More Samuel Thoughts

Last week we had our homestudy update appointment and I learned a few interesting things. As we began our appointment with our case worker we got to talking about Samuel’s living situation. Samuel’s father is not in the picture, and his mother is his sole care-taker. I thought back to the email update we had received from Kofi, the part about his mother being ‘out to the farm’ when Kofi came to visit. I asked our case worker about this and she shared that on her own trip to Ghana, when she would enter into the villages she would always be greeted first by groups of children. There never seemed to be many adults around, except for a few ‘elders’. She also noted that she hardly ever saw men in the villages, and the women would come around some time later. She said that in the villages the children often fend for themselves throughout the days as the mothers work. And, I knew from before, that the men/fathers often leave town for days at a time to find work....and some of them never come back. So, it’s not like the mothers really have a choice…this is survival to them. It seems like such a hard life. I am very interested to get to have a peek into village life on our trip. Jake was sheltered from this on his first trip, and he never did get to visit any villages when we was in Ghana last time….he stayed mostly in and around Accra, the capital.

We all also agreed that Samuel looks older than 6. :) Our consensus was that he looks about 8, but we’ll get a better idea of that once we meet him. It’s so hard to tell from the picture. With this our conversation turned to school. Our case worker mentioned that some families who adopt older children choose to homeschool their child until they are somewhat caught up with their age level. Another thing we need to consider is that Samuel is probably not going to know much English (English is the official language of Ghana, but you are only able to learn it in school – and in Ghana there is no free education, so poor families cannot afford to have their children in school). This will obviously intensify the difficulty in him learning, and it does seem silly to stick him in a classroom next fall if he doesn’t even know the language. It is on my heart to teach Samuel at home until he is ‘caught up’ or at least knows some basic things and has a good grasp on the English language. But, of course, thinking through all of this brings out my own insecurities making me feel so unqualified to teach a child of his age school stuff! But, God will grow me through this, and I will learn how to do it. I imagine it will take about a year or more to lay down a good foundation of ABC’s, 123’s, shapes, colors, reading and some basic math. And, our adoption training materials propose that it will take a child of Samuel’s age about 1 year to get a beginners grasp on the English language. If you are out there and you homeschool, PLEASE share recommendations for curriculum that I could order online. This is the one I am doing with JJ right now:

It’s a pre-school curriculum (Little Hands to Heaven – a program for ages 2-5), and it has been pretty good. I don’t really have anything to compare it to, but he seems to like it and is learning.

Also, I forgot to mention in my post about Samuel last week that on this first trip to Ghana we will only be able to meet Samuel….not bring him home. We still have to wait and go through court dates, paperwork processing, etc. to make the adoption legal. Our case worker did tell us some exciting news though, and that is if Kofi can get enough things processed for us throughout the next few weeks, it is a possibility that we would be able to file our I-600 form in Ghana. This would be HUGE and would save us about 3 months time in waiting, because otherwise we would have to file it here in the U.S. and go in line behind everyone else who is already ahead of us. Our case worker mentioned that it would be a miracle if we could file the I-600 in Ghana because of all the things that must be in order before that, but she said Kofi knows what he is doing and is very efficient so it is a possibility. Please pray that it would happen!

Kofi also met with Pastor Gideon early last week and Pastor Gideon was able to hand over the funds we had sent over earlier from our adoption of Solomon. After the adoption of Solomon fell through we had Pastor Sam/Gideon keep our funds until they identified another child for us. Since that never happened, we had been trying to decide how exactly to get the funds either wired back or somehow returned. Every cent ended up being there and accounted for, which was a huge blessing. Our adoption agency was going to cover any losses anyhow because of the frustrations with that whole situation, but thankfully all the money was there. Kofi in turn has been able to use those funds to pay for Samuel to get back into school, and also to buy him some nutritional supplements and vitamins to help with his malnutrition. It has been a very positive experience working with Kofi. He literally is in constant communication with our case worker, and email turn around time is within 1 day!

All in all we are anywhere between 4-6 months away from traveling to bring Samuel home….barring any major disasters. :) I’ve learned with international adoption you just can’t really be sure of anything. The only thing I can be sure of is that God has a plan, and He will work it out in His time.