46. Helpful Advice With Adoption and Trafficking - Lauren and Adrian Mills

Welcome back to Around the World with The Archibald Project! My name is Whitney and together with my husband Nick, we started The Archibald Project! At The Archibald Project, we support people caring for orphaned and vulnerable children. Thank you for stopping by to listen to our podcast! In today’s episode, we interview adoptive parents, Lauren and Adrian Mills. To say what these two have walked through over the past couple years has been challenging would not do their story justice. They began the adoption process from the Democratic Republic of The Congo, only to realize once their adoption was finalized and they were waiting to bring their daughter home that she had been trafficked by a corrupt orphanage director. Following the heart breaking but beautiful journey of working to reunify “their daughter” with her mother, they began a domestic adoption that later failed for unimaginably hard reasons…. This lead them through a wilderness season of absolute surrender, only to land them back in the international adoption process. This time with an ethical organization and a child that truly needed to be adopted. Through the heart ache, Lauren and Adrian give such profound advice and tips for what flags to look out for when pursuing international adoption. They give hope to those waiting, and provide steps to take to see if the agency you’re working with is a good one or if they are actually trafficking children for money. We hope you come away having a greater awareness of the global orphan crisis and a deeper understanding of how to fight for ethical adoptions.