the number one question (part 2)

"What led you to adopt?" We often get asked this question. Although it may sound cliche~ God did.

We had always thought that four would be the perfect number of kids. However, through various avenues, God started to work on our hearts and so we thought one day, when our kids were older, we'd adopt a sibling set.

Time went by, and we were immersed more and more into the global orphan crisis. We both read "The Hole in our Gospel" and God used that book to bring about some major changes in our families life. One of those being to search out the answer to this question: "What does God want our family to do in response to the orphan crisis?" After reading that book, and studying scripture, we knew we had a mandate to do something. We knew that if we wanted to be in sync with God's heartbeat, then we had to get involved. For His heart is for the orphan, the widow, the least of these.

So, we took the scary step and began to pray about our responsibility as a family. We told the kids that we needed to know what God wanted us to do to help orphans and we wanted them to pray too! And boy did they! There were many ways that we started to get involved: sponsoring a child, giving money to organizations, donating to others who were adopting and supporting them. Even giving back with our businesses. But God continued to call for more.

God began to press the idea of adopting on our hearts. We kept pushing it aside with our excuses, but He kept bringing it back. He has a way of doing that! It was at the times when I was open and consistent in my walk with Him that He was speaking. Because, well, I was listening. It was easy to get busy and just not really hear His voice.

Finally, we decided to take a first step. We sent for some information from some adoption agencies. Next step, we attended a meeting with a local agency. We started to consider a domestic adoption. After talking with our kids (ages 12, 10, 8, & 3 at the time), they were totally up for it. We all decided a boy, close to our sons age (he was 10) would be perfect.

But one road after another kept closing. We began looking at waiting lists and started to look a bit at international adoption... (next: october 13, 2009. a day that would change our lives. forever.)