HANOVER COUNTY, Va. (WTVR) - Each year roughly 120,000 children are adopted in the US, about 12,000 of them from other countries.
Because of overseas adoptions that have gone wrong and made the news, regulations are much more strict, requiring families to go through longer, more complex and expensive steps to bring home children from even the most impoverished lands.
Matt and Desiree Williams of Mechanicsville harnessed their faith and worked together – especially their four children – to bring home two young brothers from Uganda, Africa.
We recently visited with this homeschooling family who all believe in the Biblical principle of taking care of the widows and orphans.
Desiree says they have room in their home and their hearts. They have own their own family fitness center and have supportive parents to grandparent all the children.
It’s been a long walk to get to the two young brothers, Isaac and John. Their mother died and the father travels, getting work where he can.
They’ve had to raise $37,000 as they patiently moved through the complex adoption process. Matt estimates more than 100 people have contributed to their dream, buying the goat milk soap, homemade vanilla extract and bracelets the children help make, among many other fund-raising and grant-seeking operations.
Here’s the latest update from Matt, sent to me early Tuesday morning after parking their kids at the grandparents and scrambling aboard their flight to Africa:
“Good morning Mark. I wanted to let you know that yesterday morning we got an email from our agency that if we could get to Entebbe, Uganda by Wednesday night, we have a court date on Thursday. We began the scramble, finished packing and got great flights out of Richmond (thanks to a humanitarian travel agent). we leave this afternoon. The boys will meet us just before we take them to court. It's less notice than we had hoped for, but trust God will make it work well. We are very excited.”
If all goes well, they’ll bring the boys back in a week or two. If it’s appropriate, we’ll be there when they come back to meet the rest of the family.
