Adoption Group

Last night, Dwight and I had a chance to go a meeting of the adoption support group at First Reformed Church. We learned about this group back in November when we went to a Sunday service there celebrating adoption. We weren't sure how the group worked, but last night was designed to provide information about resources for adoptive families and we figured we could always use a few more resources.

Members of the group had gathered together a large number of books related to adoption and different people in the group gave a little information about particular books they had found helpful. They talked about a variety of books, including books for parents, inspirational books, and children's books. Even just a few years ago when we adopted Maria, there weren't a lot of good children's books about being adopted. I was pleased to see so many really nice picture books about adoptive families.

I did hear about many books that I would like to read; maybe I'll have some time over Christmas break. They thoughtfully gave us a book list so it will be easy to go back and find the books I was interested in. I also hope to get a few of the children's books. We only had a couple and they were lost in the flood. Someone in the group also put together a resource page of helpful websites for adoption issues which I haven't even had a chance to look at yet.

The best part, though, was meeting all the people. There were families with a variety of adoption experiences: domestic, international, infant, older child, foster. One women held a tiny 10-day old baby, her 13th foster baby so far this year. One lovely woman comes to the group mainly to be a support to families adopting from Ethiopia. She is now retired, but spent most of her life as a missionary to Africa, mainly Sudan and Ethiopia. It was so fun to meet everyone and hear about their experiences. We are really looking forward to getting together with this group again next month.