This is the Lord's Doing . . . .

. . . and it is marvelous in our eyes!   Psalm 118:23

One week ago today, the treasure hunt our family had been on since we started our adoption process back in October, took a very miraculous and marvelous turn!   What we thought at first was a trying detour on our long journey, ended up being a beautiful, scenic tour of our Lord’s amazing awesomeness!

What just happened to our family is so wonderful, it is dream-like!   Truly our dream-come-true!  I can hardly even think of words to describe just how marvelous what God has done really is.  But I want so much to somehow declare how indescribably good and gracious God has been to us.   I am sure many of you have experienced this “speechlessness” over amazing things God has done in your lives!  We’d really love to hear your testimonies, of how you “tell of His wonders” in your lives!! 

So, as you all know, our family felt led by the Lord to adopt again, and began the process back in October.  We started our international home study in mid-November, and it all went very well up until we received the finished first draft of it on January 10^th.  Since then, we have been experiencing a very unusual delay in getting it finalized.   It has been quite unsettling, but a perfect opportunity to practice patience and “being still and knowing that He is God.”  (We still have not heard back from either of the agencies that we have been working with.  It seems to have come to a complete standstill.)

That same Thursday night when we received the first draft of the home study, Ted sent an email to our adoption agency in Colorado stating that there was something that appeared in our home study that was not accurate or truthful, and that he wanted it to be re-written to reflect our true, Biblical beliefs/practices.  This was the beginning of quite a stressful and delicate situation!  On Monday morning, while we waited anxiously for a response from our adoption agency, we received an email instead, out-of-the-blue, from Benjamin’s very special social worker, responding to an email I sent to her in December.   This meant a lot to us, as we felt like the timing of her email was an encouragement from the Lord to “remember” all the miraculous things HE had done for us in our process with Benjamin.  

As we all prayed and waited on the Lord for this situation to be resolved, He was indeed answering and working all things together for good!  Back in October, our 3-year foster license was due to expire, and we got a call from our foster licensor asking us to PLEASE consider renewing it.  We told him that we would like to keep it current, so we did the few things we needed to do.  He told us that he would not be able to get out to our house for the home visit until January, but not to worry, that we would still be licensed during this time.  So, that was our plan, until we decided to adopt internationally, and I emailed him to let him know.  (This would definitely put us over our limit to be able to take in a foster child.)  When we did not receive an email back from him, or a call in January, we assumed this meant that he figured it would not be prudent for him to come out and renew our license.

Then, week before last, we received a call from him asking if he could come out in the next week or two for a home visit.  We were excited, as we still felt like it was a good idea to keep all our options open for orphan care.    So we talked about several possible dates and times that would work for all of us, and we landed on last Wednesday at noon.   He showed up right on time, and we dove in to our interview with him.  Around 12:32 : -), right at the time we were discussing that we would always want to be able to welcome any biological siblings of Benjamin’s into our family, the phone rang.

We decided not to answer it at the time, as we were all right in the middle of the interview, so we let it go to the answering service.  But about  30 minutes later, as we were walking around the house with Shane, Valerie picked up the message and ran upstairs saying, “You’re not going to believe this . . . ”   It was a social worker letting us know that Benjamin had a sister born a week prior, and asking if we would be willing to take her!  :-) 

What are the odds of such timing?  Only God could arrange the timing like that!  I wish we could have had that moment on video, when we were frantically trying to dial all the numbers on our phone to hear the message.  When we finally were able to get all the digits right to pick up the message, and listen to the social worker tell us this news on speaker phone, all our mouths dropped wide open.  Shane then began packing up his things and said he needed to get back to the office right away to write up our updated home study.  : -)  The funny thing is, Shane had told us back in October that a foster license is not mandatory to be able to take in a biological sibling, so it is not absolutely necessary in this case.  But we believe the Lord used this providential timing of the home visit and phone call to reveal His perfect plan in a very special way, and let us (and Shane) know that HE is truly directing all our steps. 

So the social worker told us that there would be a hearing the next morning, and after that, she would be calling us with more details.  We waited anxiously for her next call, which came at around 1:00pm the next day, saying that she would be placed with us and we began making arrangements to pick her up from her temporary foster home, which we did on Friday morning.

Now the process begins of waiting on the Lord for His perfect will and timing in her adoption.   And we’re not sure what will become of our international adoption process.   We’ll be seeking the Lord on that too!

"O Lord, you are my God;

I will exalt you and praise your name,

for in perfect faithfulness

you have done marvelous things,

things planned long ago."

Isaiah 25:1