"I hope in the Lord Jesus to send Timothy to you soon." Phil. 2:19

There is a little boy that is living in a "baby home" in Eastern Europe. Not for long though because we are doing everything we can to bring him home to us. He has two brothers, Zach and Caleb that are here waiting to play. He has a mommy and daddy that are anticipating the day when we will be able to hold him in our arms and tell him how happy we are that he is a part of our family.

Andy and I have known since we were married 8 years ago that whether or not we were able to have children of our own we felt the pull towards someday adopting a child. God did bless us with two amazing biological sons and we continued to believe that SOMEDAY adoption would be part of our families story and we began to feel called to a child with special needs (Timothy has Down Syndrome). "Lets wait," we thought "we would love to have more biological children, we don't have $30,000 to pay for an adoption, I am in school, the kids are so young." We had many excuses. Meanwhile we were getting to know Jon and Nina Clark, a family from our church. We were blessed to get watch them walk through two adoptions in a year! Nina knew our pull towards adoption and wasn't quite as convinced by all of our reasons for waiting! While she was traveling in August to bring home her sweet daughter Elizabeth she sent us an email that would forever change our lives.  Andy and I read the email on a friday morning with two little boys climbing all over us. I will never forget that morning as it was the last day of the week I was directing VBS and to say I was tired would be an understatement. I was wondering when I woke up how I was going to possibly make it one more day and the idea of beginning an international adoption and bringing another child into our house seemed daunting to say the least! We laughed together at the idea but decided that since its not every day that you receive an email asking you to adopt a specific child that we should at least think and pray about it.

Well you can see where that lead us...24 hours later and we were both on board. Our lives were changed. God spoke clearly and touched both of our hearts in ways we could not imagine. I spent the next few nights staying up way too late learning all about what we had committed to through the blogs of adoptive parents who beautifully share their stories. Many tears were shed! Andy spent the next few days with his calculator in hand trying to turn what we had into $30,000 (no such luck) and reading, reading, reading! At the end of that week our family had the priviledge of joining the Clark family to welcome home Nina and Elizabeth at the airport. Truly a life changing moment to watch this little girl walk through the doors, clearly already connected with her new mother, and into the arms of her father, brothers and sisters. It was beautiful!

That is the very basic version of the way God prepared us to welcome a new child into our family by way of adoption. There are many more details we would love to share and will continue to share along the way so check back often.

I will leave you with another one of my favorite pictures of him...I just think he is so cute sitting in that little chair!