“She was gorgeous.”
This was Janet Villa’s first reaction when she saw Anna, their adopted daughter.
From the first moment they laid eyes on the beautiful baby, they knew she was the child God had intended for them.
Looking back, the Villa couple shared that “God is in the details” of their journey into adoption, the road that finally led them to Anna.
In 2007, after 13 years of fertility work-up, a doctor informed Janet and Jojo that they would never have children.
“A myoma, the size of a five-month-old fetus had taken over my uterus. The doctor recommended a hysterectomy,” Janet tearfully narrated.
Answered prayers
Janet was positive that God was with them all throughout their ordeal – from finding the right doctor and raising money for Janet’s surgery to finally fetching Anna from her temporary home.
Three years after Janet’s surgery, the couple had somewhat given up on having children.
“But God had been working on our baby project all along. In 2010, a magazine editor asked me to edit a special article on adoption. I had to research on adoption, interview adoptive families and children, and talk to a therapist,” Janet recalled how she finally understood that God was leading them towards adoption.
“When Jojo and I opened our hearts to adoption, our daughter was already living, breathing, somewhere. We prayed for her, and asked God to choose her for us,” she continued.
Three months after they filed the adoption papers with the Department of Social Welfare and Development (DSWD), the couple was notified by a social worker that they had been matched with a baby girl.
Anna was ten months old when they picked her up at Ministries Without Borders, a home for abandoned babies and toddlers in Cavite run by Norwegian missionaries.
Janet recalled, “She looked so much like Jojo that the caregivers teased him for merely reclaiming her. God had taken note of our request – Anna was healthy, lived with Christian caregivers, and was entrusted to a Christian woman when she was only a week old. When we picked her up, her caregivers cried. She had been carved in their hearts. They wrote her letters for her to read when she grew up.”
The name that had been given to the child at the orphanage was Grace, while the name Anna is the Hebrew word for Grace. Janet claimed that their daughter’s name had been preordained.
The couple likewise shared how in the first few months that Anna came home with them, two birds visited their tenth-floor home every day.
“They would stay for hours, flying by, perching on our windowsill, chirping. Today, those birds—symbols of hope and God’s faithfulness—built a nest outside our living-room window, choosing to stay with us for the long haul. Truly, God is in the details,” the couple exulted.
Anna’s legal adoption was made possible through the assistance of Kaisahang Buhay Foundation (KBF), an accredited child-caring agency which is a partner of DSWD in continuously advocating legal adoption to ensure the child’s best interest.
Partner child-caring agencies
DSWD recently signed a memorandum of agreement with the Association of Child Caring Agencies (ACCAP) to better collaborate in the timely placement of children needing adoption or foster care.
On May 2009, Republic Act No. 9523, an act requiring the certification of the DSWD to declare a child legally available for adoption (CDCLAA), was enacted. Since then, the Department has already issued 3,800 CDCLAA.
To date, a total of 2,216 children were adopted through regular agency adoption – 124 were foster-adopted and 1,460 were adopted through direct placement.
Aside from legal adoption, the DSWD and its partner child-caring agencies are also advocating foster care to enable every child to experience a caring and nurturing family life provided by a licensed foster family on a temporary basis towards permanent placement.
As of April 2014, a total of 2,294 children have been placed under foster care. ###
