God first opened our hearts to adoption during our sports Ministry trips at Belmont University. We have been praying about international adoption even before we were a family. We have heard the Holy Spirit many times throughout our marriage through prayer, divine appointments, and meetings of individuals where adoption has changed their lives. We feel the Lord has strategically placed people in our lives in each place we have lived to help prepare us for the journey of international adoption. Additionally, he has used these individuals in our life to help grow us in our faith in order to hear His voice and respond in obedience. Most recently, this year, the Lord has placed it upon our hearts to adopt internationally from Burundi, and we are ready to say “Yes” to God’s calling us to adopt and walk in obedience and faith in this new journey for our family.
God is teaching us that his calling us to adoption is not for our glory or to make us seem like “good people” but to bring him glory and live out the gospel through adoption. He is also teaching us that putting others before ourselves is biblical and sacrifice is sometimes necessary in order to bring him glory. Lastly, he is teaching us to trust him even when things get hard or messy or scary, as we know there will be hills and valleys throughout this process. God blessed us with four wonderful children through the years, but now we are ready to be obedient to God’s calling and living out the gospel through adoption. We are completely trusting God in this process as there are hurdles that we could see in the future, including financing our adoption. We know we cannot make this happen without God’s provision to see it through. One of those avenues has been through Katelyn’s fund. Not only through the financial assistance, but through the intentional prayer and conversations we were able to have during our interview. We could see the heart each one of these individuals had for adoption, but more importantly for the Lord and growing his Kingdom and we were so blessed by those conversations. We are excited to see all God can do in and through our family and Katelyn’s fund is one of the pieces of our story God is writing!
