For His Glory (Part One)

We've been talking a lot at church about how everything we do is for God's glory. So, I thought I would start off our adoption adventures discussing this as well. I'm actually writing this, probably pretty well in advance before I post it. The reason being, that we want to make sure we are really on the road to adoption and in God's will. We want our sweet blessing from another country to really be for His glory.

That being said, I will share how we started this journey. There is a couple from our church who have adopted two (maybe three, I can't remember) children and are in the process of adopting three more. I spoke with her back in January about adoption and asked if I could contact her when we were ready to start our adoption process. She wholeheartedly agreed, so I've been waiting for God and His timing. He's also used the time from January until now (May) to prepare our hearts and lead us to a country. I'll get to more about what country God has lead us to later.

I've been waiting, sometimes patiently, sometimes not so patiently. Until this week, I've really felt God telling me it's time. Not only that, He put Jennifer, the mom I wrote of earlier, in my path on Wednesday, and I felt God all but yelling at me to talk to her. I really just have two main questions to ask, but I know that these two questions are what will get us really started on this road to adoption. Anyways, I chickened out. I disobeyed God because I was finally getting started and I was scared! Most of you know that when God is speaking to your heart, He will be pretty persistent. I felt Him telling me again, on Thursday, to call her. This time, my excuse was that I hadn't spoken to Mark. However, the thought, stayed in my head all day on Thursday. And God told me to talk to Mark last night. I did and he agreed that if I felt that strongly that we were being led to call, then I needed to call.

So, I called her over a week ago. She was a wealth of information and pointed me to what I pray will be a great homestudy agency out of Marietta.

We've got the paperwork for our homestudy and have already started working on it and our dossier. Basically, anything and everything about us has to be put on paper and notarized...I just hope we don't have to count how many times we go to the bathroom!

I probably won't post much on this until we get accepted in to the adoption agency we would like to use. For now, pray, and if we ask you to do a reference, be nice :)...or at least honest.

Here's what to pray for:
1. Patience on our part as we gather all our paperwork to complete the homestudy, dossier, and all the other things associated with bringing our sweet child home.
2. Our child/children who may be waiting on us now...for their health and wisdom for us to know when God shows us our child or children.
3. Finances! This is going to be expensive. Especially if God leads us to adopt more than one child at a time. We'll be trying to do it without having to go into debt. To do this, we'll need help and I'm sure I'll post more on that as we go.
4. Go ahead and start praying that Zoe, Ace, Liam, and Josiah will be able to adjust to an instant little sister (or brother and sister or sisters). This will be an ongoing prayer of ours.