The Journey Begins Again

Our family leaves for Guatemala a week from tomorrow, and when we return, another angel will be in our midst. Her name is Catherine Maria Glover, and we call her Catie.

Catie is our third child, all of them adopted by the grace of God from Guatemala, a country that we now consider our home away from home. We adopted our son, Anthony Lee, about five-and-a-half years ago. He is named after his two grandfathers. Next came Eliana Patricia, born in December 2001. Her first name means "God answered me" and has special meaning to my wife, Kimberly, and me (explained in another post on this blog); her middle name is the name given to her at birth. And Catie shares a first name with her maternal grandmother, with Maria also being the name her birth mother chose.

I wish I had discovered blogging six years ago because I could have recorded the details of all three of our adoption journeys in this simple format. But I'm thankful that I have the chance to record this journey for posterity.

All of our trips to Guatemala have been special in their own way -- the trip to get Anthony because he was our first child; and the trip to get Elli because we felt like we were going home, with our dear friend Stephanie joining us -- and this one is no different. This time, Mamaw and Papaw (my parents, Jack and Barbara) are going with us. We'll also take Anthony and Elli, just as we took Anthony when we adopted Elli, and Stephanie plans to join us for at least part of the trip.

We are going earlier than usual this time. When we adopted Anthony, we were nervous about being in a foreign country and stayed only a few days, rarely leaving our hotel. The nerves were long gone by the time we adopted Elli -- we even took a tour in the Antigua area -- but we still stayed only about a week. Catie's adoption has taken much longer, though, and we can't wait to see her, so we are basically moving to Antigua for at least two weeks and perhaps longer. We plan to rent an apartment and stay as long as necessary to overcome the few remaining bureaucratic hurdles to expanding our family. Lord willing, we will have our family together in America before the end of April.

Thankfully, Antigua has plenty of Internet cafes, and I'm hoping they are affordable enough for me to blog about our trip while there. So we invite all of our friends and family, and anyone else touched by the joy of adoption, to visit this site over the next few weeks.

If you have an adoption story of your own you would like to share, please do. And if you're thinking about adoption and want to talk to a family that has taken that course three times, feel free to contact me.