My sisters and their families came to CA during Christmas-New Years. We haven't all been together in one place since Rebecca's wedding 3 years ago! Here are some shots from our family photo shoot. It went amazingly well with Ben just using a tri-pod and the camera on a timer!
Hello everyone! We are so excited to share with you all that we have decided to expand our family through adoption. Adopting was something we talked about before we were married and had agreed that we would be open to it in the future.
As Hudson's first birthday was approaching we made the decision that we do not feel a need to have another biological child but agreed that we have room in our family and hearts for more children. Then a few days before Christmas we had our first official talk that wasn't about "someday adopting" but rather, yea lets do this!
We began a ton of research and and had so many mixed emotions. We have such excitement and joy to be taking this step but as we learned more about the huge need to care for orphans both domestically and internationally our hearts began to ache. I mean, this need was known to us before, but after reading so many people's blogs and seeing their pictures, the need became personal to us. God is tugging at our hearts to take action. So, we are stepping out and we covet your prayers. We are still researching different adoption agencies and have decided we would like to adopt from Ethiopia (we will do another post on "why Ethiopia?" later). Of course God could totally change this but we feel confident that He already knows what child, born or unborn, will become a part of our family.
We ask that you would pray for us to be in the center of God's will during all of this as there is a lot of paperwork, decisions and waiting involved. If we began today, we likely be able to pick up our child in 12 to 18 months. We ask for prayer regarding our financing this adoption- that we would make wise decisions and that we would be patient with our saving for it. We likely won't be able to start any paperwork until we have saved a significant amount which may take us anywhere from 4-6+ months. We are currently wrestling with the urgency we feel in wanting to act today- that God has placed this on our hearts and we want to take action- but the reality is that we need to save to be able to begin the process and this could take some time.
We will leave you with a couple YouTube videos connected with one of the agencies we are looking into using called All God's Children International (AGIC).
This one is about their orphanage in Ethiopia called "Hannah's Hope"
This one is showing the journey of one family's adoption (they went through AGIC).
More words to come but we thought we would officially let our blog readers know of our hope for our next child.
