Our adoption story is a story about answering God's call and trusting in His faithfulness! When Jon and I met in 2008, in those early conversations as a couple, we talked about the desire to adopt and we knew that adoption would some day be a part of our story. We just weren't sure when. We have two biological children George (3) and Hadley (1). We knew our family wasn't "complete" just yet. The conversation about adoption started to happen again, but we figured that would happen further down the road. God had other plans in mind. Suddenly in May/June of 2016, we got this push to look into adoption. We started doing our research, even into the wee hours of the night, we were hungry for more and more knowledge on adoption. A fire was placed in our hearts. We had been praying a lot about adoption and if it was the right choice for us. We talked to others who had adopted, got recommendations on agencies and decided this was our time. We chose Africa because honestly that is just what we had always envisioned, a dark-skinned child (a boy in particular), and Ethiopia, more specifically, because of its rich history and great need for adoptions. We were told it would be about a year until a referral, and then another year after that until travel, so we felt like this was good timing for us since Hadley had just turned 1. God had other plans. We applied, started working on our home study and about 2 weeks later (end of July) we received an email from CHI about a 2 month old boy and asked if we wanted to hear more, and of course we said yes! We viewed his file and just knew that this was our baby from the moment we saw him. Tears streamed down my face as I said "that's our baby!" Our home study was rushed and we officially accepted Samuel's referral on September 9th! Samuel means "God has heard" and it couldn't be more fitting for our story. God heard our prayers indeed and answered in a HUGE way! We started this process hoping to fundraise/save for that year we thought we would be waiting on a referral and obviously that didn't happen, so that is why we need support! We are a single income family with a dream to adopt and we are making that a reality with your help and God's provisions!
