floor was nothing but sleeping bodies…but honestly, I wouldn’t trade a moment of it for anything in this world. I so, so love those children and will ache forever because…FACT…Korean as a nation believes orphans are no good, that they lie and steal and can’t be trusted, so they won’t hire them and they won’t let their kids marry them. But when an orphan finishes high school they must leave the orphanage and support themselves. What a heartbreaking situation! When I look at the orphan teens I see son and daughter material, but to Koreans they’re seen as either prostitutes, thugs or factory workers making far less than $ .50 an hour (working 12 hours a day and getting ONE DAY A MONTH OFF!)

    Incidentally, the 15 year old we adopted graduated from high school with honors and got an ROTC scholarship. She graduated from university a math major and was commissioned a 2Lt. She eventually served in the war effort overseas and 10 years after we adopted her she was a Captain stationed in Korea where she was able to see her Korean parents once more. I’d insisted that she remain in contact with them, saying one day she might want to locate them again. She didn’t want to but she wrote every December, nonetheless. (I’d explained that her writing to them and letting them know she was happy and healthy and doing fine was my way of thanking them for signing the relinquishment papers.)

    Ten years later I received a letter from Quinn (her American name) and in it she said, ‘I see the wisdom of your words.’ And her letters, her emails, her birthday or Christmas cards, etc….she signs them all, ‘I adore you!’

    Now I ask you, how could any parent want more than that!! And to think that she was adopted at the age of 15. Actually she was 17 (I learned some years later) but she’d gotten the orphanage director, Mr. Lee, go to down to the government office and for a small amount of Won he changed her age by lowering it 2 years. She knew the maximum age to adopt Korean children, by American law, was 15 and she was getting older and so dearly wanted to be adopted, so the age change gave her a few extra years to be considered for adoption. But I don’t fool myself. I’m sure if I hadn’t adopted her she never would have been adopted…and all because of her age. How terribly sad.

    Please, PLEASE adopt the older Korean children. Older, OLDER…over 10, over 12! You will never, EVER regret it! I can be reached at [email protected] if you want to reach me. Please put the word KOREAN ADOPTION in the subject line.

    Blessings…Brook in Olympia, WA

    P.S. – I also worked with street children that I’d bring home to live with us on a temporary basis. One boy was about 13 and had lived on the streets of I-TaeWon for 4 years as a shoeshine boy and buying gum for W100 and selling it to the GI’s for W200 a package. A year later he was adopted by a millionaire family in Alaska who already had 18 adopted Korean kids. IF ANYONE KNOWS OF THIS FAMILY I’D LOVE TO KNOW HOW TO REACH THEM.

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  5. MUST MAKE CHANGE IN MY OTHER POST = I was referring to the 15 year old girls KOREAN MOTHER and not to the girl herself!!

    and the last one adopted was 15 years old and in the 10th grade (I first met her as a room mother in the orphanage and we became friends; she was bipolar and had no money for meds so she was often arrested during her manic states and put in a mental hospital for a mandatory 30 days where she was kept doped up until released, then it started all over again because she had no meds).

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