April 8, 2005 We were on our way up to Chicago to look into an adoption agency. It was an agency that we kept being drawn to. We had a list of questions in our packet that we kept adding to while we were traveling the 3 hours to get there. After getting checked into a hotel, we decided to go get something to eat and to discuss some of our concerns, hopes, and dreams. We both wanted to be paper pregnant but it kept being a dead end. Before being drawn to Children's Hope International, we had search out the foster care system to find our daughter. When we first began our journey, Lisa had heard that one of her students was going to be up for adoption. That day Lisa had ran home and told Mike. We talked about it and we both agreed that we would love to be her parents. Well, about two weeks before we finished our Foster Care and Pride classes the little girl we thought would be our daughter was moved from the home she was in and placed with a family further away from her biological family. DCFS felt this would be to her safety. We found out that family wanted to adopt her. We were so sadden. Over two months after getting our foster care license we had not heard from our agency about any type of perment placement. We decided to check other states. We had our homestudy through out the United States and we were up for several children but each time it was a dead end. We kept getting denied. There we were in Chicago begining another journey to find our daughter. This night we were scared that once again thinking that this would be a dead end. Maybe God did not want us to be parents to a little girl.