The calling is clear for Wesley and Meaghan Gordon: Adopt a child who “doesn’t have a chance.”
The Gordons, entering their sixth year of marriage, are the proud parents of a 3-year-old girl, Mary Reeves, and 1-year-old boy, Murphy.
They recently moved back to Starkville after getting jobs at their alma mater, Mississippi State University.
The whirlwind of completing graduate school and starting a family is over. The Gordons are beginning to settling down.
The timing is perfect to begin one of Wesley’s lifelong dreams of adopting a child.
“I’ve always felt like financially, if we could afford another child, I felt like we should offer a family to someone who doesn’t have one,” Wesley said. “Me and Meaghan have thought about it for a while.”
The Gordons’ route to adoption, to most, is unconventional. They’re in the process of adopting a boy from Ethiopia, one of the poorest countries in the world. They won’t know who Max is until they meet him in Ethiopia. Max, a family name from Meaghan’s side, is set to be their adopted child’s name, making a trio of children with names starting with M.
That day could be as many as 18 months from today, as the Gordons are on a waiting list filled with families like them. So Max will be at least 2 years old when he is adopted, since Ethiopian adoption regulations require the child be younger than the family’s youngest child.
“It’s kind of a countdown right now,” Wesley said. “As they place children with families, it might be 90 next month; it might be 50. It just depends.”
The wait is just one of many international adoption hurdles the Gordons already and will have cleared by the time “Max comes home.”
The Gordons began five months ago by linking with Children’s Hope International, a placing agency that connects parents to countries like Russia, Taiwan and Ethiopia.
New Beginnings, a Christian-based adoption agency in Tupelo, assigned the Gordons a case worker to do the in-home screening, which includes hours of watching them interact with their children. Case workers also update the Gordons on the status of their paperwork and place on the waiting list.
“I thought it’d be pretty nerve-wracking,” Meaghan said, “but they tell you up front that they want you to have a child. So they try to make the process pretty smooth. But of course, I wanted to make my house as clean as possible. Make sure all smoke detectors are working, things like that.”
In-home screenings have been the easy part of the process. Wesley said the Ethiopian government moves at a far different pace than what Americans are used to.
“We’ve gone through paperwork pretty fast, but over the last two months the Ethiopian government has really tightened up,” he said. “Right when you think you’re there, they ask you for something else. But it’s just the culture and nature of the route we’re going.”
The Gordons settled on Ethiopia, partly because it was one of few options. As young parents, the Gordons didn’t meet most CHI partner countries’ qualifications that require parents to be married and/or have kids for 10-15 years.
The Gordons have a previous tie to the country after sponsoring a child through Compassion International.
Financially, the Gordons likely will spend close to $40,000 in travel and legal fees to adopt Max.
The cost, higher than that of a typical domestic adoption, is a tough allocation for a family raising two children in a recently purchased house. But the Gordons haven’t been alone in their effort.
Tuesday, Cold Stone Creamery on Highway 12 East in Starkville hosted a fundraiser that donated 20 percent of all sales to the Gordons. The Gordons are selling T-shirts on their website, thewesgordonfamily.blogspot.com, and have had a garage sale to raise additional funds. They’re contemplating selling Boston butts and holding a spare-change drive in the spring.
The Gordons want to deflect as much spotlight from their family as possible, hoping to inform others about international adoption and help families who are already interested. They’ve been overwhelmed by the support of community members and feel rewarded by their decision to move ahead before having enough money saved.
“As my mama said, if we waited to begin the adoption journey by first saving up the estimated $30,000 it will take to bring our son home, then we are putting human conditions on God’s call for action,” Meaghan says on the website.
Still, for the last four months the most common question the Gordons have heard is “Why?” It would be far cheaper and less stressful to adopt domestically. But most people can’t understand the Gordons’ perspective.
“It sounds crazy, but I feel like an orphan in America has a chance,” Wesley said. “They still have a huge mountain to climb, but we’re the best country in the world. There’s freedom here. We have a government that helps.
“One in four kids dies before the age of 12 in Ethiopia,” he added. “There’s 5 million orphans in a country the size of Texas. It’s devastating. Giving a chance to a kid who literally doesn’t have a chance is our reason.”
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