A whilrwind weekend.

For the past seven years that Tricia and I have been married, we have often heard of children who were in need. Sometimes this was a physical need, sometimes spiritual, but what has captured our hearts so often have been children who need a home and a family. About two years ago, Tricia and I decided to start down the path of pursuing Adoption.

At any given time, there are about 150,000 kids in the United States that are in Foster Care waiting for adoptive parents. There is a particular need for parents who are willing and able to adopt older children. For every baby that is available for adoption, there are approximately 50 children over the age of five waiting for families. In light of that need, our desire was to adopt a child between the age of 5 and 10.

We had several interviews with several state agencies, and were fairly far into the process - about to get a home study done. Then, we stopped.

At the time, we realized that we really wanted to adopt a child, but we weren't 100% at the same place with it. There were other factors, but to make a very long story short, we decided to hold off on moving any farther forward. That was about a year ago. There really has been no movement, and very little conversation about it in the past year - though we think it's been in the back of our minds.

Yesterday, we received a call from Tricia's mother in Kansas. (This gets a little complicated, so please bear with me as I attempt to explain). Tricia's brother, Travis, had neighbors who have adopted three children. These neighbors are friends with Trish's mom (Doris), and she told them two years ago that we were moving towards adoption. His name is Ben. Ben is an investment advisor. One of his clients has a grand-daughter who is expecting a baby girl in May, and for various reasons has decided to give the baby up for adoption, but didn't know how to proceed. Ben referred her to an agency in Wichita. When Ben's wife heard about this situation, she said "We need to call Doris right now." So, yesterday, we get a call from Tricia's mother - completely out of the blue - telling us about this baby, and that Ben would like to introduce us to the birth mother, and see if it would be a good fit.

Wow.

Here's the deal. We've decided to move forward in faith, and see if this is something that God would have us do. We have not talked about this in a while, and we have not really ever considered adopting a baby. But, we feel that we need to pay attention. This situation found us - we were not looking for it at all. We don't know what will come out of this, but we want to see if God wants us to be a part of this.

We know of no greater way to display the love of Christ in a tangeable way than to provide a home for a child who may not otherwise have one. We are convinced of this. Hosea tells us that "Assyria shall not save us; we will not ride on horses; and we will say no more, ‘Our God,’ to the work of our hands. In you the orphan finds mercy.” James says that "Religion that is pure and undefiled before God, the Father, is this: to visit orphans and widows in their affliction, and to keep oneself unstained from the world."

Beyond that, we've been Adopted by God, and Jesus was even adopted by Joseph. Adoption is a part of God's plan, and it is at the core of the Gospel. This is not about us. It's not about a baby. It's not even about adoption - this is about God. This is about the spread of the Gospel to future generations.

I write this e-mail to ask for your prayers. Would you pray for us, that God would give us wisdom. Two months doesn't seem like a whole lot of time, but we know it's plenty of time for the God of the Universe to accomplish what he wants to accomplish. Would you pray that we would discern how we can best serve this situation -- that may or may not be adopting this baby. We don't know. Could you pray that we would come to a quick understanding of the process. At this point, we are also praying for the birth mother. Our prayer is that ultimately through this situation, she would see Christ for who he is. If nothing else, we'd like for a bunch of people to be praying for her.

At this point, there are three other couples that we know of who have been introduced to the birth mother. We'd like to ask you to pray for these couples too. Our prayer is that they would be encouraged through this process.

Please pray! Also, please feel free to ask us any questions you want. We want to be an open book. This is a very exciting, very scary, but faith-building time. This thing could go in any number of directions. We don't know what will happen, but we do have a God who does. We also know that there are several lives that may be forever altered in the next six weeks.