When the Surprise Is a Son by Saturday | Family Friday
While still living in Guatemala as missionaries, we felt a clear call to return to the U.S. to pursue adoption.
After arriving home, we began our home study in June of 2015. I remember asking our worker about the timeline. She commented that no later than October, she would have our study completed. I remember thinking, “Wow! As early as October, we need to be ready.” However, with our first adoption taking about 2 years, I didn’t really think anything would happen that quickly.
You can imagine my surprise, getting a call from our worker on a Tuesday, just weeks after the home study was done, asking if we would consider an emergency placement of a 3 year old boy, who needed a home by Saturday!
We needed to decide if we wanted our profile to be presented to the birth mom THAT night! Then, if she selected us, we would meet her on Thursday, then meet our son! We prayed, sought counsel, and proceeded forward. That night we got a call that she had chosen us from 5 profiles. Two days later, we drove more than 2 hours one way to meet the birth mom and then our son. I returned the following day (Friday) for a second play date, and on Saturday morning we picked him up with all he owned and drove him home! Yes, it went that quickly.
The transition to our family has gone fairly smoothly, as we had experience with adopting children who had been through trauma. It is not easy, but by the Grace of God and some training on trust-based parenting and parenting children from trauma backgrounds, we have learned to parent in a different way that we parented our first children born to us.
How God provided in a marvelous way
In addition to taking on another child, we took on thousands of dollars of fees associated with the adoption. We were not prepared for this, as we had just returned home from being missionaries. We did not have any money in savings. In addition, we thought we would have time to save, fundraise, etc. However, shortly after our son arrived, the bills began arriving…
We felt blessed to be granted a Lifesong matching grant, which allowed family and friends, and a church fundraiser to be matched for the benefit of our adoption. We were blessed to be matched with a church in Wisconsin that had an adoption ministry. Our hope is to create an adoption ministry in our church/community one day that will be able to also assist others who wish to adopt.
God has truly been our Jehovah Jireh–our provider–as He provided for all we needed to bring Liam home. We are thankful and grateful to you for your part in helping us raise the needed funds.
Thank you for sharing your story of God’s provision! And thank you for opening your arms and home to a child who needed a family in such a short time. We look forward to hearing how God continues to meet needs for your family, and we suspect God has big plans for little Liam!
Be God’s answer to a family’s prayer.
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