As a technical manager, I'm not accustomed to talking about my feelings.  I'll do my best to describe the range of feelings my husband and I experienced while adopting our two children from Russia. 

When I committed to adopt internationally I knew it came with great responsibility. Not only would I gain entry into a new culture, I would also need to embrace the loss that accompanied the international adoption experience.

Our journey to adopting was probably not much different than any other couple’s.  However, it was not something I wanted to do initially.  Having two teenage boys and being forty-eight years of age were big obstacles for me.                                    

The last day of 2003, New Years Eve we received a long awaited phone call from our Social Worker at CHSFS.  Our referral had arrived and we would finally learn some of our daughter!

The crispy breeze on the morning of April 20th said it all.  Our six long years of wait is almost over. The exhilarating joy, thrilling emotions and overwhelming anxiety about the first meeting with our son. Our days are about to change.

There were many reasons we chose international adoption, one being that we weren’t interested in an open adoption.  After attending a workshop at Children’s Home Society & Family Services of Minnesota in November of 2002, we understood the reasons behind open adoptions and felt a little sad that our child would never know his birth family.

There is a saying that goes like this:  Life is not measured by the number of breaths you take, but rather by the number of times it takes your breath away.  I am the Mama to three of China’s treasures. 

How many children will join our family until we will feel our family is complete?  After two biological boys and two daughters adopted from Korea, I am still unsure of the answer.  Many people in today's society are moving towards smaller families and we seem to be moving against the crowd.  I never cared much for going with the flow.

As a child in Minnesota, growing up I had many Korean adoptees as friends.  I remember back to my first meeting with my preschool pal Peter.  I was four and had never met an Asian person before then. 

On the other side of the world, our baby waits for us, though she doesn’t realize it. She’s the subject of our late night talks, our sweetest dreams, and our hopes of the future . . .

For the past ten plus years (or as many of those as she can remember), we had promised our daughter that, at age 12 (why 12? We can’t remember!), we would take her to Colombia to visit her country of birth. 

Many people have heard the ancient African proverb that it takes a village to raise a child, but for MJ and David Betzold, they see it the other way. We have not only adopted a child from China. We adopted a village, a country, and a culture. We have a bond with the people we met in the village where our daughter was found that will never be broken, said MJ Betzold

Last January my husband and I traveled to Ethiopia’s capital to shepherd home our three youngest children.  To me, Addis Ababa is everything people claim New York to be, but better—all the vibrancy without the surliness and crime.