Benjamin & Jennifer's Story
By Blair & Julie K
It all started in the summer of 2002 when we made the difficult and joyful decision to go through the adoption process for our first child. Our research took us through a few chosen agencies but the decision was made to go with the personal recommendation of a family friend’s close friend who highly recommended Wide Horizons. The next step was speaking to the Philippine Coordinator, Mary Lou Eshelman, since we had made a decision to adopt from the Philippines as Julie was born there. Completion of the application, home study with our social worker, the approval of our application by ICAB (Intercountry Adoption Board of the Philippines) and waiting for the referral, which came after the long Memorial weekend in 2003, went very fast (lucky break for us). We brought our son home in September 2003 at eight months old and our lives were completely changed after 16 years of marriage. No longer thinking about us and our careers, but this little person who is waiting for us to raise and nurture him with lots of love and affection.
In the Fall of 2004, a year after we brought our son home, we completed the application for our second child, updated our home study and waited for the ICAB approval, which we received in January 2005. We requested a daughter and, given our age, the waiting time for the referral took much longer than our first child. It was hard and at times in 2006 we contemplated pulling out our application because of the long wait. Thankfully before we could make that hard decision, our social worker called us to come to the office the beginning of December 2006 for the referral of our daughter, which we formally accepted the following day. We picked up our daughter in March 2007 when she was 23 months old and brought her home after our long wait.
No doubt that it has not been the same raising a child who came under our care at 23 months old versus an eight-month-old child. Sure, we missed several of her milestones, but the journey is very similar to our first child. They have similar needs and the same craving for our affection at the same time. It took a little time for our son to get used to our daughter, but you can tell the love and protection that he offers to her in various situations. At the same token, it is heart-warming to see our daughter rub our son’s back when he is crying or run for the tissue box for him. Our daughter is two years younger than his Kuya (older Filipino brother) and she has the affection at a very tender age of 2, and only with her new family a few months.
Adoption is never an easy decision for anyone but you cannot find a better partner in this journey than Wide Horizons For Children. The team of social workers and staff, such as Mary Lou, Amanda, Laura (retired), Bridget, our Philippine liaison, Che, from Chosen Children and others are there for you assisting, listening and making the journey a memorable one. We are so grateful to the team and for someone recommending WHFC to us. We have gotten calls in the past about WHFC and have been doing the same high recommendation to pick WHFC as their partner in the journey. Our thanks and congratulations to WHFC for reaching the 10K milestone and we pray that they are able to place more children to loving families like ours.