Yes. No. Maybe So.

Well I posted last night about the conference and said I would post about the possibility of using a different agency. At the conference yesterday they had a ministry fair where agencies had "booths" set up so you could wander around and check them out/ask questions. We went that morning with our minds set on just looking at the booth for Bethany Christian Services. Sure we might look around to see which other ones were there but not with the intention of changing our minds or even thinking about it. We ran into the friends from church who made us aware of the conference and they told us that the agency that did their home study for their second adoption was there. We were asking them who that was and etc. We decided to just walk by to check it out and see if they had any information available. Again, just to look not to change our minds. We started speaking with the lady that was running the booth and she was super nice and very informative. She answered all of our questions and was very helpful. You know how sometimes when you first meet someone you just feel at ease or comfortable with that person. We both felt this with her. Now I know that our "feelings" aren't always accurate but it does make a difference on how the relationship is.

She said they are a very small agency that only do about 5-10 adoptions a year. I know this is a very teeny tiny number in our minds. However, they only have about 10-11 families on profile right now and they are accepting applications for new families. She said an advantage for us would be our age (younger) and the fact that we don't have any children yet. I think out of all the families they have on profile only 2 or 3 are looking for their first child. On average birth moms will pick an adoptive couple that have no children.

The pros to this would be
1. Local agency
2. Only 2 or 3 of the couples on profile have no children
3. Cost is about half of the other agency
4. More personal service since it is smaller
5. Your only dealing with birth moms from IL so your only dealing with one state of laws (you could end up getting a child from another state if you locate your own birth mom)

Now for the cons
1. Less exposure (now with this we can do some researching on our own to try and find a birth mom but I'm not for sure how to go about doing that)
2. Only doing 5-10 adoptions per year
3. You know the whole go with the big guy kind of thing (choosing a big chain store over the mom and pop shop)


Trying to compare both agencies in our minds. When we look at Bethany as a whole (nationwide) they did around 755 domestic infant adoptions last year. But when you break that down into each office the number is a lot smaller. For example, the office we would use if we continue with Bethany did 11 adoptions last year. They currently have 21 families on profile. I think that sizes up pretty well with this other agency. The thing with Bethany is birth moms all over the country can see your profile. If they go to the Bethany website they just click on a state and they can see any of those profiles. The same thing can be done with this other agency but since its not a "big chain" kind of agency a birth mom in California would probably never find this small agency in Illinois. That is where the less exposure comes in to play.

So for now--we're undecided. We're going to take the next few weeks to pray about it and talk about it. We can't make any more headway with this until after March 8th anyway. This is when Aaron will find (as long as Cat doesn't go on strike) what/where his permanent placement will be. YES finally after 3 years he will be done rotating from one job to the next and hopefully stay in one place. We're very grateful for this opportunity and for God's provisions during all this but we're looking forward to no more new rotations every May/June. We're trying to do what we can to stay where we are but its in the Lord's hands.

Have a great week everyone!