Why Bethany and Why Albania?

Immediately, Jen began searching the internet, devouring everything she could about adoption. Of course, Googling adoption wil bring up 14 gazillion websites offering their services. Some were religious, some were not. Some were more expensive, some were less. Some went only to certain countries, some went only to certain other countries. We suddenly found ourselves having to identify not only what our values in this process were, but also finding an organization that best lined up with what we wanted.

Then there was the matter of choosing a country. Did God have a specific country that we were to be looking at. It made no difference to us, but again only certain agencies worked out of certain countries. Should we choose an agency and then pick the country, or vice versa? Every day I would come home from work and receive a briefing on all the information Jen had found online that day. At the same time we really wanted to get started but the first orientation meeting in our area was a month away.

At one point, Jen asked me if I was at all excited about any of this. I told her that truthfully, I was completely overwhelmed with this decision. I would be happy if I could just pick a child out of a catalog, or something. Every option made the decision more difficult. She asked what we should do, I responded,"Let's just pray that God would make it clear."

The next day, May 7, 2008 Jen was talking with a friend who asked if we had looked into Bethany Christian Services(Check it out http://bethany.org/). When I got home we looked at their site and were amazed at the scope of their work. Suddenly, there was no other option. Why would we use another agency that only swapped our money for a kid and then was gone? As we looked further, we saw that they were offering a special orientation meeting that month, 2 weeks earlier and an hour closer.


As we searched the website, we saw that they provided adoptions from Albania, a country we hadn't seen with any other organizations. As it turns out Bethany is only one of two organizations that are allowed to operate in Albania. Doing a little more research we discovered that Albania is considered a third world country in Europe. It was then that we remembered Rachel's criteria for adopting (see previous post). Within 24 hours God had answered our prayer and led us straight to the agency and country.

Some other points in our decision for Albania

1. 70% Muslim population


2. During the Holocaust gave harbor to the Jews


3. War torn until recent years