Big Big Changes

I am sorry I have been a little absent the last week or so.  We have recently had some very big changes in our lives in the last week, so we have been very busy trying to get a grasp on life and what is to come.  If you are not sitting down, you might want to...

We are adopting a baby boy, born February 23 near Fort Wayne and he will be joining our family THIS WEEK.  We have named him Machiah Samuel.  Here is the story...

A week ago this past Friday (so about 10 days ago), I was talking with Nate's mom on the phone.  She told me that a pastor friend of Steve's (Nate's dad), contacted him about a family who was looking to place their 3 week old grandchild for adoption.  This pastor friend has known about us through Steve and thought of us for this baby and family. Obviously, we were not on the road to domestic adoption but God had been preparing our hearts for this, and oddly enough, I had just mentioned to my friend the previous Wednesday that we would be open to domestic if God lead us there.  So, I immediately called Nate and told him the information his mom had told me.  We talked about it briefly and decided we would at least get more details and decide from there.  We contacted a lawyer to get more information on how we should proceed and he recommended that we go ahead and meet the birth family.  So, by Sunday afternoon, we were sitting in a coffee shop meeting the birthmother and grandmother.  I was very nervous prior to the meeting, but as soon as the family got there, I felt complete peace and the meeting went as well as we could have hoped.  They told us that they would let us know by Tuesday if they wanted to proceed.  In the meantime, we had been doing a lot of praying and thinking about whether this was right for our family.  We really felt a lot of peace given the situation, and we knew that the few people that knew were praying hard for discernment, wisdom, and God's complete direction in this situation.  We felt (and feel) God's peace and decided that if this family wanted to move forward, we would love this child and welcome him as our son.  After an agonizing two days, the family called on Tuesday to let us know they wanted to move forward.  Wow. Wow.  We had gone from five days prior not having any inkling or plan of adding a child in the *near* future except through whatever would happen with our Ethiopian adoption to planning to have a child in our home within a week! Our God is a big God who is not surprised by anything.  Through this whole thing, my heart just kept praying TRUST God. We trust God that this was in His plan and this is His perfect timing.

So, here we are.  We are currently waiting on all of the papers to be signed, and we think Machiah will be in our home hopefully by tomorrow.  Prior to this, we have kept things very quiet and had told only our immediate family in case things didn't work out.  However, we feel confident at this point that things are going to go through as we have been hoping this past week and wanted to share this news with those we haven't been able to tell personally.  We really appreciate all of your support and prayers.  We know we have some very big adjustments and transitions to go through in the following days and weeks, so we would appreciate your continued prayers.

I know this leaves a lot of questions in the air about our Ethiopian adoption, and I will address those at another time.  For now, I will say we still plan to adopt again from Ethiopia, but the time frame, obviously, will be a little different.

Levi is going to be a Big Brother!!

PS. Please do not re-post this on Facebook. Due to the situation, we will be limiting information on Facebook for awhile.