The Girls Part2

People have been asking a lot of questions about our upcoming adoption. So here's a bunch of answers.

Why adoption? We have been adopted into God's family! We didn't know or love Him until he reached out to us and called us to His family. So adoption is the picture of the Gospel. We've also known that we've wanted to adopt for a very long time because the world has so many orphans who need homes and families and besides, why would we want to pass on my genes?

How did we find Ethel and Mutale? We'd been visiting orphanages just to love on some kids, playing games or holding the little ones (if you like holding and snuggling toddlers, visiting an orphanage is a great way to show love to kids!). We let social welfare know that we were interested in adoption and they encouraged us to move forward. They gave us a list of adoptable children in the orphanages we'd been visiting. Tricia and I both felt that God had been calling us to adopt siblings because they have a harder time being adopted and staying together. In our minds we wanted an older girl, 5-9 and a boy 2-4. But social welfare only had two sisters, 3 and 5. So we started praying and fasting. As soon as we realized who the girls were - we jumped. Mutale (3) already loved me and will jump into my arms when we visit the house. Ethel (5) had been playing with Lucas and laughing and fooling around with him. We felt God saying this was it. And we wanted to seek His will in something this big and not just do what WE wanted.

How did we know? Well, I'm still working on that one. But I had a strange moment with Ethel after praying and fasting before our first real visit with her. I had this very strong buzzing feeling - I guess, like de je vu, like I was already looking back at this moment from the future as a moment that changed my life forever. It was WIERD, and awesome. It's hard to explain but Tricia and I just feel assured it's the right thing for us to do... just like we felt about moving to Africa!

When do you get to bring them home? Please pray! So we found out that they were adoptable about three weeks ago. We met with Social Welfare and turned in our initial paperwork a week ago. I think we'll have our homestudy done on Tuesday of this week. And then... Only God knows. It could be weeks or months before the girls are released to our custody... but probably more like the beginning of the year. We have plans to go to Botswana for a day in Dec and the girls would not be able to leave the country with us. So we are praying for the first weekend of Jan. AND we want to take them for day trips and to bring them home for a couple days for Christmas to get them used to us more before January comes.

So that's the scoop, we'll keep you up-to-date. Please pray. And when things are official we will send out a picture of the family.