The Journey

This adoption journey has been a very, very long process. Even after we knew we were called to adopt it took us several months to accept and process everything. It then took us a number of months to research and decide upon an adoption agency and a homestudy agency. We chose American World out of Brentwood as our homestudy agency. They were endorsed by ShowHope, an orphan awareness and fundraising organization started by Steven Curtis Chapman. We chose CCAI as our adoption agency because of their reputation and cost.

I guess it took about five months for our homestudy to be complete and then we began working on our Dossier which is a huge compilation of paperwork, signatures, and notaries. That took another four months. Once that made it to China we were officially logged into the system in September, 2013. After that it was pretty much a waiting game. We waited through Halloween, then Thanksgiving, then Christmas and the New Year. We waited through the Chinese New Year and Valentine's Day. Then five months from our log in date we finally found her! The very day in early March that we requested her file I had been told by a nice lady at our agency that our wait time might be another few months. But as fate would have it they listed a new file on the agency website that I just happened to notice soon after it was posted. I immediately emailed a request to view her file. I couldn't believe that we weren't matched to her to begin with. She met every criteria we initially specified. But the decision to accept her file came slowly. We prayed and analyzed and then prayed and analyzed some more. We finally concluded that this was another time when we just needed to take a leap of faith. So we said yes to Dang Can Can of Nanyang, China.

We are getting closer to bringing her home each day. It is looking like we will be traveling sometime in June, but that could change to sooner or later. We are at the mercy of the Chinese government which is not a comforting feeling. We would sincerely appreciate your prayer support as we near the end of the paperchase and the beginning of the travel leg of the journey.

A New Chapter

We have a running joke in our family that we could have our own reality show. It is pure chaos...not exaggerating one little bit. If we aren't going at Mach speed every. single. day. something is wrong. Don't get me wrong. I LOVE my crazy life!  I love being a mother and a wife. My one goal in life was to be a mother. I always knew I would have a house full of kids. But for some reason we stopped with three. Tubes Tied. Book closed. That ship sailed. I could have lived out the rest of my life content and happy with my three little blessings....or so I thought!

The older I get the closer I get to God. The closer I get to God the more I see him working in me. I can honestly say that adoption, at least international adoption, had never ever crossed my radar. Yet, at different times in my teaching career I have toyed with the idea of bringing home this child or that. I would come home and poor my heart out about the situations some of these children were in. We both agreed that our family had a lot to offer but it never went further than that.

Well, God just kept doing his thing. He worked in all of us exposing us to this person or that situation or this book or that website softening our hearts to the cause of the least of these, the fatherless. He created in us a desire to step out on faith and a desire for obedience. For his word commands that "Religion that God our Father accepts as pure and faultless is this: to look after orphans and widows in their distress and to keep oneself from being polluted by the world," James 1:27. So that is what we are going to do. We are going to 'look after' Logan Grace' Can Story. We are going to teach her what it means to belong to a family. We are going to teach her about Jesus so that she has a hope and future.

So, while I treasure and have loved every minute of the previous chapters of our story I can't wait to see what happens next.

Tammy