Our Story -Where do we begin?

For many years my husband and I knew
that we wanted children in our family.
Several Angel Babies visited us but did not stay.
Then came the day when we decided to adopt.

Not yet knowing anything about International Adoption
we followed the normal route
of completing a detailed Home Study
and requesting a child domestically.

Several years went by
and one day while sitting in the doctor's office
waiting for a routine checkup
I noticed a poster telling of an International Adoption Talk
being held the very next day at a local Hospital.
I told my husband & we decided to attend.

It was November 1999.
The room was filled with people
wanting more information
about adopting Internationally,
in particular from China.
Several families, with their recently adopted babies,
happily shared their adoption stories with us.
We had the opportunity to watch a video
telling of one family’s adoption experience.
We were deeply touched and moved to tears.
At that moment, was born in our hearts,
the desire to adopt a baby from China.
The name "Magnolia" came to me
and I hoped to name our baby girl
"Magnolia".

We spoke to our Social Worker
who promptly arranged to do a HomeStudy update for us.
We also contacted Children’s Bridge
and got all the necessary information
to be able to complete the paperwork.
It was our hope to have our dossier ready to submit
by January 2000.
Well January came & went…
My mother became quite ill
and I took on the responsibility
of all of her private Music Students
on top of my own large class of students
This left me no time to work on putting our dossier together.

Fast forward to summer 2000….
My mother has recovered and we finally complete all our paperwork.
Our dossier is submitted in August
and we now wait for Ministry Approval.
I joined a walking group of families in the London area
who were all in some stage of the process
to adopt from China.
It was wonderful to be able to share our stories while we waited.
My husband and I hoped to adopt twins
but in talking with my new friends
I discovered that specific Ministry approval was necessary
before China would consider placing twins with a family.
I was more than disappointed,
as our Social Worker had discouraged us
from requesting twins from China,
suggesting that it might slow down the process for us.

Well, our Ministry Approval finally came and it read,
“Christos & Marcia Havaris have been approved
to adopt a healthy baby girl or a set of twins”
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
I started to cry –
realizing that the Ministry had considered our request for twins
from our original Home Study,
which we had completed in 1996.
Immediately I phoned the Children’s Bridge
and told them what had happened.
They said they would add the information to our file
but warned us not to get our hopes up
as it was rare to receive a referral for twins from China
and also that we did not meet some of the requirements China had
for families wishing to receive twins.
But at least the hope was there that there was a remote chance….

To be continued....