National Adoption Month - The Beginning of Our Journey

*To God be all honor, glory and praise.

November is National Adoption Month. This month also marks the anniversary of when God began to clearly show our family that we were supposed to adopt a child. We had never really considered adopting before; in fact, we were content as a family of 6 and weren't really interested in adding any more children. But God began to work in our hearts and we soon realized just how selfish we were for wanting things OUR way. We began learning more and more about the orphan crisis going on in the world today, and started feeling very convicted that we could do something about it. After all, hadn't we been praying since early in the year that God would reveal to us someone who needed our help? (We had taken a Crown Financial class at our church during the winter of 2008/2009, and we were very moved by the class. After learning that everything we own is really all God's anyway, and that He had blessed us far more than we deserved, we wanted to give back in some way and help others more. We started praying for God to show us someone who needed our help, whether it be someone we could help out financially, someone for whom we could do a work project, etc. We helped out here and there and whenever we could, but still felt that we wanted to do more. We never once considered adoption.)

Then in the fall of last year, little things started happening that made me start to wonder more and more about adoption. I found a tiny scrap of paper in the bottom of Adrian's bookbag one day. I pulled it out and was ready to toss it into the trash when I saw that it had some writing on it. It said, "If you would like information about adoption or becoming a foster parent please contact:" and included an address and phone number. I set it aside, but soon forgot about it.

One day in November of last year, I was blog-hopping when I ran across a blog called "The Journey." It was written by a 21-year-old girl who lives in Uganda, giving food and medicine to the people there. She had taken 14 girls into her own home and described how poor and diseased everyone is there. I was very convicted as I read her post, and thought to myself, "Here is a young girl who is doing so much for others - what in the world am I doing?" She mentioned how there are 147 million orphans in the world today. 11 million children starve to death or die from treatable illnesses each year. 8.5 million children work as child slaves or prostitutes, and 2.3 million are living with HIV. This equals out to 168.8 million needy children in the world today. Katie stated, "Seems like a big number, huh? It shouldn't, because there are 2.1 BILLION people on this earth who profess to be Christians. Jesus followers. Servants. Gospel live-ers. And if only 8 percent of those Christians would care for just ONE of these needy children, they would all be taken care of." Well, that really got my attention.

Shortly after that, I received a DVD in the mail from Loving Shepherd Ministries. It was called "Fields for the Fatherless," and was all about adoption. It asked for our help with the orphans and fatherless, because God commands us in His word to do so. Again, I had the feeling that we should do something to help. We talked about it with the kids, and Shana said that it was really something she would like to do. The children started praying about it as well.

I'll try to share more of our adoption story later - that's all for now! I wrote it down last year as we were going through it, and our story is almost 15 type-written pages long. I'll try to just share the basics with you in several different posts.

Thanks for stopping by today, and have a wonderful weekend!