18
Apr
April 18, 2011
Hi MLJ blog readers.
My name is Tyler Northcutt, and my wife and I are adopting from Nicaragua.
So, we just got back from a week long trip to Nicaragua, where we spent time in Managua [the capitol city] and surrounding areas. This is especially exciting for us due to the fact that we are now 9 months into our process, with our dossier sent off, and hoping to bring some Nicaraguan culture and flavor into our home.
We had just recently finished our dossier and submitted it just weeks before our trip. We have a real desire to adopt some of the Nicaraguan culture [along with a child of course!] into our home, dialect, color palette, and food….so it was very exciting to be able to live and breath a little bit of that during our brief trip there.
Being from Austin, TX, we felt lucky to be able to tag along with a small group from Indianapolis inclusive of 7 individuals from a local church there, and one girl from Seattle. It was not until we landed and exited the airport doors that, I believe, we truly felt the reality of traveling to the country of our future adopted child. We have continually thought about all of the details we would remember and treasure of our child’s home country, BUT it is kind of overwhelming when 20-30 kids from local orphanages and group homes welcome you when you land! We were thrilled. The children are more beautiful than we expected, more welcoming than we thought, and so excited to spend time with strangers that it was hard to consume. What a cool thing to have happen our first time in Nicaragua.
The week in Nicaragua was intense, fantastic, but very emotionally [and physically] draining. We were there under the pretense of a mission trip with the group from Indianapolis, although we were secretly hoping that we would get a lightning bolt from God that would say…"hey, here is your child." We spent our days loving on tons of kids, swimming, handing out food, painting walls with very strong smelling paint, touring orphanages, visiting a volcano, and realizing that EVERY child we had the pleasure of hanging out with needs love, attention, and deserves the simple knowledge of having a place to call home. And it doesn’t hurt that the kids from Nicaragua are overwhelmingly kind and beautiful!
We can not say enough great things about the people we had the pleasure of spending time with in Nicaragua…ALL of them. I would strongly suggest that if anyone is considering adopting or has previously adopted from a foreign country and has not been there, that they go. We are looking forward to traveling to complete our adoption even more now. This experience has finally revealed the rich culture of our future child, and introduced us to our beautiful future!