Blessed

“In love He predestined us for adoption as sons through Jesus Christ, according to the purpose of His will, to the praise of His glorious grace, with which He has blessed us in the Beloved.”
(Ephesians 1:4-6 ESV)

I've thought of so many ways to begin this post. Been thinking about it for weeks now. And now that it's time to write it, I don't know how to do it justice.

How do you say something so big? How do you express something so life-changing?

I guess you just say it.

We are adopting a baby girl from Rwanda.


Ever since I was young, adoption has spoken to my heart. They call it the Adoption Gene. There are many reasons why I want to adopt, and I plan to delve into them in the coming weeks and months as we wait for our daughter. But it's always been there, something I knew I would do. Jeremy and I talked about adoption before we married, and decided it was something God was calling our family to. Lately, we've been discussing it more and more, wondering if now was the time.

But we'd always thought it would be from Asia. As many of you know, I have a deep love for Mongolia. I thought a child from my "heart country" just made sense. But all the doors closed. Mongolia only allows two agencies in, and it was an unstable situation. I contacted one of those, and it had shut down its Mongolia branch. Jeremy, like I, had always just assumed Asia was the place for us. So we thought about other countries in Asia, but for many reasons, doors just kept closing.

One morning, I prayed (in the shower, one of my best prayer places) about it. I asked the Lord to open my heart to whatever place He wanted, whether Asia or not. And almost immediately, I just felt a peace - a sense - that Africa was where our daughter would come from. Jeremy was praying about Africa, too. We talked, and prayed, and thought, and got more and more sure and excited that it was right.

So we researched some more, and decided on our agency.  We really like it so far (If you are interested to know which agency we're using, email me or leave me your email address in a comment.  I'd be happy to share!). It are a Christian organization, with a definite heart for the orphans of the world. And we applied for Rwanda. Why Rwanda? We don't really know, other than that we feel very drawn to that country, and we know it is the right place.



So, for the curious: Our daughter will be between 0 and 14 months, most likely closer to the 14 months. We will begin assembling our dossier in the next few days, and the home study will be done simultaneously. It takes an average of four months (we're very motivated, and hope to get it done faster!). Then it will be submitted to Rwanda. From then, it will take an average of ten months to get the referral (again, we hope for faster - but who doesn't?), which will give us the name, picture, and short bio of our daughter. From then, it takes about two months until we go to Rwanda (for about ten days) and bring her home. So total, we're looking at a little over a year from now (but Godspeed the paperwork!).

The cost is low for an international adoption, but it's still high. We plan to fund some of it ourselves, apply for grants (and possibly an adoption loan, which is interest-free), and fund-raise. We figure that there is pretty much no better way to spend our money than this.

We ask for you to pray with us and rejoice with us! We're thrilled to be walking this road which will end with a new little girl in our arms!