That Your Hand Would Be With Us

. . . that Your hand would be with me . . . I Chron 4

Five months ago we fell in love with a precious little baby in the country of Colombia.  No, not South Carolina, but South America.  For five months we worked hard to bring her home, but through tears and prayer we made the decision to not continue that pursuit. 

As we were drawing to the end of that endeavor, moving on emotionally as we made the decision to move on literally, we became aware of a sibling group of girls in the DRCongo.  They are beautiful little girls ages 4, 3 and 2 whose mother is deceased and whose father relinquished them because he is in the military and can no longer take care of them.  That had to be an agonizing decision, but the most amazing display of sacrificial love.  His request before he left was to have the girls adopted by a "foreign family" to get them out of the country and ravages of the African World War which is being waged all around them.  I cried when I found this out, and so did Jode.  His father's heart was broken.  After reading their back ground story and reviewing their medical reports, we said yes, we would like to pursue them so with a vengeance we have been.  Much of our home study was complete and will be in the next week.  Our dossier had already begun for Colombia and with DRCongo not being part of the Hague Convention, we should be able to move forward quickly.  We finally feel like we're making headway and we feel like God is showing us in His way that this is the way.  His hand is with us and it seems that with each step he keeps saying more and more "yes, but do you really trust Me?"  One little Latina, to three African daughters and then came Thursday night. 

Thursday night I received an apologetic email from our agency saying the biological father came in that day and relinquished his son as well.  Of course I sat there with my mouth open thinking "REALLY!?"  She asked if we would be interested and I said we would be interested in knowing more about him.  He's a handsome thing.  At 6 years old he would be older than Flora, which is something we have tried to avoid, but then we had not considered adopting a boy either.  So there is much to consider.  The bio father's instructions were that should the children need to be split up, they could adopt them out two and two.  At first I though, ok, we can just adopt the younger two but then, it horrifies me to think they would never see each other again.  Jode and Jane felt the same way.  No final decisions have been made, but we're leaning that way.  Of course his medicals will have to be reviewed.  We decided not to adopt a child with special needs if we are going to have a big family.  So much . . .  so much to be considered.  

And so we continue to pray for wisdom, for favor and of course we continue with the mounds of paperwork, but at least now we are making progress.

Thank you, Father, that as You bless us and expand our territory, You will also ever be with us to guide us through that which you've called us to do.