Our journey began over 12 years ago when I had the opportunity to babysit a little girl who had recently been adopted from China. It was through this phone call, in a last minute search for a babysitter, that ultimately brought us to where we are today.
The funny thing is, for such a life changing event, I can't remember the name of the little girl I babysat or even the things I did to keep her occupied those few short hours. The only thing I recall was coming home with the dream to one day adopt a Chinese girl.
The twelve years since have been filled with school, marriage and 2 very lively boys that keep me running all day long. However, even during the busyness of life, we knew that our family wasn't complete. We always knew that one day, in a couple of years, we would embark on our journey to adopt our daughter.
That is until recently......
In retrospect, both Adam and I can see God's hand in all that has transpired over that last several months but at the time we were completely unaware of what He had in store for us. I was in the process of going through a bible study, taught by Beth Moore, called Stepping Up, a journey through the Psalms of ascent. This study (Psalm 120 - 134) not only showed the history of the ancient text and how it related to the Jewish people, but also how we can relate it to our lives today and come into greater faith through obedience and worship of God.
At the same time, Adam had been feeling like we needed to start prioritizing things in our lives. Previously we were waiting to adopt because of China's age requirements and other factors that we felt were prohibiting us from adopting. Out of the blue, he received an e-mail from an acquaintance asking about cycling. They met up one evening to hit the mountain bike trails and the subject of adoption came up. Adam learned that a few years earlier he and his wife had adopted a Eurasian girl from Russia. Once learning that we meet Russia's requirements and that there is a huge number of orphaned children in Russia, we prayed for direction and felt the Lord calling us to take this journey.
I knew in my heart that God was calling us to start our adoption, but I found myself asking God for clarity. A few days later, during the last session of my bible study we were asked to find the 3 most profound things God had revealed to us (there were 15 total, 1 for each chapter). My eyes fell upon this revelation: Through me, God will reap a harvest of joy. At that moment, I knew God's will. He has given us the opportunity to bring our daughter out of the bleak orphanage that surrounds her and give her joy for the first time in her life.
This is proving to be a huge financial and emotional journey for us. We have little to no control over this process and we are having to give it completely over the the Lord. Our comfort continues to be the words God gave us over 2 months ago when we asked him to provide for every need this adoption brings. His words were, "I will, I AM.

Where we are at today...
All of the paperwork for our homestudy has been completed. We will meet with our caseworker two more times to complete the required interviews. Once that is finished (hopefully within the next two weeks), we start working with our international adoption agency. We will be sure to keep our blog up to date with the latest on our adoption and God's faithfulness.