August Adoption update

This time last month we were writing to inform everyone of the latest update in the saga that had become our adoption journey.  What started out as a night of VBS quickly turned into an emotional night with tears of joy spread over the faces of a circle of prayer in the church office.  The love and support we have received from our church has been incredible.  Kind words when you need them, prayers, financial support and more keep us going still today.

What we learned from that night and the week that followed is that the Army of God is undefeated.  During that week, the army was praying for a specific need we had within our family.  A need that Satan had his manipulative hands on and was trying to use to rob us of our joy.  Never before had the words of Matthew 10:34-36 been real in our lives.  Never before have we been so in tune with the will of God that Satan rears his ugly head and is obviously trying to impact what we are doing because of a conviction, a calling, a stirring, a whatever you call it, from God to adopt.  I know we are not all “called” to adopt a child, but we are all called to look after and take care of the orphan (James 1:27).  This need was met on the following Saturday we thought and we rejoiced that we had new support from a much needed area in our lives.  No names to be used to protect the various misinformed, out of touch, and non-supportive people in our lives.  There are multiple “christians” unfortunately in this category.

It is a scary feeling for us to be in the center of Gods will and see the work that Satan is doing to oppose it, but we are right where we need to be.  The scariest thing is when we think we are doing all this Godly stuff and we don’t see Satan at work opposing us.  Makes you wonder who we are working for, God or ourselves.  We pray that we get to the place in our Christian walks that the devil dreads every day that we wake up and head out the door.  Yes I saw it on a bumper sticker, t-shirt, etc…

So that brings us here to the third week in August.  I am still unemployed officially, though staying at home with a child is much more like a job than I imagined it would be.  Ryleigh is loving kindergarten and her teacher and the whole experience.  She became famous by having her picture on the cover of the back to school edition of our local paper.  Our adjustments to our new roles in life seem to be going smoothly.  I have done more laundry in the month of August than I have done in my whole life.  My brother always said I would make a good wife one day.  So as I sat down to take a break after putting Layla down for a nap, the phone rings and it is our agency.  (This being the second phone call within a week’s time.)  The first they needed a letter talking about various things such as the existence of Layla, who was not in our original paperwork, what we planned to do as far as travel and whatnot once we were able to retrieve Wiktoria and so on.  I figured this was another one of those phone calls.  Thankfully it wasn’t.  They said they had exciting news.  The Polish authorities had approved us to adopt Wiktoria!  This was the missing piece in our journey.  We accepted her, they accepted us, and now we have travel dates. 

In order to be home in time for a wedding, we are looking at travelling to Katowice, Poland on the 26^th of this month (1 week from today!), arriving on the 27^th and meetings with authorities on the 29th-31^st.  During this time we will also be visiting the orphanage and spending time with our newest child.  Please pray this goes well as it will be a scary time for her wondering why these weird people are looking at her crying, taking pictures and snotting all over the place.  Remember our girls we leave behind for a week.  Please pray for our travelling safety and health and that things with us and our new child go well.  Pray for how you can be part of ending the global orphan crisis.