How It all Started

We are Lindsey and Cortney Clevinger from KY and we are in the process of adopting a baby from Ethiopia! Many of you who know us may know how tough the past 2 years have been. We set out to add to our family through the traditional way and soon learned that God had something wonderful in store for us. We weren't able to conceive a child however during those months of trying God taught us patience and understanding that will be necessary to bring home baby Ian from Ethiopia.

I think the hardest part so far (I can say this because we aren't waiting for the referral yet!) has been picking a country. When we started looking at the 25 or so countries we decided that we would love to have a baby from EVERY country! We narrowed it down to Korea and Guatemala. Due to conflict with Guatemala's program we decided that we were definitely going with Korea. Then, one night I was looking around on the internet and God must have guided my searches because I found the story of baby Enoch. An African American boy who captured the hearts of his adoptive parents as well as my heart. I read all of the information about the country and the need for adoptive parents and I think I knew right away that this was something that we would be doing. The next few days were about Cortney and me realizing that we could do this. We had to ask each other all of the hard questions and pray that God would equip us with the tools to do this.

Since that day about a month ago we have finished our homestudy, submitted our I-600A form, gotten fingerprinted at the immigration office, and started our dossier and Gladney application. As we work diligently on the mountain of paperwork to bring home our precious baby we have the joy of sharing this paper pregnancy with our family and friends. We are thankful for the supportive words we have received so far and pray that they will continue throughout this process and for the duration of our attempts to parent this wonderful little person. Please follow us throughout this process and pray that God blesses us with one of his greatest gifts.