Our Story...so far.

Quite a few people have asked us what made us decide to adopt.  That is a simple and complex question to answer all at the same time.  We definitely think it's an important question.  Here's our best attempt to answer.

The simple answer: God called us to do this.

The complex answer is only complex because there's not really one single compelling reason.  It's more a jumble of various good reasons.  First of all, we can remember discussing our future family plans before we were married.  Both of us remember saying that we wanted a big family.  Second, Mary has high-blood pressure and any future pregnancies would be harder on her body.  We have been blessed to have 3 pregnancies without any major complications but, while we are still able to have biological children, future pregnancies will be riskier.  Third, adoption has always had some appeal and we had been tossing around the idea for awhile.  Finally, we have taken God's admonishment, found in the Bible, to care for orphans seriously.  We strongly feel that the way that God wants us to care for orphans is through adoption.

The moment of truth came last August (2009) at Collegiate Week in Glorieta, NM.  Tony Merida, a guy we went to seminary with, was speaking one night about adoption.  He was comparing physical adoption of a child with God's spiritual adoption of us.  Woven throughout was the story of he and his wife adopting 4 children from Ukraine.  God was clearly speaking to both of us.  On the way to pick up our boys from childcare, we looked at each other and said, "So, how many children are we going to adopt?"  We have been slowly but surely moving forward through the process.

We finally completed our application during the Christmas break.  We are using an agency in Birmingham, AL.  One of the big decisions we had to make was domestic adoption vs. international adoption.  We intially felt led toward international adoption and began researching various counties' requirements.  We felt very limited regarding our choices and knew that the cost and in-country visit requirements would be very difficult, espcially having to coordinate care for our 3 boys while one or both of us would have to be out of the country.  We began researching domestic adoption and decided on this path.

We then had  our initial interview with the agency, our application was approved, and we began our home study.  We just completed our home visits for our home study.  While our social worker was visiting us, she mentioned some information she had learned about adopting from Ethiopia. This sparked a curiosity in us, IMMEDIATELY.   For a couple of weeks, we wrestled again with the domestic v. international question.  We are now back to our original journey toward international adoption--probably from Uganda. 

There are still more questions than answers in our lives and we know that there is still a long way to go.  We are confident that since God has placed this call in our lives, He will be faithful to work out all the logistics in His timing.  Please pray for us as we continue on this long and winding adventure....and check back in often!