We reserve Tuesdays to share stories from  some of our grant recipients.  May you be blessed by their stories….

 

Perhaps we were destined to adopt internationally.  John is one of three kids and both of his siblings are adopted.  They were adopted in the U.S. as infants because his parents were “unable” to have kids (until John came along several years later and surprised them!).  Kristi has always been interested in other cultures and languages.  In college that prompted her to earn a B.A. in Spanish.  After finishing college Kristi moved to Mexico to work in an orphanage and saw the possibilities of adoption. 

We had been thinking about adding to our family and adoption felt like the right way for us to do that so towards the end of 2010 we started the process of looking into agencies and countries.  We felt that the Lord would have us adopt from a Spanish speaking country since Kristi is bilingual.  As we looked at countries it seemed like most Hispanic countries were not open or not a fit for our family.  So we tried to just keep walking through the open doors as the Lord closed so many others.  At the end of it all we were looking at China’s Waiting Child program. 

So in February 2011 we started the home study process and the agency coordinator, Heidi, started looking for our little boy.  On April 28th Heidi called us and said she’d locked a file for us to review.  There were so many God winks in the file, which made us both so sure he (Sam) was our son.

Very excitedly, we turned in all our paperwork for our Pre-approval and Monday May 2nd we were told the sad news: Sam’s file was missing.  It had just vanished from the system.  Three days later as China came back from holiday Sam showed up on the list, but not locked to us anymore.  As Heidi tried to lock him there were again technical difficulties with the database.  Our agency called China and pleaded our case, explaining our story.  China found favor with us and let us again lock on Sam so our paperwork went to China.  Sam’s third birthday fell just a couple of days later and not knowing what would happen, but certain that the Lord was doing something, we celebrated his birthday by going out for Chinese food and then coming home for cake with some extended family.  Then the news we were waiting for came on Mother’s Day at 11pm.  Sam was approved to be our son!  What an incredible Mother’s Day gift.

At this point we are through most of the paperwork hurdles and are just waiting for our Travel Approval that should come soon.  Lord willing, we are hoping to travel to China in early March.

 We are so grateful to Katelyn’s fund and the grant they so generously gave us.  It is because of their support and many others that we are able to bring Sam home.