Why Guatemala?

I'll give you the final decision maker as to why we chose Guatemala - namely: we fell in love with the idea of adopting a child from Eagle's Nest children's home. Now I will back up and fill you in on a little of the decision making process.

One of our considerations for where to adopt from was travel time. With two small children already at home, it was pragmatically difficult to even consider a country that required a lengthy stay. Guatemala has a very short time that is required to travel, so we were drawn to that country for that reason.

However, as I researched I soon discovered that there were many "rumors" and talk about concerns of child trafficking and other ethical issues with the way Guatemalan adoptions were being handled. Now, bear with me here. I realize that there are similar issues with any country you adopt from (including our own), and that there are many, many good, reputable agencies that provide excellent and very ethical service in uniting Guatemalan children to families. But, I'm just reporting what I was finding through my research, specifically that Guatemala was especially in the hot seat for issues concerning fraudulent adoption practices and child trafficking. Knowing that, we were wary of pursuing an adoption from Guatemala, and we were leaning towards a domestic minority adoption.

However, during one of our home visits for our homestudy our social worker was describing the different programs they had to offer for international and domestic adoptions. When she mentioned Guatemala, she said that in order to qualify through their program you needed to have a reference letter from a pastor. We were definitely intrigued and wanted to learn more. What we learned is that the agency that was doing our homestudy uses another agency for their program for Guatemalan adoptions. This other agency matches children out of an orphanage in Guatemala that is run by Baptist missionaries. We looked at the web-sites for the orphanage and the international agency, and we checked for any other information we could find about them.

In the end, we fell in love with the idea that our child would be well cared for at this children's home. We could go there to visit and stay right there in apartments that they had on site. Years later we could go back to visit, maybe even taking our child with us if he or she was interested. We could support the home even after our child was home with us. These were all reasons we fell in love with Eagle's Nest children's home in Guatemala, and we were thrilled to adopt children from that home.