Our First Blog....

  I am so excited that we FINALLY have a blog so we can share with our family and friends this next phase our family is embarking on....ADOPTION from Ethiopia!
 It was about four years ago that God first laid this word upon my heart, "adoption".  I am not really sure why I first started thinking about it.  I have never had any issues with fertility (quite the opposite!) nor have anyone close to us ever adopted.  I was very shocked at first that this thought kept coming up in my mind...so I started to seek God and pray about it.  As I began to share my thoughts with Matt, I realized that he also wanted to add to our family BUT he had different thoughts.....he thought we should have another child "naturally"....like we had done before.  However, he agreed to pray about it and we both let the topic fade.....but in my heart I continued to ponder the thought and my desire grew.
About a year later Matt and I took a missions trip to Uganda, Africa.  It was here in Africa that Matt began to get confirmation from God that we should adopt.  Not only did we fall in love with the country but our eyes were opened like never before to the poorest of people....of children.....babies without the most basic of necessities.  We were sickened that it would sometimes take a child a whole DAY of travel just to get a dirty glass of water to drink.  MANY lay in sickness and HURTING when back home it would have taken a small over the counter medicine to make them better.
When we returned home we began to look seriously into what we would need to do to get our adoption started and about this same time is when the economy and our business started to take a downward turn.
Everything "financially" began to fall apart...BUT because of where we had BEEN ..we could put it in perspective and know that we still had more than MOST of the world would ever have.
It was at this time when our family was seemingly losing everything that we felt in our spirit God telling us "NOW IS THE TIME"..... so walking out on faith we began this process of BRINGING OUR CHILDREN HOME.

I can't even really write what it feels like when you KNOW that you have a child somewhere else waiting on you...our family has been praying for this child(ren) and talking of them as if they ARE already a part of our lives.  Even now as I type this ...I find I even feel nervous and think "Oh no, what if it doesn't happen?"....  BUT 99% of the time my faith is greater than my doubts and I anxiously await all God has planned for our family...Now family of 5....SOON to be family of 7!!!