Our Story...Finally!

On Easter Sunday April 8, 2007 our Pastor preached the most life changing sermon. We were beginning a series called FAQ where you could send in questions and Pastor Alex would answer them. He wanted to start with his question, what about the orphans? He took us through how often it is talked about in the bible and how it was hugely on Jesus’ heart. A couple of months later this turned into a sermon called Adopt(ed) which is now an amazing ministry in our church.
Adoption has always been on our hearts. We had looked at it as a someday thing (much further down the road) not a lets do this first thing. After that Easter Sunday what kept stirring in me was when Pastor said, “why is adoption plan B, why isn’t plan A?” What a statement with not a good answer to give. When we are young we plan our lives…you graduate from high school, go to college, get married, and HAVE kids. I just always assumed HAVE kids meant biological.
So on to the details…a couple of weeks after Easter Jonathan and I were driving home and the discussion of kids had come up (again). We had been married going on 4 years and it just seemed about that time. I can still picture as we are pulling into our neighborhood you curve around a large pond and the words coming out of Jonathan’s mouth that he would like to consider adoption first. My eye’s welled up with tears and I really didn’t say much for a couple of days as I let it sink in. I knew in my heart that God had been telling me the same thing, but just didn’t want to admit that my planned out life now had unknowns.
Once we began to discuss it Pastor did the Adopt(ed) sermon which continued to confirm what we had been feeling. In July of 2007 our church had our first Considering Adoption class. It was the perfect setting to discuss with other couples who had the same questions, fears, and to just be able to talk to them about the excitement of it all.
After completing the 6 week class we decided to seriously start looking into the process. We discovered that before you choose an agency you have to choose a country. Every agency does not adopt from every country. Through lots of prayer, fasting, and God’s guidance we decided on Ethiopia! We were ecstatic! We felt like we had made some progress.
Ethiopia it was, now what agency do we use? I started calling just about every agency that adopts from Ethiopia with a list of questions that Jonathan and I wanted to know. We went over how the agencies answered the question and how the phone conversation went as well. When we spoke with Gladney it just seemed to click. We went to their informational class in January 2008 and decided they were who we were going with.
At the time we were 24 and to adopt from Ethiopia one of you had to be 25 (my birthday was the next one in July) before we completed our home study so there was a little waiting involved. At the time seemed awful, but looking back I am really glad that we did have to wait. It took a little over a year to start the process from that Easter sermon. Taking so long confirmed for us that we weren’t experiencing a “camp high” or jumping on a bandwagon we were following God’s will for our life.
We have been on the waiting list for over 7 months now. It has been hard at times, but we know that it is all in God’s hands and it is His perfect will and plan for us. We are so excited to be able to see Him work in our lives as He continues to give us patience that we don’t understand.

S