Our Adoption Testimony

Lao Tzu, an ancient Chinese philosopher once said, "The journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step." The first step of our journey to bring home our second child began on December 23, 2005 when we submitted our formal application to Bethany Christian Services. Our journey has been long! It has been filled with wonder and questions and yet it has also increased our faith in our Heavenly Father.

Shortly after we returned home from China in 2002 with our first child, Natalee, we knew that God had another child in store for our family. We deeply desired to begin our second adoption right away but finances kept us from qualifying. We began to earnestly pray that God would provide the way for us to adopt again. God answered that prayer and our Dossier was sent to China on May 31, 2006 requesting a "non-special needs child as young as possible".

We were so excited to be "paper pregnant" and began right away at raising funds for the adoption related expenses. We started off with our church helping us with a yard sale which made over $800. We applied for several grants and received one from Shaohannah's Hope. We were thrilled! Everything seemed to be going so well. However, over the next several months to a year, the process of referrals from China was almost at a standstill. We began to question God and wondered why things just weren't moving "fast enough". Emotionally the journey began to wear us down.

In the summer of 2007, our Adoption worker emailed us a list of special needs children that the agency had received. She said she knew that we had not specifically listed a child with special needs on our dossier but perhaps we would like to look at the list and prayerfully consider if God was speaking to our hearts. We did, we prayed and began to consider these children and their unique beauty and needs. Could God be leading us to journey a new path?

Over the course of the next several months, God began to change us....little by little as each new list of special needs children was released we began to pray and diligently search the heart of God. We opened our hearts to things we never would have thought possible on our own and we found ourselves requesting the opportunity to parent many of these children. Although God did not answer these requests they way we had wanted, our faith was being stretched and our reliance on Him deepened. We began to pray diligently that God would reveal our child to us before the end of 2008.

And, God answered that prayer!! We received the referral of our daughter on November 25, 2008. She is a beautiful 3 1/2 year old girl who has had some health challenges in her short life. She has had two surgeries and she was born without her left thumb. To say that we were prepared right away to accept this referral would not be honest. We had to fall on our knees in prayer and in searching our hearts and God's before we felt His complete wave of peace over us, reminding us that every good and perfect gift comes from our Heavenly Father. We then could see how God had been changing us...preparing us...for the daughter He had planned.

His gift was here! It's been a long journey, not always easy...but along the way we have learned so much about ourselves and God. We've been given perfect peace and joy as we complete our journey to bring our daughter home!

We are blessed beyond measure!