Second Home Study Meeting

Our second meeting for our home study was today, and it was a good meeting.  It was very informative, and she gave some great advice on helping an adopted child adjust into a new environment.  Our social worker also mentioned a Life Book, which is a baby book for adoptive children.  I'm going to look into that.  Then there was some digging into the lives of Ryan and Cristy.  The questions are nothing bad or hard, but I get kind of nervous when I'm asked so many questions.  She did ask us the question everybody seems to ask, "Why India?"  Our desire is to give a child some opportunities they would not have otherwise.  Most people typically do not think of India as being poor.  India has so many different parts to it...from the eternal snows of the Himalayas to the cultivated peninsula of far South, from the deserts of the West to the humid deltas of the East, from the dry heat and cold of the Central Plateau to the cool forest foothills.  There are parts of India that are amazing and have wonderful technology, but the country as a whole is very populated.  A recent study showed the Indian states, including Bihar, Uttar Pradesh and West Bengal, have 421 million poor people.  This is more than the 410 million poor in the poorest African countries.  It was hard for me to believe at first that eight Indian states account for more poor people than in the 26 poorest African countries combined.  The adoption agency we picked, Dillion International, works with an orphange in Kolkata.  There is also hopes in the next couple of years that two more orphanges might possibly open up for Dillion to work in, and that is very exciting news!  I hope to hear in my lifetime that many children of India will find homes whether in India or all over the world.