
Our adoption journey began with a simple act of obedience as both my husband, Matt, and I felt the Lord indicating that this was His "Plan A" for building our family. We jumped right into the mountains of paperwork, not knowing it would be 6 1/2 long years before our son and daughter would finally come home from Haiti. Within months, we learned their orphanage was actually a human trafficking ring and that corrupt officials within Haitian Social Services were being paid to look the other way. While reason told us to walk away, our hearts were committed as soon as we signed our first homestudy document. These were our kids and there was nothing we would not do, no amount of money we would not spend, or time we would not wait to bring them into our family. We drained our savings on multiple occasions to hire 5 different attorneys and 3 sequential adoption agencies to work on our behalf. Between the 2 of us, we made a total of 66 trips to Haiti and ignored death threats while my husband spend extended time in Haiti searching for our children after they were kidnapped by the traffickers. In early 2012, our joy in finding the kids was short-lived as Haitian officials halted all international adoptions while they passed laws to reduce future trafficking situations. The irony was that these new regulations made it legally impossible for us to adopt our kids since the government now needed to match prospective adoptive parents with children they had never met and that contact