The Adventure Begins

Well, it's official!! The Ribars have decided to adopt from the Philippines!!

It's going to be a long process, and we are going to try to journal each step of the way. We want to be able to remember all the fun and insanely difficult parts of this journey. We are working with the Hand in Hand International Adoption Agency. Karin is our adoption counselor, and she has been a great resource so far and we are so grateful for her experience and advice.

Back in September we attended an Orientation Night. There we learned about the different countries that Hand in Hand works with. The Philippines was the first country that they placed a child with a family, and Karin's aunt actually helped the Filipino government write out their adoption laws!!

We felt that the Philippines match up with who we are very closely. It is a predominantly Christian country, and require that families adopting from there be practicing Christians. They are also very family-oriented, and anyone who knows us well knows that our family is our passion! We are so excited to add a Filipino child or children to our family - That's right, we have said that we would be willing to adopt a sibling group of two children. We don't know if that will actually happen, but for right now we are open to it.

We are so excited about everything we have learned so far. We know it's going to be a very long process, and at times we will be very frustrated with things that are out of our control. But overall we know that this is in God's hands, and He has the perfect baby/babies already chosen for us. Thanks for supporting us through this, we appreciate all of the prayers sent up on our behalf!!