Adopting

Several have asked how we decided to adopt, so I though I would share what the Lord has done and is doing in our hearts.  Though our biological family is large with six kids, 21 - 8, adoption is something that has been on my heart for years.  My sister has a daughter that is adopted and it a wonderful picture of God's redemption of each one of us.  My husband, however, feeling the financial burden like men do, has felt like our family was complete.  So my prayers have been that if this was something God wanted us to do, that He would have to change Mike's heart.  I knew in my heart, that when that day came, it would be from God.  


A few months ago, my friend Sarah began posting blog links on her Facebook about a family who was adopting two little girls with Down Syndrome from the Ukraine.  I followed those links and subsequently ended up on Reece's Rainbow.  There I started reading about the conditions and lack of future that these children had.  It broke my heart.  I shared these facts with Mike and we both decided to start praying about it.  Then one day I came across this blog post Reckless Abandon and I sent it to him.  We both ran out of excuses and knew this was the path the God had set our feet upon. 


We then spent a couple of weeks looking at pictures and asking God, which one?  Then one day, I felt a very clear direction that Sam was the one He wanted to be part of our family.  There are many phases of the adoption process and we are in phase one, the home study.  We hope to have it done by the end of January and be onto the next phase of getting our Dossier (a large amount of paperwork) together to be submitted to the Russian government in February.  We will then wait to be told when we can travel to meet our little boy.  


Pray for us when you think about it.  Pray that the paperwork process goes smoothly.  Pray for Sam as he sits in an orphanage not even knowing that he has a family coming for him.