Sarah and Michael’s International Adoption

We learned of the three children (boys 5 and 3, and a girl, 18 months) in January 2023 while we were, and currently reside, in the mountains of western Honduras where Sarah is an academic director to a Christian, bilingual school and Michael works remotely. We were told the children were a priority because there a sibling group of three and there was talk of needing to split them up to get them into forever families. A sibling group of three is difficult to place and the boys, as effects of their trauma, have difficult behaviors. Therefore, SENAF (the child services agency in Honduras) was considering splitting up the little girl and the boys, since a girl under 2 would be able to be placed immediately with a family. They were prepared to write the boys off as too far gone and assume they would be lifelong members of the system, despite the boys still being so young. Our hearts immediately broke for these children and the way they had been failed by so many adults already in their young lives. Since we are living in Honduras, the agency thought that they could quickly get them into our care once the Home Study was approved but before the adoption was finalized so that the kids could stay together. The plan worked! The kids have been living with us since November 2023 as we await final closing procedures, but we were matched with the children in July 2023. We are now eagerly working through the next phases of the adoption process so that we can finalize it and call finally and certainly ourselves the children's forever family.