Friends, we are adopting again!! Not only are we adopting again, but we are adopting from South Korea!!!
South Korea has been essentially closed for international adoptions due to a change in adoption structure within Korea that will occur in 2025. Because there were no open doors to South Korea with any agency, we had a phone call scheduled with a local adoption attorney in Chattanooga, TN to start the domestic adoption process back in August.
The day before that phone call was scheduled, an adoption agency contacted us seeking only 2-3 families who had previously adopted from South Korea and would be open to considering a child with special needs. (Wow, God!)
We went through the pre-approval process and were accepted! Our home study was expedited and completed in 5 weeks, and it was finalized and sent to South Korea this week!
At a high level, South Korea is moving all adoptions from private agencies to government run adoptions beginning in July 2025. The agency we are working with has a handful of children remaining in their care that they would like to have placed before this transition and hand off to the government occurs.
Only God could open this door, but He has more mountains to move for us.
The catch? We could be matched with a child in as little as 4 weeks due to the expedited need to have these children placed by the end of June 2025 (7 months away!) The most recent small batch of families whose home studies were submitted to South Korea were matched with a child in 4 weeks, so this is a VERY likely reality. When this occurs, we need to be prepared for our largest fee in the adoption process, the Program Fee, which is right at $22,000. God has already moved mountains to allow our family the opportunity to adopt from South Korea this time around. We are praying that He continues moving the remaining mountains and does BIG things to fund this adoption.