Our Adoption Testimony
Jason and I lived in Okinawa Japan during the time that God opened our eyes to His purpose for our lives. It was during those years that “adoption” became more than a word from stories that you read or hear.
In Jan of 2007 I went on a mission trip to Thailand. During this trip we served two orphanages, one in Chang Mai and one in the hill tribes. Through serving and loving these children and their caretakers, my heart began to break for the great need that was obvious there in Thailand. It was after that trip that I realized Gods heart for adoption and found James 1:27, which I then wrote on an index card and has hung on my mirror in the entryway of our home ever since. God changed my heart during that trip, but it was only the beginning of a great journey.
After finding out that I was pregnant with our second child we also found out that our close fiends were beginning the adoption process to bring home a child from the orphanage we visited in Thailand. The child that God had pressed on their heart would be theirs. This was a very exciting time, but still had no idea what was in store for our family.
With Caleb and Sammy we now had two very active boys and life was full! We often talked that we did not see any more children in our future. It was during that time that we moved back to the USA as Jason’s job in the Air Force required. We found a great church right away and began getting plugged in.
It did not take long before God began tugging at my heart that our family was not complete. We also realized that our church had an adoptions ministry along with a large number of families who had adopted or who were planning on adopting. We decided to begin asking questions and then took an adoption class. We read “Adopted for Life” and continued to learn about our vertical adoption along with Gods great heart for the weak and the fatherless. And spent much time in prayer.
We researched adoption agencies and possible countries. And finally in January of 2010 we decided that God would have us begin the adoption process in February. We applied with our agency to adopt from Rwanda and began the long process of home study and dossier. This took us well into the summer. Towards the end of the summer we found out that Rwanda was closing to all new dossiers to become Hague compliant. This was heart breaking at first. And then God reminded us that He is good and will work all things out according to His good and perfect plan.
We began praying and asking what God wanted us to do. After much more research and prayer, Jason confirmed that we would change agencies and countries, which lead us to the path we are on now. We are adopting 1-2 children under the age of 3 from Ukraine and could not be more excited about meeting our new child/children that we have been anxiously awaiting for over a year now.
