Turism, Bitsuanit and Tihitina Hanover

The Hanover Family

Once Curt and I decided to have kids, we basically decided we wanted both biological and adopted children. After two miscarriages throughout the years, the Lord turned our thoughts toward adoption.

At the time, we were living in Siberia, Russia. We are on staff with Campus Crusade for Christ and were living in a village in the south. Needless to say, that means we had NO medical care, and when I was pregnant the second time and began to miscarry, I was so upset. By my viewpoint, I was unable to have kids, and having no medical access, wouldn’t for a really long time. Boy, did God have other plans.

We began to get ideas about adopting from among the people group we lived with. We knew their language and culture and thought it would be really neat to adopt from there where so many kids needed homes, mainly due to alcoholism. We began researching possibilities and kept hitting dead ends. But through all the dead ends, we wound up contacting a Russian who lived about 12 hours north of us. He was working with an organization called Christian World Adoption and suggested we get in touch with them. We did and suddenly found ourselves speeding along the adoption track.

CWA informed us that we weren’t allowed to choose children from Russia and therefore might not wind up with one from our people group. As we continued processing, we decided that we really felt lead to adopt a sibling group. We asked CWA which countries they worked with that had sibling groups and they came back with Russia and Ethiopia. We looked into Russia’s costs, and wanting to adopt 3 or more, felt like it was an overwhelming amount. So, we turned to Ethiopia.

My husband, Curt, had been to Ethiopia. In his days working for the Jesus Film (a ministry of Campus Crusade for Christ), he had traveled to Addis Ababa and recorded three versions of the children’s version of the Jesus Film. When Ethiopia suddenly looked like an option, his heart was ignited.

We were given access to CWA’s waiting children’s list for Ethiopia and saw two different sibling groups of three that we thought might be possibilities. It turns out that one of them was seriously being considered by a family, but the others weren’t. Those were our girls.

The paperwork stage was a challenge. There is no other way to put it. We lived three hours from the nearest “city” where we could buy vegetables and meat. We were nine hours from the closest airport and a nine hour drive and 24 hour train ride from our nearest Embassy. We were told everything needed to be notarized and wondered how to even begin. We continued to pray and knew if the Lord wanted us to adopt now, He would have to figure out how to make it happen.

He gave us the idea about using our Power of Attorney. At the time, we had been overseas for four years and had a woman back in the States who acted on our behalf for everything. It suddenly occurred to us that we could have her act on our behalf for this as well. And we began moving forward again.

What we thought would take six months turned into twelve. As frustrating as those times were with the delays that had nothing to do with us and that one paper that is always missing, we trusted that God was in control. I remember being woken up at five a.m. one morning in September of 2008 by an audible voice that said, “Trust Me.” That was it. From then on, when the frustrations would rise, I would choose to trust that He knew better.

Eventually, we finished. Everything was handed in and approved. And we waited for our court date which was ten weeks away. Ten weeks! That would never pass.

But through all this time, we had come back to the States and were raising support. As staff with CCC, we are supported by individuals and churches, and everything we do comes from the money we raise. Being overseas for five years, we were living on a very low budget and hadn’t raised new funds for eight years. The Lord knew we needed the time to prepare financially for our family. From September through March we hit 15 different states, slept in 30 different houses, and spent all our time in concentrated support-raising, which we would have never been able to do with the girls. Looking back, the timing was perfect.

Our court date came and was successful. We were thrilled and a little surprised. We had tried not to get our hopes up. Suddenly, we were speeding toward the day of actually going and getting our girls. The rest is a blur. The plane tickets bought, the travel, getting picked up at the airport, spending time shopping and getting things for them that would help them take a bit of their culture with them, taking pictures, and not sleeping the night before in anticipation of meeting them.

We awoke on March 22nd, the day we would meet our girls and take them with us back to the guesthouse. We were so nervous. How does one go from having no children to having three? Breakfast was quiet, and we waited for ten o’clock to roll around for the CWA staff to come and get us and bring us to the foster home. They arrived and we drove there as nervous wrecks. We pulled into the foster home, and all the kids were inside. We followed the staff, and they brought us to the older children’s room that was full of kids and some staff. Three girls walked out of the crowd to greet us. Those were our girls. They hugged us, and I looked at them and thought, “I am going to know you for the rest of my life.”

I remember taking a tour of the foster home, being brought back to the guesthouse, and having these three girls staring at us and wondering, “What in the world do I do now?” We all made lunch together and had our first meal as a family.

Now that we’re home and made it through the Embassy date, the long flights, immigration, settling in, medicals, and the first phases of getting to know each other, I look back and am amazed at God’s grace. The girls have been amazingly patient with us as we learn to share our lives with them. The Lord has given us such adaptable and loving girls who are willing to listen to us, forgive us as we mess up, and come to us day-after-day with smiles and anticipation on their faces of what a new day could hold. They have learned to swim, ride bikes, read (a bit), how a washer and dryer works, what fun showers can be, and that so much food can be bought in a can. They fight and play and disobey and bring such joy. And I look back on less than a year and a half ago when I thought that kids were so far off in our future and laugh at how full, and often loud, the house is. God is good.

— Curt & Janna Hanover

Tihitina Hanover