Our Adoption Story

Well, I promised to go back and post why we ultimately decided to adopt and why Kazakhstan.

We have always had a heart for adoption and could really feel the Lord drawing us closer to actually taking that step. In the winter of 2008, through a great deal of prayer, we knew that God was inviting us to be a part of something wonderful. It was truly amazing how God spoke to both Mike and I in very different ways, showing us that we had a child just waiting for us. We had started our journey looking into fost-adopt and domestic adoption. At that point, international adoption was out of the question. It was too much money, too far to go, too ..., well you get the point. We had a long list of why we would not consider international adoption.

On the brink of signing a contract for domestic adoption, I heard the Lord say very clearly "Be open." What did this mean? For several days, the Lord spoke those two words into my heart. I realized that I was not open to adopting a child from another country. I had decided, before even asking Him, that this simply was not a possibility. It was in those moments that I knew that our daughter was waiting for us, across the world, in an orphanage, and that Our Father was holding her in His hand.

The Lord led us to Laurel, our adoption facilitator, and she showed us Kazakhstan as a great option for our family. With a giant leap of faith, we signed the contract in August 2008 and just handed the rest over to God. There were so many unknowns when we began this adventure, but He has carried us through.

So, now we wait. Above is a map of where we are going. We will be travelling to Petropavlovsk. It is on the northern border next to Russia. Please keep us and our daughter in your prayers as we wait, and wait!!

Waiting is the hardest part

When we started our journey, Laurel at our adoption agency told us that waiting would be the hardest part. We both said, out loud nonetheless, that will be the easy part for us. We truly believed that since our lives are full of so many other things, homeschooling, working, keeping up with our boys, that time would just fly by and before we knew it, we would be travelling to Kazakhstan. Ha! Ha! Ha! Boy was I wrong. At least during the paperwork phase (I like to call it our papermester, our first trimester of our adoption) we were so busy with our to-do list, that we didn't realize so much time had gone by. Then in our second trimester, our paperwork went through a maze of officials who had to check and re-check all that hard work we had done. During that time, we were getting updates often and we were making progress (or so I told myself). But now, we are in our last trimester and this has certainly been the most painful for me. Laurel called it the longest labor you will ever endure.
We have been assigned to our region as of July 21st and have been on the "any day" alert since then. I have had some difficult days when I felt like maybe this adoption was not going to happen. I have been dancing the "what-if" tango, letting my imagination run wild. But then, my amazing hubby comes home and reminds me that God called us to this journey and He will see us through it till the end.
I could go on forever, so I will end this post with a promise to post why we decided to adopt in our next post.