AMAZED

... is how I felt when I read this e-mail earlier today:

I have some good news for you. Our youth group at church recently held a thirty hour fast to earn money. They canvased the neighborhoods in town to get pledges and earned almost $3,000 dollars. They have chosen to donate the money to Operation Starfish.

To enable them to feel more a part of the process I gave them a list of our waiting families and a little bit about their adoption wishes....there were 8 families on the waiting list. They choose 3 families they wanted to support. Your family was one of those. So, along with the $500 Starfish has already given to you and the $1500 we have pledged to give, we will add a $1000 from the youth group. I hope that this $3000 total will be helpful in bringing your little one home.

I could hardly contain my excitement at this wonderful blessing from God, all the more so because (1) our $4500 agency fee is due, perhaps as soon as this week (our dossier is that close to being completely done and ready to be mailed to Haiti!) and (2) we have made a decision about the children we will adopt (Lord willing) and this seemed like such a confirmation of that decision!

I know I should not leave you hanging with that last sentence! Our decision was not an easy one. Upon learning that we would not be able to adopt the twins, we wondered if we should still adopt two children? or only one? Should they still be one boy and one girl? or two boys? Should they be infants? or toddlers? We talked about it and prayed about it and Pedro felt more comfortable requesting two boys, but we also wanted to be open to whoever needed us most. Several of the children whose profiles we reviewed had other families already interested in adopting them. Then, it was suggested to us by our agency that we consider adopting the 4-month old baby boy who had arrived suffering from starvation as well as a baby girl who was about to be born. Both of these babies had siblings/relatives adopted by two families in the States, very best friends who hoped the babies would have the chance to grow up together. We added these two to our list to consider and quickly felt confident about adopting the baby boy who so desperately needed a healthy home. Then, the day before Pedro's birthday, the newborn arrived. Only the newborn girl turned out to be a newborn boy ... and we chose to say yes to both of these babies. Not exactly twins, but very close! (Although for the record, that was not the deciding factor.)

So thank you to those who prayed with us about this decision. There is still much need of prayer. If there is one thing we have learned, it is that there are no guarantees with the Haitian adoption process and we are trying to pray diligently but hold loosely to these two sweet babies while we wait for confirmation that they will truly be ours in the end.

We serve an awesome GOD!