Advantages to adopting sibling group!

I am just reminded and sometimes haunted by the faces of the sibling groups still at Layla and in Ethiopia. In just a little over a month I cannot imagine our lives without our 3 new kids. I also cannot fathom what life would have been like for them had we not come forward to take the leap to adopt all three of them. THe reality of the situation is that there are 4.6 million orphans alone in Ethiopia. Statistics from Unicef show that although Ethiopia is a popular country to adopt from , only one onehundreth of 1% of the orphans are adopted or around 4000 ish a year. Of that one one hundreth of one percent...most people chose to adopt infants...more specifically female infants...this narrows the percentage of the older single adoptable children into the next miniscule percentage. Sibling groups would be the next group that would be attractive to adopt (3rd on the list of the one onehundreth of one percent)..in that group there are few brave families willing to adopt more than two and beyond that sibling groups of 3 or 4 kids stand even less of a chance..AND it is the exceptional family that choses a sibling group where one or more of the children are age 10 or older. Beyond that there are the special needs children who either have HIV, HEP B, or have other issues...many of them may never enjoy life with a family. With our first adoption we adopted an infant female. I can say that at the time I had many fears regarding older children. BUt I guess once you have adopted once you get a little (or with some people a lot) bolder the next time.

These are the advantages that I personally have experienced from having adopted an older sibling group:
No potty training (with the exception of teaching them to put the toilet paper in the toilet), when one doesn't understand you at least one of the children will be able to figure it out and interpret for you, the kids stand a better chance of remembering their language because they have eachother to speak with, the older girls in Ethiopia have so much joy in helping in the kitchen, kisses every morning, watching as the kids discover TANNA MATANNA (Hannah Montana), there are never left overs (this is an advantage because I was always the one who had to eat them), always someone to play with (this was our son Andrew's observation), the oldest will keep the younger ones in line (you just may have to teach them better techniques than kicking, slapping and hitting as a means of discipline), the kids can share all of the firsts with you (Mom ...look the moon has a cross in it)...or "this staircase is moving... HA!", watching the joy in their eyes when they discover hot water coming out of the faucets or ice from the refridgerator..., having to rely on God and watching as He shows up...seeing Him more everyday...praying more everyday....believing more everyday....Praising God with your children in church.....knowing that you are the one the children have been praying for for over a year to come and get them...and seeing how God made it possible...

There are still children praying at Layla tonight..Some of these kids are 14 or 15 years old and worry about their little brothers and sisters and their own future. Specifically we pray for both Tsions that we know at Layla who are waiting with their siblings...but there are so many others that I haven't had the pleasure of meeting......Please pray for them tonight.....they are praying that someone somewhere will COME.....