Journey to Adoption

Our family began praying about how we could minister as a family the Truth and Love of Jesus back in 2012.  Jesus displayed his love for us through adopting us into his family, and accepting us just the way we were with no requirements being place upon us to receive that love and acceptance.  The more we thought about the amazing grace that we received the more we wanted to be able to provide the acceptance and love of a family to an orphan. It was a ministry for our family.  We could provide a loving home that would allow an orphan to know and be known, and experience a Jesus like acceptance. It is grievous that every child doesn't know the love of a home with their birth parents, but it would be even sadder for them to never know a family at all.

We started the process with the idea in mind of how a child would best "fit" into our family.  We have a 7 year old son, Noah, suffered two losses, and then were blessed with our youngest son Isaac who is almost 2.  Prior to finding out we were pregnant, we had gone to an adoption meeting to learn all about it.  At the time Ellie was set on an infant, and Jonathan was set on an older child.  We came home and discussed the process, Jonathan really felt lead to try to have a biological child one more time.  Prior to us even making an appointment, Ellie found out she was pregnant. 

We were elated to be welcoming another little one into our family, but were still seriously thinking about adoption as a way our family would live out being the hands and feet of the Lord.  We spent more time researching domestic foster care, and looking into international adoption.  When Isaac turned one, we started looking at waiting children profiles.  The Lord has graced our lives with various families that had walked the “waiting child” road before us that were inspiring us with their stories. 

We had some selfish motives at the start of the process, Noah really wanted a brother closer in age to him and remembered the losses we experienced and we thought it would be great for him to have a playmate.  We weren’t really open to very many special needs at all, and we really preferred a child that “looked” somewhat like our family.

The more we looked at profiles and learned about the countries.  The Lord demonstrated the great need for the orphans in the Ukraine.  We slowing started to have our perspective changed, we became more focused on providing for the needs of the orphans, and not so much about our families desires of convenience, ease and comfort.  As the Lord changed our perspectives, he also opened our hearts and minds to adopting a little one who may have some special needs.

We experienced a great deal of sickness as a family that delayed our ability to pursue the adoption in December, and during that time the political circumstance started to fall apart in the Ukraine.  We had significant concern over whether we would be able to safely travel, and began to pray diligently about whether the Lord wanted us to continue in the Ukraine or pursue another country.

The Lord answered our prayers by changing our minds about “what” we were pursuing, from a country and obedience, to the love of a child.  On January 27th I got a child profile in my inbox from China.  We talked briefly about adopting from China, but were dismissive as we didn't meet the requirements for the country.  Ellie really had a strong desire to look into it a little further, and after prayer we decided to contact the agency to see if China ever granted exceptions to their requirements.  We were told exceptions do happen, but we would need to fill out all the necessary paperwork, submit it to China and wait.  Just a couple days later, we got an exemption granted, went through our "conditional" list of special needs we would consider, and had the profile of YingHe (David) in our hands. 

The first day I saw him, I instantly feel in love.  I knew in my heart of hearts he would be our son, even though I knew nothing about him, and he didn’t meet any of the initial “criteria” of special needs that we set forth, but when we saw his face, none of that really mattered anymore.

The Lord was going to walk us through what true unconditional love looked like for our family and really allow us to experience a small piece of what loving like him really looks like.  Our mission was no longer adoption, but it was bringing home our son, Yinghe(David.)  Even with all the struggles that would come along with the journey, we cannot think of a better way to invest our time and love than in a child in need of a family