Anna Dombkins

He showed care for them in the way he responded.

So, yeah, keeping them in our life has been really important and watching that relationship develop has been amazing.

Yeah, it changed us a lot.

I think we often talk about how it made us both harder and softer at the same time.

We had to become very...

strong and tough and determined to get through that kind of adoption system in Tanzania.

But we also, our hearts just broke all the time.

And so we had to kind of manage both of those things of being soft and moved by things that should move us and also really tough to get through it.

Yeah, then the adoption law changed.

So we knew it was changing and the adoption law change was completely fine, but then social welfare changed their processes along with the adoption law.

So those processes weren't law, but we still had to follow them.

And because they had a new process and our process started under the old process, they wanted us to send the children back and start all over again.

And they'd been with us for three years at this point in our home, but they sent us a letter saying the children will be removed.

They need to go back to Mwanza.

You need to start the process again.

And in a year, you can apply to adopt the same children again, if you like, and then keep going from there.

It must have just been infuriating and heartbreaking and everything all at once.

It was.

And it was terrifying because we knew any minute there could be a knock at the door and then the children would be taken.

And it just made no sense to us at all.