We are blessed with 3 beautiful bio children who bring us more joy and love than we could have ever imagined! We are so blessed by their precious lives and thank God for the gift of them every day.
After we had our youngest, the Lord put in us a dream for another child. After several devastating miscarriages, a lot of prayer and discussions we felt that the Lord was moving our hearts towards adoption. We went to an adoption conference in Dallas and we were even more convinced this was what the Lord wanted for our family. So, we slowly began moving forward looking into the foster to adopt programs in our area. During that year, the Lord called us to a new city and a new church. Adoption was set to the side for a while as we adjusted to a new home, job and city. As we began the adoption journey again, for some reason we were having a hard time feeling good about the foster to adopt agencies in our new city. Can't explain it. Just know we didn't feel as connected or like minded as we did with the agency we began working with in Dallas.
This amazing man came home one day telling me about a meeting he had just had with a wonderful older lady from our church. He had spent 2 hours with her talking and looking at pictures of children in an orphanage in India. This sweet woman was hoping our church could help her carry the load of the $200 she had been giving monthly to this orphanage for the past 10 years because her husband is sick and it had become a bit of a financial burden. Little did she know that the Lord was going to use those pictures of those beautiful children to change our family forever. My husband came home that night and shared that something happened inside him when he saw those pictures and he thought we were supposed to pursue international adoption. I was not there yet. At.All. I was thinking CPS foster to adopt for so long it was hard for me to shift gears. I said I would definitely pray about it and we were confident the Lord would change one of our hearts either way. Andrew went away on a men's retreat for the weekend and I took the kids to my hometown to visit my parents and dear friends we hadn't seen in a while. In a God ordained conversation with one of my precious best friends from high school, she began talking about how her and her husband were praying about adoption in the future and she mentioned an agency in our hometown that specialized in infant and international adoption. Hmmm. Interesting. She said it was an amazing christian agency (they are!!) and several people close to her had adopted from them and had great experiences. Those were key words for me. It was important to me that if I was going to step WAY out of my comfort zone and adopt internationally, I wanted to know that the people helping and walking alongside our family to accomplish this were for us, believers and prayer warriors. I went home that night and spent over an hour on the computer reading everything I could about this agency my friend mentioned. It was wonderful and I knew it was what the Lord wanted for us. I couldn't wait for Andrew to come home to share with him the excitement rising in me about this new and scary journey. So, we chose our agency first and then we looked at what countries they helped people to adopt (kind of backwards, but it worked for us).
Ghana and Uganda. Those were our choices, so we prayed and read a lot about both countries and mutually landed on Uganda. As SOON as we said yes to Uganda, the Lord continually confirmed it over and over again through conversations, music on the radio while driving, events in the news, and in our hearts. I love how He does that!!
We mailed our application in at the end of January of this year, interviewed with our case worker (who we LOVE), were quickly approved and moved on to gathering our first round of paperwork and training for our home study. The kids have been involved in the process from the beginning and we love having conversations with them about Africa and the new sibling the Lord is going to give them. They are such great kids and can't wait for their new brother or sister to come and live with us. (They are not too excited about shots for the trip eventually to Africa, but we will cross that bridge when we get to it. ;)
We finally (and I do mean finally!!) compiled every thing needed for our home study and mailed it off in July.
We had our home study (nerve wracking!!) done by the end of the summer and were approved to adopt 2 children!! (We are definitely open to adopting siblings if it comes up at the time of our referral. We will see!) We were so excited to be 'official' and to be able to move forward in this process.
So, that is where we are today. We will soon mail in our approval to then be approved by the U.S. government and then hopefully around Christmas of this year, it will be sent to Uganda for approval. From that point we will have 7-9 months of wait time before we get to see our child's beautiful face for the first time. We have a lot of wait time ahead of us, but we are excited about what God has already done in our hearts through this process. We are ever more thankful He chose to adopt us and die for us so that we can live for him! Obedience is both a beautiful and challenging thing. We named this blog Joyful Endurance because that is what the journey feels like for us. We are filled with JOY for all the many things the Lord has done for us and given us and we also know that this adoption thing is not for the weak harded. We have already experienced some delays and frustrations and plan on more as we move forward in the process. We are hopeful and ready for the Lord to grow our family and place that forever child with us.
Thank you so much for reading and joining us on this journey! Here are the ways you can help us:
~ Please be in prayer for our family as we 'joyfully endure' this process. Pray for our patience, faith, joy and dependence on the Lord to increase in our waiting. The Lord has a purpose for this time for each member of our family and we desire to glorify Him in all we do and say.
~ If you desire to do so, please help us by participating in one of our fundraisers. Right now we have an online "shop" at Just Love Coffee where you can purchase coffee and $5 for each bag sold goes toward our adoption. We also will be participating in a half marathon at the end of the month for adoption called Chosen where you can contribute to our team for the race. We also are going to be several other fundraisers to help the costs of the 'in country' portion of this adoption process and the costs of getting our family over to Uganda when the time comes. (We will have to stay in Uganda 4-6 weeks. We could definitely use prayer for that, too!) More fun fundraisers are in the works and I will post about them soon.
Thank you all, again! We have such amazing family and friend support and we seriously could not do this without each of their love, prayers and encouragement.
'The LORD has done great things for us and we are filled with JOY.' Psalm 126:3
Thrilled deep in my soul! And praying praying praying!
ReplyDelete