Dec 2007/2008 and big news

I will never forget the fall of 2007. All four kids were in school fulltime and I was busy being involved in a teaching and training ministry a friend has - it was an amazing growing time for me as a person, but all fall I felt like there was something more - something more God wanted from me, something more. For sometime Scott and I had both been feeling God's call to the orphan and to Africa and we were looking for someway to take the kids and go help in a orphanage or something for a summer mission project, when all of a sudden God started saying things to us like you will have children from Africa. We went - huh??? are you kidding me. The kids are all in school and we can serve in so many more ways than before and besides we adopted once before - a teenager, don't you remember??? and then the floodgates of heaven opened over us and not a week went by that something didn't scream out at us ADOPT, AFRICA, ETHIOPIA, CARE FOR THE LEAST OF THESE, JAMES 1:27, JER29:11. Then the first Sunday of Advent arrived and our pastor preached on Mary and Joseph and on how God uses regular people who are brave enough to say YES, with out condition - Just YES to change the world. Well that was it for us we sat in a church service of 6000 people (yes it is a very large church) and felt like the whole sermon was being preached just to us. As if God orchastrated everything that morning to convice us that he could use us to do this thing - to change the world. We went home and that week asked 4 of our dearest friends to pray with us and we began our journey into the world of international adoption. At the Christmas eve service I clearly heard God say that by Christmas 2008 we would be home with our daughter - and don't you know what God says he will do he does. The word of the Lord doesnot return void. Fast foward to Dec of 2008 - the first Sunday of December we had Becca dedicated to the Lord that day in the same sanctuary, and God said I am not done with you yet. Which was okay with us because we had caught God's heart for the least of these - because we are the least of these. Each one of us is adopted into the family of God - each one of us is grafted in and we are honored to be able to walk down this road again as God and God alone brings another one home to our house - home to His house. Thank you Jesus - we can hardly wait to see the face of the child you have planned for our family.