OURS!
Yes--really!
We weren't planning to adopt a 2nd child, but the doors are wide open at this moment.
How does that happen you ask? Well that is NOT a simple answer.
It all started with a video from church during our 24/7 children's program. (Ben and I both work in this area on Sunday mornings.) The video was talking about how we are adopted by God into His family. It was interviewing a family who had adopted several kids at various ages. One of the last comments on the video was, "We always have room for one more in our family." (That's what God's message is too--He always has room for one more.) We didn't really think anything about it until later in the week, when I got an email from our waiting child coordinator. She asked me to advocate for a 13 year old girl named Sara who needed a family. Sara has the same special need as Hannah, she is blind in one eye.
Ben and I talked a little about Sara that night, but not that much. Individually though, God just would not let us alone. I tossed and turned and prayed about Sara--for God to please find her a family. That just didn't feel like the right answer, and somewhere in all of that non-sleep, I began to really consider adopting Sara.
I didn't want to be the one to bring it up to Ben though. So during that night I prayed that if God wanted us to adopt Sara that he would burden Ben's heart so much that he would not have peace at work the next day and that he would contact our agency about Sara. I just REALLY had to KNOW!
So the next morning I didn't say anything to Ben about Sara--I know that it's hard to believe I remained silent about this, but I really did.
About 3 in the afternoon, I just couldn't stand not knowing anything more about Sara, so I called our agency. I started asking her questions about Sara when she stopped me and said, "Have you and Ben not talked today? I just sent him the answers to his questions about Sara."
At this point I started laughing and told our agency about my prayer the night before and that "No" we had not talked that day about it. I asked her to not let Ben know that I had called and she agreed.
When Ben came home he came in like usual and put his stuff away, and then nonchalantly, started telling me stuff about Sara. I started laughing and shared my news with him. What I didn't know was that Ben had emailed his questions to our agency at 9PM before we went to sleep. God had answered my prayer before I even prayed it. WOW!
We continued to pray about this descision and felt like we should pursue this adoption. Not because we think we need another child, but because we have been blessed with so much and we feel we can love another child. I guess you could say, "We have room for one more."
We KNOW this will not be easy, or simple. We will now have two non-English speaking girls, who will be dealing with all kinds of changes and emotions. So you may begin praying
NOW!
We don't know when we will travel, but we do know it needs to be before November 19th, because that is when Sara will age out and no longer be adoptable.
We recieved our PA for Sara---YESTERDAY--- can you believe it? We couldn't. But last night we had fun calling our parents and sisters and brothers and telling them our exciting news. That was a bunch of laughs--our families were suprised--but excited.
So here is Sara's debut picture . . .
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| Sara |
Only God can work this way!!!
Something else to think about. On every other adoption, we have always put down that we would be ready to have 2 children, just in case there was a sibling that we didn't know about. But on our paperwork this time, we only put down 1. So last night we had a meeting with our homestudy agency and we are on the way to updating our homestudy. That is QUICK in the adoption world. But our agency knows that Sara only has a short window to be adopted so they are jumping through hoops. We are thankful!
