“Kofi was originally going to put them up for adoption and probably split them up among families, but he thought of contacting us first to see if we could take all three. Sarah and I wanted to make a decision before we left for Ghana. We decided we had to go and meet them and get a gut feeling for the kids.”

Adopting a child, particularly when an agency is involved in international adoptions, is a long, tedious, and expensive process. The Reicharts knew that adopting three more children would involve considerable amounts of paperwork, long hours of interviews and background checks, and thousands of dollars.

“Anyone can have a child, but to adopt a child is to expose yourself to the world and prove umpteen times over that you’re capable of parenting,” Reichart said. “We’ve gone through dozens of interviews, background checks, and filled out tons of paperwork. This next adoption requires two trips to Ghana.”

Reichart said the greatest challenge to bringing Mary (3), Emmanuel (6), and Abigail (5) home is financial. Assuming all goes as planned, the Reicharts will have Mary, Emmanuel, and Abigail in the U.S. by May 2012. Samara, since she is too young to be taken to court presently, will be brought to the U.S. in November 2012.

“Emotionally, it was a fairly easy decision but it’s been very difficult financially,” Reichart said. “Our big problem now is that adoption costs a lot of money. An international adoption done through an agency costs anywhere from $20,000 to $30,000 per child.”

Despite the enormous financial barriers the Reicharts will need to overcome in the next year, Mr. Reichart is confident he and his wife have made the right choice.

“We spent the week with them and to see how they interacted with one another made all our doubts disappear,” Reichart said. “The three older kids were living in a tiny village in the Ashanti region. They didn’t have any running water or electricity, they drank out of a stream. Emmanuel wanted to go to the bathroom on the street outside our hotel the first day we had him.”

The family will have to adjust to the demands of raising five young children once Mary, Emmanuel, Abigail, and Samara come home.

“The biggest immediate challenge will be the language barrier,” Reichart said. “I think it’ll be difficult for them to compensate for the initial lack of exposure to English, but they’ll catch on pretty quickly. School is going to be challenging since Emmanuel and Abby will be thrown into a foreign environment as soon as they get here.”

Mr. and Mrs. Reichart are not worried that the five siblings will not be close with one another; Mr. Reichart said their shared Ghanese heritage will make it easier for them to accept one another as family.

“I don’t worry about the five of them growing together as siblings--I think that’ll come naturally,” Reichart said. “We know it’ll all come together.”