The Story Thus Far...

After promising an adoption blog for many, many months, I am finally doing it! Many of you reading this have never heard how we got into the grand adventure of adoption, and hopefully this answers questions many of you have had about our process.

How did this all begin anyway? When I was pregnant with our second child, Trinity (aka Trina), I kept having very vivid dreams of an African-American baby boy, and each time I dreamt about him, I knew he was my son. Also during this time, I heard several radio broadcasts about adoption and caring for orphans. One of the broadcasts was an interview with a Christian singer named Sarah Groves. She said, "If God said in the Bible in the book of James that pure religion is to care for widows and orphans, I really think He means for us to actually do that." (Ironically enough, she later traveled to Rwanda and did some work there.) Those words struck me like an arrow. Adoption wasn't some abstract ideal that I should dream about someday doing. The seed was planted. Since we had just had a new baby, we were in no position to even think about adopting. I put it back on the "prayer shelf" and left it there for one year. Lots of things needed to come into place if we were going to pursue this dream.

Fast forward to July 2008. Have you ever felt like God's hand was in your back, pushing you forward? We were feeling it, but so uncertain of whether we should move forward in this monumental process. Both Justin and I knew that our next child should be brought into our family through adoption, but it seemed so expensive and so laborious. We had found the agency we wanted to work with, America World Adoption Association (AWAA; check them out at www.awaa.org) but didn't know where the money was going to come from. As I was praying about it, I felt like God told me that the money was the easiest part. He has unlimited resources! I had an idea to do a fundraiser that my mom and I had used when I was in junior high; cinnamon rolls. I started putting the word out that I was taking orders for cinnamon rolls. We said that we would start the process when we had raised $3,000, figuring that might take awhile! Two weeks later (yes, two weeks!) we had $3,000 in hand and were sending off the initial paperwork to the agency. Amazing! Since July, I have made almost 600 dozen cinnamon rolls (I'm still taking orders! :) ), we held a dinner and silent auction with our friends, the Lockwoods who recently adopted from China, and received a few large monetary donations from several individuals. God has provided so much!

Where are we in the process now? We have gone through the paperchase process, submitted our dossier (all the official adoption paperwork) to the Rwandan government, and been approved by them to adopt from the Home of Hope orphanage in Kigali, Rwanda. We are anxiously awaiting our referral any day. A referral is where we are matched with a child from that orphanage and receive a picture and information about him. We are requesting a boy, under one year of age. Hopefully, we'll be able to travel to Rwanda in July to bring him home!