(Laura speaking) We spoke with Bethany Christian Services about agencies that worked with Costa Rica, and they only knew of one. We decided to look online and do some research on the companies available. We were only able to find two companies. The problem was that the company we wanted to work with wasn't in Michigan. We spoke with LifeLine, the company we chose to use, and they said we would need Bethany Christian Services to do our home study. We were very excited that we finally found a way to adopt through Costa Rica. Through our Internet research we were able to find a missionary that works in Costa Rica and she is willing to help us while we are in Costa Rica.
     We submitted our formal applications to both Bethany and LifeLine in March 2011. We have gone to the orientation for parents adopting children. We have also attended a meeting that spoke about adoption, and the medical problems that can arise with internationally adopted children. We had our first home study at the beginning of April 2011. Our second home study was completed at the end of April 2011.
     We were so excited to begin the home study process. We have two wonderful women working with us and being very patient in explain what needs to be done. When we had our first home study they told us we needed to put a railing on our stairs, and a deck up that would attach under our slider.
     Jordan and I stayed up very late one Saturday night trying to put up our railing on our stairs. We had a difficult time with it, so Jordan asked one of his friends to come help. It took them a couple of hours to get it done, but with out his friends help it would have been so much more difficult.
     As we were trying to get our house ready for our second home study we celebrated Kyra's Third birthday and Mark's fourth birthday. They are just eleven months apart. It has been great having two children close in age. They love to play together and really enjoy each others company. We can't wait to have a third child.
     After the completion of our second home study we were told that we didn't need to have any more home studies, and that they would start to work on the paper work. We are expecting the paper work to take approximately four to six weeks. We just have a couple of things to do now to make sure that the paper work can be completed.
     We are very excited to start the next process of completing our dossier. The dossier is all of the paper work that needs to be done to send to Costa Rica. One item of the dossier is our passports, which we just found out the cost of those as I (Laura) just applied for mine. We are asking for your prayer as we continue to pursue this adoption.

The beginning

     I was only three years of age when I was welcomed home by my mother and father. I was adopted from Costa Rica over 22 years ago. I came home with my three sisters. My mother and father adopted four children from Costa Rica. We were considered hard to place because of being a sibling group. 
     It was hard to adopt from Costa Rica because agencies didn't really work with Costa Rica, so with the help of Bethany Christian Services my parents were able to figure out a way to adopt. My parents adoption will also influence more children. The love and blessings they have given will continue.
      It has been 22 years since my adoption and now my wife and I have decided to adopt from Costa Rica. We would like to offer a child a family that will love them more than words can describe. Our two children Mark and Kyra are very excited to have a brother or sister. Mark is four years of age and Kyra is three years of age. They talk about their brother or sister daily. Most days they ask when we will be getting on the big air plane to pick up their brother or sister.
     While we were dating we both spoke of adopting a child it was on both of our hearts. Within our first three years of marriage we were blessed with two wonderful children. On our fourth year of marriage we decided to start the process of adoption. We didn't realize that Costa Rica still didn't have many agencies working with them. We thought that we would be able to use Bethany Christian Services. We sent our pre-application to Bethany and soon realized that they didn't work with Costa Rica and we began to look at other places to adopt from. We received our packet from Bethany and we were shocked to see that we couldn't adopt at all because we weren't old enough and we weren't married long enough. The minimum age seemed to be 25 years of age and 5 years of marriage. We decided to wait a year until I was 25 years of age and Laura was 24 years of age. At that point we were married for Five years.
     We submited our pre-application again and decided that we might look to adopt from Haiti or Ethiopia. We were told very quickly that Haiti would not let us adopt because we had to be 35 years of age and married for 10 years. At that point we thought we would adopt from Ethiopia. We discussed as a family where to adopt from and our hearts were still with Costa Rica, but that was a problem because we still needed to find an agency that worked with Costa Rica.