Our hearts are ready

International Adoption Process

Note: While many elements are common, the process can vary depending on country, agency and state of residence.

Select adoption agency.

Select program and country.

Complete home study. This is performed by a social worker, who certifies your home as being fit for children. Typically this takes 2 to 3 months and requires several visits.

Complete dossier. This is the complete set of documents that will be sent to the country in which you adopt. It is full of reports that will need to be notarized. Lots of legwork here.

Receive referrals from the agency. The agency presents a child who's available for adoption. You may receive a picture and medical information, sometimes a video. You must decide whether you would like to adopt that child or wait for another.

Receive travel dates. Prepare to travel to pick up the child.

Travel to the host country. Some countries permit the child to be delivered to you in the United States by a surrogate.

Meet the child. This can be an emotional moment, as you might imagine.

Obtain court date. The court will finalize the adoption in the child's country.

Obtain documents. Passport, physicals and other documentation are necessary to leave the host country.

Obtain immigrant visa from U.S. embassy. This is necessary to bring the child into the United States.

Bring child home.

Obtain citizenship (This is now automatic for children under 18.) Re-adopt in the United States.

Provide post-placement reports. These reports may be required by the host country to make sure their children have been well-placed.

The time to complete the process can be affected by several variables, not least of which the country which you choose to adopt your child. Other factors include age, ethnicity and health. John Towriss and Carole completed their first adoption in eight months, start to finish. The second adoption was much faster -- under 5 months -- because much of the documentation required only updating. The second adoption took under six months from the start until the current trip to pick up the children in Kazakhstan. Both Towriss adoptions are considered to be on the fast end of the normal spectrum.

By John Towriss
Special to CNN.com

November 9, 2001

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- I was having a "profound moment," and in the oddest of places.

I was standing in my garage last Sunday, loading my minivan, when I froze in my boots -- as I looked across the passenger space, I had this vision of wall-to-wall car seats.

Actually, it wasn't really a vision because my wife had just purchased two new baby seats to add to the two child seats already in our van. But that's when it hit me: Soon all those car seats will be full of children. Four of them. And all mine!

Maybe it was the pure fright of that thought. But for an instant, time stood still. And isn't it at times like these that destiny-changing thoughts are supposed to emerge and deep truths spring to life? For me, it was just one word: "Cool!"

I'm married to Carole. We have two daughters, 8-year-old Emma and Mira, who's 3. When Carole and I were married in 1983, we shared a goal to have a large family. But it seemed God had a different plan.

After years of infertility treatment, we still struggled with the anguish of childlessness. Then somehow, miraculously, Emma was conceived. We were so blessed to have one angel. But there would be no more and we slowly let go of our family dream. Carole once brought up adoption, but I shut it down with a clinical "not interested."

Then came the summer of 1997. Carole and I traveled to Bosnia-Herzegovina as part of a humanitarian relief mission. I'll never forget standing in a small Sarajevo orphanage, surrounded by a dozen babies produced by rapes amid bombs and the nastiness of war. I was melted with compassion for these small lives. Who would love them? If I could, I'd have scooped up all of them my arms could hold to bring them home that day. Sadly, it wasn't possible, then or now.

Fast-forward 18 months, and Carole and I are sitting in a small orphanage in Esik, Kazakhstan, where we're seeing our new daughter, Mira, for the first time. She's only 3 months old, but it's been an 8-month process, culminating in this most tender, yet exhilarating, instant. We're both in tears.

Now, two-and-a-half years later, I can't imagine our family without Mira or Emma. And I wonder how I could ever have avoided this most merciful of acts that's put me in such joyous touch with humanity. Carole and I often say the decision to adopt is no decision at all -- it's a choice to pour your life into another. And in one of life's great mysteries, the more you empty yourself into one life, the more you're filled.

Which brings me to today. In a few hours, Carole and I leave on a special adoption journey that may dramatically restore that lost family dream. We're going back to Kazakhstan, this time to adopt two kids. Our ties to little Dara and Johnny are tenuous: a picture, a short video, a sheet of medical information. But already the bonds begin to wrap around us, like the warmth of a fire on a winter day. It's a good feeling.

We'd like to share this special trip with you in real time, as it unfolds, in these articles. In doing so, it's our hope that we can help others who may be standing on a precipice overlooking this sea of mercy, wondering what it takes to dive in, what it feels like, how to do it. Our greatest hope is that many young and broken lives around the world can begin to find restoration.

So come with us and experience the events, the characters, the emotional highs and lows - and, yes, even the frustrating bureaucracy. When you next hear from us, we'll have met our new son and daughter.

If everything goes right, we should be home just before Thanksgiving with a houseful of family coming to visit. Imagine the prayer of thanks at our table.

John Towriss has been with CNN for 21 years, a journalist covering stories the world over. He is deputy bureau chief and director of news coverage in CNN's Washington bureau. Towriss can be reached at TOWRISS@aol.com


Carole Towriss holds the couple's first adopted child, Mira, for the first time in Esik, Kazakhstan, in March 1999.


Having never met their new children, the parents have only these photos of Dara and Johnny.


Here are Mira and Emma shortly before their parents leave to adopt their new brother and sister.