One winter Monday evening Todd and I got a call from his brother, Donnie. He told us that he knew about a little boy in Rome that would be eligible for adoption. Now, we had heard this more than once, so we didn't necessarily think alot about it at first. He said that he had posted something on facebook about wanting to know how to adopt Haitian children after the earthquake. He didn't hear anything about that but someone did contact him about a family they knew who was helping foster a little boy. (We do laugh a little at the fact that we had stated that we did not plan to adopt domestically, especially through DFCS!) We called the family who was providing respite foster care for him. Leslie was the mom. She told us all about him. He was born 3 months premature, weighed 3 lbs 8 oz at birth, and had endured a few medical problems, but overall was a healthy growing baby who needed a home. What we did not know at the time was that the previous Sunday they had taken him to the alter and church and prayed over him that the Lord would provide an adoptive family for him if it was not to be them. Now that's a pretty quick answer!! So, the next day we contacted our local DFCS office and they said that we had to do IMPACT training classes first, but they were already 2 weeks into the current session. After Todd talked with her further, she said that if we had a specific child in mind they would go ahead and let us in, we would just have to make up the hours somehow. The Lord had removed the first obstacle. So, we began attending classes every Thursday night from when we got off work until 9PM. They were not fun, but we knew what was at the end so we endured. We managed to get all the paperwork, homestudies, fingerprints, etc done very quickly so that we could hopefully be approved soon after the classes ended and bring home what we hoped would be our sweet baby boy. During this time we were still pretty skeptical about it working out. DFCS had informed us of one of his biological family members wanting custody also - but the courts deemed that not a suitable situation. So, we plugged through trying not to let our hearts get too attached.
Finally, DFCS approved for us to go and meet him. So, one weekend we travelled up to Rome and got to go see this sweet little boy at his current foster home. We got to interact with him briefly, feed him, and then he fell asleep in my arms. Not too bad for our first meeting. Finally, on March 11, 2010 we travelled back to Rome to pick up Jeremiah for good . . . bringing him home with us. We went back to Todd's parents that night and spent the night. I think we only got up once during the night for a feeding - and we were ok with that. From there we went to Gainesville so that my parents could meet him. He was quite a little champ during all this travelling!! Finally, we made it home, back to Griffin. Over time we grew more and more attached, loving this sweet child the Lord had blessed us with. We had hoped to have the adoption finalized by August or September. October (by his first birthday) at the very latest. Well, those were great plans, but of course it did not work out quite like that. The Lord's timetable was not ours. Finally, June 15, 2011, he OFFICIALLY became Jeremiah Elijah Slade!!
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