Divine Gordon

Divine Gordon’s story and process….
Divine was brought to the orphanage in September of 2012. His mother was 16 when he was born, and had a second child in October of 2012.
Divines foster mother is a kind and sweet woman. She does her best in the situation she is in. However there is a flaw in the system of sponsorship and the children are lucky to get 3 meals a week. Medical treatment is a luxury they cannot afford.
The director of the program (on the US side) is trying feverishly to fix this problem, but in the meantime we have more mouths to feed in this home, than they are able to care for. (again, not for lack of trying, and not out of neglect or evil motives)
When I arrived in Liberia and met Divine the first time, he was sad. He did not open up to a smile for at least a week of our attention. (Kristi is the one who he glommed onto, and the two of us would jokingly fight over who got to take him home)
After we had decided to adopt Divine, I was making stop whenever our travel plans permitted to visit with him. One day when I arrived, Divine was in bad shape, he was lethargic, and feverish. He had ooze dribbling out of both ears, and was raw with scabs on both ears. I immediately took him to the clinic and got him medicine. He had malaria and a double ear rupture and a fungal infection . He had no appetite and was sleeping constantly. I returned Divine to the foster mother the following day and gave her additional money for more medicine and cab fare.
3 days passed and I was in ‘red light’ during traffic (normally it takes us 2 hours to get 3 miles during traffic ) I did not want to delay getting home, but felt a prompting more than once to go check on Divine. After the second nudge, I asked the driver to make a detour to check on my baby Divine. When we arrived aat the home, Divine was in the same or worse shape than he was the first time I took him. It was then I made a decision that I was going to take Divine home with me until he could get feeling better.
This boy HATES medicine, and he was a battle to get it down him. But after 4 days, he started to feel better, started eating normally, and sleeping on schedule. He was running around, playing and acting like a normal 2 year old. He ate voraciously and was overall in good spirits.
I decided then to enroll him in the preschool where Quita resides, as all the many meetings I was having kept me from attending to his needs, and I knew the teachers well at the school, and I knew they would do right by him. (Peter had also started to attend as he was SICK of sitting for hours and hours of meetings each day)
I spoke with the director of the foster program, who was happy to see that Divine was cared for, and she agreed that I should keep him and provide for his care. She felt it was a blessing to Divine as well as the program, as it freed up a bed for another child in need.
I then made the arrangement to meet with the birth mother and have her make an appearance in the Ministry of health to begin the process of adoption. Lydia is an intelligent and articulate woman, who has the interest of the children as her primary focus. She and I discussed candidly the conditions of the home, and the issues that must be addressed in regards to the children’s ongoing care. We took down the contact information for the birth mother so that we could begin the case study. (the essential background information that is required to prove the child is indeed eligible for adoption)
It was during this time that we got the permissions from the embassy to bring Peter home, we were busy doing the last of our documents to depart. It was a stressful time, and as we were driving home from the embassy with Peter’s visa in hand, I got an unnerving phone call. Martha the foster mother who had cared for Divine phoned,, and in excited Liberian began to chew me out. She had finally been told that Divine was not going to be returning to her care. She was angry with me, and I felt bad, as I had been told that she had been informed and understood the overall plan.
I wanted to make sure everyone was clear of my intentions and plans as NONE of this was to insult, anger or usurp any ones feelings or plans.
I immediately phoned the pastor in charge to ensure we were all cooperating in Divines plan for his future.
This is the first time I was aware that the Pastor and foster mother were NOT informed of the plan. While I felt bad for them being left out of the loop, I explained that the plan and desire of the birth mom was to have Divine remain in my direct care until his adoption was final. I explained to the pastor about the incident with his malaria, and he was belligerent and rude. He DEMANDED that the child be returned, he claimed he ‘owned that child’ and was insistent that the child was not available for anyone else to direct his care.
This was very disheartening, as I DID NOT want to have a battle over this child. I wanted to be able to send money each month and KNOW without a doubt that his needs would be taken care of (food, attention, schooling, clothes) I was saddened that we could not come to agreeable terms, and I then phoned the MOH about this issue.
Lydia once again clarified that this pastor did NOT have guardianship of this child, and that it was the birthmother coupled with the ministry of health that had control over where this child was to remain. Seeing how both the birthmother and the MOH had agreed that I was in the right to keep this child, I have been working on ensuring the LEGAL paperwork is in order.
I had the choice, to remain in Liberia for another week, or return home and pray that My Quita was able to complete the process in relinquishment and move on the paper work to adopt Divine.
THEN I got a bombshell email from my adoption agency, initially they had agreed to work with us on our adoption for Divine, and the email I received was stating that she was NOT willing to facilitate Divine’s adoption.
I then immediately emailed the 2nd agency that was licensed to do adoptions in Liberia . The USA agent said that she would NOT work with any child that had come from that foster home, she did not want her name/reputation entangled with that Pastor.
I was being left with no options, and I was so frustrated and angry.

Since being home, I have been anxiously working on getting the legal relinquishment accomplished, and Quita went into the MOH to get the Birth mothers contact info so she could bring her (birth mother) back into the MOH to sign official documents. Today we found out that someone has misplaced the file with the birth mothers information. Quita went to the foster home to ask them to help her to find the B.Mom again, and of course they refused to be of assistance.
Karen is a woman from SLC Utah that runs a Ngo in Liberia called “Lifting Liberia”
She is in no way affiliated with adoptions, except that she has adopted form Liberia and has assisted other families that are in limbo and unable to accomplish the necessary work to complete the adoptions.
Karen has agreed to meet with Lydia, and even scout out the neighborhood where the birth mom resides, in order to find her and assist us in getting her to sign the relinquishment.

My cryptic posts about the frustrating aspects of this adoption are about all the ADOPTIVE mothers who email or call me and rant about how MY FEELINGS and MY EXPEIRNCE are affecting future adoptions in Liberia. I am being accosted (and discriminated) because I have been open in documenting the issues and frustration with the process. I was warned NOT to share ANY MORE with you, my friends, supporters and family. It is because of my sharing and OPEN honesty about the mistakes made during this process that my agency is refusing to assist us in this adoption of Divine.
In the adoption world, the adoptive families are NOT CONSUMERS, who are able to ask for fairness, or refunds due to incompetence. APPARENTLY anything goes (according to the liability waiver they force you to sign) even though we PAY the salary of each of these workers, they do NOT feel they are obligated to satisfy our concerns or problems. (some of which THEY created) therein lies the problem, this entire industry is based off ransom. You may be the one writing the check, but you do NOT have control over any other portion of the process!