A Tale of Two Tetreaults
Hi. I'm Julie and he's Justin, and we're the two Tetreaults. There's 5, soon to be 6 (or 7, or 8, who really knows?), more Tetreaults in our tribe and this is our tale. We are a military family. My husband, Justin, is a Captain and an RN in the US Army. I am a systems engineer and work for a wonderful company called Booz Allen Hamilton doing defense contract work. My nickname is Sparky. We live in Evans, GA. We love dogs. Big dogs. We have a Newfoundland and an Australian Shepherd. Our cat, Gus, is a hoot! We also love Auburn and bleed orange and blue. We go to church at an amazing place called Journey Community Church. I like sparkly stuff and I have a bit of an obsession with handbags that I've recently tried to tame with nailpolish instead. I like the glittery kind best.
That's not what you guys want to hear about though, is it? I'll bet you'd much rather hear about how we got involved in this whole adoption business... after all, we already have 5 kids, what on earth would possess us to want more? We must be c. r. a. z. y. Wait, make that a capital C.
Just like we always knew we would name our first daughter Riley, we always knew we would adopt someday. We didn’t know how, or when, or where, but we had adoption conversations very early on in our marriage. Life went on and we were blessed with 5 amazing kids of our own. These little angels can have pretty crooked halos at times, but we were seriously given the best kids in the world! Big shout out to Riley, Reagan, Reese, Ryder and Rhen! Holla! (Good thing I still have some R names on reserve, huh?)
It wasn’t until 2008 while we were stationed in HI that we started seriously talking about adoption. We started looking into it and had so many questions! Can we really do this? How do we even start? Domestic or international? How do you pick a country? How much is it? Where do we get that kind of money? And the big one... won't people think we're crazy?!? Yes, of course they will. The thing is, we don't care! We're glad it's us and not you, too! :)
As time passed, the answers came. We first looked into domestic adoption but soon found out that a domestic adoption would be almost impossible for us while stationed in HI. It would be very difficult to meet the fostering requirements before we were sent off to a new duty station. Not to mention that if the child had any Hawaiian ancestry we couldn’t take them away from the islands. Based on that, we chose to pursue an international adoption.
So now what? We need to choose an agency to work with. This part turned out to be pretty easy. We asked around to other adoptive parents and got the same answer for which agency to use, so that’s who we chose to work with. Next up, we needed to decide where to adopt from. This turned out to be pretty easy too since the agency only worked with one country that we qualified to adopt from. Most countries have rules on how many kids you can have before you adopt, and with 5 kids, we don’t meet many countries’ qualifications! We don’t care about ethnicity or the child’s nationality so the Kingdom of Swaziland in Africa sounded good to us. It was an easy choice at first, but we have grown to love Africa and are convinced it’s been God’s plan for us to adopt from there all along.
International adoption is expensive. After we heard how much it would cost to bring our kids home, we swallowed the lump in our throats and started wondering how we were going to come up with $20-30K. Remember when I said we are military??? Well, that means we don’t have $30K stuffed under the mattress. Yes, for real… military people aren’t rich. Shocking, isn't it?
Regardless of cost, we know this is what we want to do. No, not want to, have to. Our child is there. God led her to us in a very special way. Let me put it this way… what would you do if one of your children were stuck in Africa and you had to raise $20-30K to get them back? You’d go to the ends of the earth (literally) to make it happen, right? That’s how I feel even though I haven’t met my child. She’s there waiting for us and we’re going to bring her home.
It was during this time when we were trying to sort out all of the details of adopting that my mom got very sick back home. She had COPD and it had progressed to the advanced stages during our first year in HI. This was beyond devastating. You see, my mom had lived with us and helped me raise my kids up until we moved to HI. It was very hard for me to see her so sick and be halfway around the world and not be able to help her like she helped us for all those years. Mom passed away on Feb 18, 2009. She left us this special gift that I didn’t know about. She left us just enough money to start our adoption. It was enough for our home study and dossier so that all we had left to worry about was our money to travel.
Fast forward several months, our dossier is in Swaziland and we are anxiously waiting and hoping for an email every day matching us with a child. We got an email one day, but it wasn’t the one we were hoping for. It was a notification that the program in Swaziland was being put on hold indefinitely. Swaziland was a pilot program, meaning it had just opened for international adoption when we started this process. Everything went smoothly at first, but as time went by, the country started experiencing growing pains. The process became a bit disorganized and they needed some time to iron out the details. We were told to wait it out and it would reopen soon. So we waited, and waited, and waited some more... For two years we waited. We weren’t in a particular rush as we had just been reassigned to Ft. Gordon, GA and my husband was facing a deployment. We figured we would wait it out and see where things were when he got home.
We found out at the end of the summer that there’s not much hope of Swaziland reopening and that means it’s time to move on. As heartbreaking as that is, we still believe that it was God’s plan and now our hearts are forever tied to Africa. I started praying and asking God, where is my child? How do I know where he/she is? Where do we focus our adoption efforts now? Soon after that, I started seeing references to a country I had never thought of or heard much about pop up almost every day. Every time I turned around there was something in the news, on the radio, or on a website. I decided that was sign enough that I should sit down and look for more information about adopting from this troubled country called Uganda.
We are thrilled to announce that we recently accepted a referral for an 8 year old little girl in Uganda. She's a little bit older than what we had in mind, but God knew what He was doing with this one. Please take a few more minutes to visit the "Finding S" page to read all about how God let us know this was the child He chose for us. It's truly an amazing story!
This whole process has been a huge growing and learning experience. It has taught us to be resourceful. It has also taught us to listen and trust God. It has taught us humility. There’s no way we can do this by ourselves. We need your help. And prayers, we need those too.
We would be grateful if you would please consider donating to our adoption fund. A $10 donation for a piece of our puzzle or participating on one of our other fundraisers isn’t much individually, but collectively all of those little $10 donations are going to bring a child home to their forever family. What an awesome thought! Wouldn’t you like to be a part of it? If so, take a look at our "Fundraising" link.
That's not what you guys want to hear about though, is it? I'll bet you'd much rather hear about how we got involved in this whole adoption business... after all, we already have 5 kids, what on earth would possess us to want more? We must be c. r. a. z. y. Wait, make that a capital C.
Just like we always knew we would name our first daughter Riley, we always knew we would adopt someday. We didn’t know how, or when, or where, but we had adoption conversations very early on in our marriage. Life went on and we were blessed with 5 amazing kids of our own. These little angels can have pretty crooked halos at times, but we were seriously given the best kids in the world! Big shout out to Riley, Reagan, Reese, Ryder and Rhen! Holla! (Good thing I still have some R names on reserve, huh?)
It wasn’t until 2008 while we were stationed in HI that we started seriously talking about adoption. We started looking into it and had so many questions! Can we really do this? How do we even start? Domestic or international? How do you pick a country? How much is it? Where do we get that kind of money? And the big one... won't people think we're crazy?!? Yes, of course they will. The thing is, we don't care! We're glad it's us and not you, too! :)
As time passed, the answers came. We first looked into domestic adoption but soon found out that a domestic adoption would be almost impossible for us while stationed in HI. It would be very difficult to meet the fostering requirements before we were sent off to a new duty station. Not to mention that if the child had any Hawaiian ancestry we couldn’t take them away from the islands. Based on that, we chose to pursue an international adoption.
So now what? We need to choose an agency to work with. This part turned out to be pretty easy. We asked around to other adoptive parents and got the same answer for which agency to use, so that’s who we chose to work with. Next up, we needed to decide where to adopt from. This turned out to be pretty easy too since the agency only worked with one country that we qualified to adopt from. Most countries have rules on how many kids you can have before you adopt, and with 5 kids, we don’t meet many countries’ qualifications! We don’t care about ethnicity or the child’s nationality so the Kingdom of Swaziland in Africa sounded good to us. It was an easy choice at first, but we have grown to love Africa and are convinced it’s been God’s plan for us to adopt from there all along.
International adoption is expensive. After we heard how much it would cost to bring our kids home, we swallowed the lump in our throats and started wondering how we were going to come up with $20-30K. Remember when I said we are military??? Well, that means we don’t have $30K stuffed under the mattress. Yes, for real… military people aren’t rich. Shocking, isn't it?
Regardless of cost, we know this is what we want to do. No, not want to, have to. Our child is there. God led her to us in a very special way. Let me put it this way… what would you do if one of your children were stuck in Africa and you had to raise $20-30K to get them back? You’d go to the ends of the earth (literally) to make it happen, right? That’s how I feel even though I haven’t met my child. She’s there waiting for us and we’re going to bring her home.
It was during this time when we were trying to sort out all of the details of adopting that my mom got very sick back home. She had COPD and it had progressed to the advanced stages during our first year in HI. This was beyond devastating. You see, my mom had lived with us and helped me raise my kids up until we moved to HI. It was very hard for me to see her so sick and be halfway around the world and not be able to help her like she helped us for all those years. Mom passed away on Feb 18, 2009. She left us this special gift that I didn’t know about. She left us just enough money to start our adoption. It was enough for our home study and dossier so that all we had left to worry about was our money to travel.
Fast forward several months, our dossier is in Swaziland and we are anxiously waiting and hoping for an email every day matching us with a child. We got an email one day, but it wasn’t the one we were hoping for. It was a notification that the program in Swaziland was being put on hold indefinitely. Swaziland was a pilot program, meaning it had just opened for international adoption when we started this process. Everything went smoothly at first, but as time went by, the country started experiencing growing pains. The process became a bit disorganized and they needed some time to iron out the details. We were told to wait it out and it would reopen soon. So we waited, and waited, and waited some more... For two years we waited. We weren’t in a particular rush as we had just been reassigned to Ft. Gordon, GA and my husband was facing a deployment. We figured we would wait it out and see where things were when he got home.
We found out at the end of the summer that there’s not much hope of Swaziland reopening and that means it’s time to move on. As heartbreaking as that is, we still believe that it was God’s plan and now our hearts are forever tied to Africa. I started praying and asking God, where is my child? How do I know where he/she is? Where do we focus our adoption efforts now? Soon after that, I started seeing references to a country I had never thought of or heard much about pop up almost every day. Every time I turned around there was something in the news, on the radio, or on a website. I decided that was sign enough that I should sit down and look for more information about adopting from this troubled country called Uganda.
We are thrilled to announce that we recently accepted a referral for an 8 year old little girl in Uganda. She's a little bit older than what we had in mind, but God knew what He was doing with this one. Please take a few more minutes to visit the "Finding S" page to read all about how God let us know this was the child He chose for us. It's truly an amazing story!
This whole process has been a huge growing and learning experience. It has taught us to be resourceful. It has also taught us to listen and trust God. It has taught us humility. There’s no way we can do this by ourselves. We need your help. And prayers, we need those too.
We would be grateful if you would please consider donating to our adoption fund. A $10 donation for a piece of our puzzle or participating on one of our other fundraisers isn’t much individually, but collectively all of those little $10 donations are going to bring a child home to their forever family. What an awesome thought! Wouldn’t you like to be a part of it? If so, take a look at our "Fundraising" link.