God placed adoption on my heart as a child. I had this idea that I could go into an orphanage in any city and just pick up a child and bring her home (yes, HER). Apparently I watched Annie a time or two as we all know orphanages don't exist in the U.S. Scott and I talked and prayed about adoption for ten long years. We didn't wake up one day and say, hey the cool thing to do is adopt, so how about we do that like... tomorrow! We talked about it extensively - we discussed adoption when the tsunami hit southeast Asia in 2004 taking the lives of over 200,000 people, we talked about it when the earthquake devastated Haiti in 2010 killing over 150,000 people and leaving countless children orphaned, we talked about it when people we knew were facing a crisis pregnancy. In April of 2012 we stepped forward in faith with plans to adopt a toddler girl from India. For several months we are filled with so much excitement about who she would be but God had other plans. Instead he sent a precious BABY BOY to us and I can't imagine a second of our lives without him. Before we even left India to bring Ryan home, Scott and I both knew we would soon adopt again and this time we would find our daughter. Nearly two years ago we started the process and six months ago we saw her sweet face for the first time. The daughter God told me would come our way from the womb of another mother, the daughter we officially started searching for when she was just eight months old, yet through a series of detours took a little longer to find, the daughter that's waiting for us so patiently. Please pray with us for a smooth and quick court process - for all the evidence to be ready and for sweet SJ to find favor with the judge and the advocates working on our behalf. She's been living in an orphanage for 4.5 years and while it's evident she's loved so very much, we are just anxious for her to be home with her family. Pray with us for God to continue to move in a supernatural way so that the only explanation for any of it is just simply HIM.
In other news, we have completed our SHOE DRIVE!! We collected 10,540 pairs of shoes and yesterday we loaded them all up in the truck sent by Angel Bins. The driver will come in the morning to take them all away (yaaayyyy!!) and I will finally be able to park in my garage again. :) We sincerely thank every person who helped us collect shoes by sharing info about our shoe drive, cleaning out closets upon closets and dropping bags of shoes on our porch, at our church and through friends. We couldn't have done it without your help and we are very grateful!
We had a pretty good system set in place and it only took about 3 hours to load and stack all the bags. Scott is a beast!
Donut break :)
He was convinced I could jump out of the truck into his arms. :)
Thank you all for supporting our family and thank you for praying with us while we wait for SJ to come home.
