Mountains

With Adoption comes paperwork.  And lots of it.  Forms and more forms.  For International Adoption you must create a Dossier.  This is a collection of legal and original documents.  It looked like a mountain.

And then there is the International Homestudy.  Let's not even go there.  Our local agency (who will go unnamed) was taking their own sweet time and kept giving us more and more to do before we could even get our final home visit.  They became like a thorn in our side, holding us back.  We needed this home study so that we could begin applying for grants to fund our adoption. And we needed to be approved for all 3 of the children we had since fallen in love with.  Another mountain.

Know this ... there is an enemy. And he hates it when Christian families follow God's will. He hates it when fatherless children are adopted into loving families and are raised up in the love of the Lord.

But God has His own plans ... In June, someone told me of a pastor and his wife who lived nearby, in Dillon, MT. who had adopted 2 girls from Ethiopia. They said, "You should call them." As part of our ongoing fundraiser we went to Dillon, MT and had a booth at the fair. While I was there, I tried to found them!  I spoke with Cyndi and she explained that her daughter, Becky lived in Dillon and she gave me her phone number. The more we spoke I realized this was a God thing. I began explaining to her the troubles we were having with our home study agency. Then she tells me this: She is the director of an Adoption agency!  No way!   Yeah ... that's what I said!  Our God is so awesome. She prayed with me and then said, if they did not approve us for our 3 children, then give her a call.

The next day, her Ethiopian daughter met us at the fair. She is now 23. When she walked through the crowd, my heart started pounding. I felt like I was meeting a member of my family for the very first time. Turns out she speaks Oromigna, the same dialect that our children do. God is so awesome. By the way, our Ethiopian children don't know any English!

Last week on Wednesday, we had our final home study visit. It was the day were all had been waiting for for over 9 months! This very nice lady came to our home. She was very pleasant and kind. But we could tell that she had already made up her mind before she entered the room. As she was leaving she said, "If you were only adopting one, I would not have a problem approving you. But since you want to adopt three, I will have to talk with my supervisor."  Mountain.

As soon as she left we raced to church. We arrived very late, but just in time for prayer.  Our faithful friends gathered around us and prayed.  Our pastor prayed with authority.  When we was finished he said, "Don't get discouraged."

Noah Webster describes discouraged as: "the absence of courage."  In the book of Joshua, we read over and over, "Be strong and very courageous."  We started an internet prayer chain.  We spent the next week fasting and praying for our 3 kids in Ethiopia.  By Monday we had had enough!  I called the agency and said you need to give us an answer ... today.  That evening they called and told us that they would approve us for not 1 but 2 children.  Mountain.