Last fall, Chad and I had decided we wanted to adopt another boy from India. We love the Indian culture, we qualified for the program, we prayed about it and really felt God leading us that way. However, that wasn't God's timing because we had some other commitments that had been made prior to that decision that we later found out would legally keep us from adopting during that season of our lives. So, we pushed on another "door", so to speak.
Last December, We started the process to become a safe family and minister to the local children in our area. We also saw that our agency, Dillon International, had opened a new adoption program in Nepal and we would qualify for the program in 2011. So, we saw this as an open door to walk through, and added ourselves to the list for 2011.
Last spring, We took in several children through the Safe Families program. During some of my free time, I would peruse the India waiting children lists. We also kept reading the adoption alerts for Nepal and knew in our hearts that probably wasn't going to be the program for us.
In May, Chad and I came accrossed Sarah's waiting child profile online. I knew in my heart, and told Chad that next day, that she was our daughter chosen by God for us. Keeping the emotions at bay, we did our research about her conditions, talked to a pediatrician, specialists, other families, etc. After lots of praying, we both decided to move forward with her application and remove ourselves from the Nepal list. The next week, we received notice that Nepalesse adoptions were going to cease and a month later, our agency closed their program.
In June, We started our application and her application was put on hold for us. We decided, almost right away, that we would name our daughter Sarah. Her hindu name is Rukmini. In Hinduism, Rukmini is a princess, daughter of the king of Vidarbha. Rukmini is also considered to be the incarnation of the goddess of fortune. However, we know that our daughter is a princess of the KING OF KINGS and LORD OF LORDS, JESUS CHRIST. To honor our heavenly king, we decided to rename her Sarah. In Hebrew her names means "princess".
Since we first started the process, God has just poured on the blessings. Here's a few...
- Our homestudy only took 3 weeks!! Yep, 3 WEEKS!
- Sarah has had no complications with her heart condition. As far as we see, everything has been normal for her.
- Our IL state approval took 6 weeks less time than expected.
- The Indian adoption process has been undergoing several changes the past several months. As of now, our timeline has been almost completely unaffected by it.
- God has provided for our every financial need to fund the adoption thus far. We believe He will continue to do so.
- Sarah seems to be developing physically like we would expect any other 12 month old.
- There's been some hiccups and complications with paper work, etc but our Lord is sufficient and has comforted us when we needed it.
- We have a closet full of cute girl clothes from hang-me downs to garage sale finds too!
We are continously giving God ALL the GLORY!
"that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father. "
Philippians 2:10-11
