My husband and I adopted our4 boys from Mexico in 1985. They are all grown and doing fine and living in Washington state. We went to the orphanage expecting to adopt one child, ended up with 4 boys, we're the lucky ones. We didn't go through an agency, just talked to the woman in charge. She told us what we needed for documents and refered us to an attorney in Mexico to adopt in the family court there. We spent a lot of time, many trips to the orphanage to get to know the boys and do paperwork. The kids didn't speak English so I learned Spanish fast and wrote to the boys every day. Our adoption and the US immigration process took us about 10 months. One of the biggest accomplishments in my life is getting my kids through the US immigration process without a lawyer! The costs were high for our middle America family. The biggest expense was for document translations and certifications, every English document had to be translated into Spanish and every Spanish document translated to English. Also every document had to be stamped by the Mexican Counselate for a fee and/or certified by a licensed US translator.
Every country has it's own requirements and these requirements are subject to change. Do your research and good luck! :thumbup: :thumbup: