Grants
The question is, “How has God led you to adopt?”
This
question scares me. What if I don’t give the right answer. What if I don’t come
close to having an understandable answer. Let me tell you- I can talk better
than I can write, but it’s not about me. It is about God and what He has done.
So here it goes.
In June of 2017 our family of 3, Richard, Terri, and Erynne
were just an “average family” with no thought of adopting anyone. At the end of
June a friend of ours from church, Michele, was blessed to host two cute girls
from Ukraine. The church family was asked to donate clothes or anything to the
girls as they had come with only the clothes on their backs. I love kids and I
love shopping so I went out and purchased a few items for each of the
girls. I gave my donations to Michele
and thought that was it. Boy was I wrong! Later that same evening during youth group at
our church, my husband and I were serving food to the teens and the two hosted
girls, Nina and Katya come running into the kitchen and lay the biggest hugs on
me. I have never been hugged like that! It was their way of thanking me for the items
I bought for them. At that moment I wished I could bring them that happiness
for the rest of their lives.
God planted a seed that day. I shrugged it off as me being
an emotional person. You see I want to help everyone always. Well later that night after we were home from
Youth group my daughter, Erynne asked if we could talk. She said “Mom, Nina and
Katya need a family. Could we adopt them?” Can I just say my girl has a heart
as big as Texas! I cried, and cried and cried, not because I was sad, but
because God had already told me we would. I let Erynne know I would talk to Dad
and let her know what he said. I did not tell her that it was my desire to adopt
them and be their mom. That night I prayed. Not just a standard payer but an on
my knees fervent kind of prayer. The kind where you can’t really talk you just
cry your way through it prayer. I ask God to tell me what to do, how to
approach Richard and to use me any way He wanted. At that moment I was
completely His for the using. The next evening I spoke to Richard about the
girls and how sweet they were and how they needed a forever family and how we
could be their family. I was met with a very loud NO!! I calmly asked him to
have an open mind and to pray about it. He said he would and we left it at
that. Two days later I did bring it back up to him again. (In the mean time I
was doing research and asking questions to the host and the sponsor.) You ask
why would I research this after my husband said no. Well God had made it very
clear to me that we would be adopting these girls. It is now two day later and
I went to Richard again and asked if he had prayed about adopting Nina and
Katya. He said he had and the answer was still no. I asked why. He couldn’t
give me an answer. We talked I shared my prayers and “talks” with God and how I
whole heartedly believed this was God’s calling for him and me for us as a
family. He let his guard down a little and asked me to get some information
(which I already had, knowing he would ask for it). We talked a lot. Adoption
is expensive and we had no extra money. I asked if he would be okay talking to
our pastors about the possibility. He agreed. I asked him if his “no” was a
biblical reason or a selfish reason, he calmly said it was selfish. He said,”I hate change,” which I already
knew.
Well fast forward to August 17. Lots of praying, lots of meetings with
pastors and friends. Lots of conversations between Richard and me and many late
nights with Erynne talking about what it would mean for her. On August 17 we
went on our yearly camping weekend. The girls’ time was coming to an end here
in America and they would soon be on a plane back to Ukraine. The time was now
for Richard to make a decision. I had given him gobs and gobs of information. The morning of August 19th sitting around the
campfire together as a family, my sweet Erynne asked “Dad, could we please
adopt the girls?” Without hesitation (he knew it was coming), Richard said “YES,”
a big enthusiastic YES! I cried, but not for long. There were phone calls to be made!
I have to tell you there was a condition to adoption, that
God would provide all the money for said adoption. We had no savings and live
check to check like everyone else we know. We do save for retirement and we do
have life insurance so I figure we are ahead of the game, right?
On Monday, August 20th Erynne and I were in the
car with Nina and Katya. We were taking
them to Six Flags for some fun before the girls returned to Ukraine. Julia, the girls chaperone and friend called
us (Nina, Katya, Erynne and Me). Over speaker phone Julia asked the girls if
they would like us to adopt them. There was a scream from both of those girls
that let me know YES! The excitement in their young voices was amazing. This
was their dream! God was answering their prayer! Up until this point, they had
been praying with Michele every day for a forever family.
Since that time God has shown us so much
GRACE. We have had many fundraisers and
a GoFundMe page set up. We have had so many delays and so many miracles. God is faithful. He has provided us with a
new home with plenty of space and a wonderful support system. God has raised
$31,000 in just over a year for our adoption. We are so close to our goal. I don’t know if this is the answer you are
wanting. We are just obeying God’s calling for us. God is our rock and source
of strength.
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