Lance and Sonya received a Lifesong interest-free loan to bring their son home from China. And their story is nothing short of a miracle. In Lance’s words–

Our journey to adopt our youngest son began in an unexpected way.

In 2011, we were content as a family of five. We had been blessed by the birth of our two oldest children and brought our youngest home from China in 2009. Our family felt complete. But God had a different plan–a plan that took us on an amazing journey to bring home our son, Ezekiel, from China.

God’s Plan Revealed

On a June night in 2011, my wife, Sonya, had a dream. In this dream, she was sitting with our two sons and holding another little boy who, in this dream, was also our son. It’s difficult to describe how it was evident that this was more than just something she had dreamed. It was clear in Sonya’s heart that this was a revelation from God. The most beautiful part of her dream was that this child was given a name–Ezekiel.

In all of our past contemplation of baby names, we had never given any consideration to the name Ezekiel. God had a son for us, and He had been blessed with a name–a name that means “strength of God.”

Doubt and Confusion

This journey is very much a testimony of God’s grace and faithfulness in spite of our shortcomings. The mountaintop experience of the dream was quickly followed by a plunge into doubt and confusion. Sonya was certain that God meant for us to immediately adopt again.

There was a little boy on our adoption agency’s website who so resembled the child in her dream. It became a matter of urgency to Sonya that we pursue adopting him. I listened but did not feel God’s call to adopt at all. And so the wait for our son began in a very hard place.

Our journey moved forward in God’s timing, not ours. God used every moment of the years that passed to grow us and prepare us for our new son. In time, we came together as a couple in the certainty that another adoption was in our future. We waited together for God’s clear direction, and He began to reveal His plan into our hearts.

Unbeknownst to each other, God grew in each of us a clear understanding that our son’s Chinese name was Zi. Also, because we had always thought of our children’s birthday’s as having a sort of pattern–December 5th, January 5th, and May 2nd (the fifth month)–we fully expected God to use this pattern to reveal Himself as well.

Finding Zi

Six years and nine and a half months passed. Late on an April evening in 2018, Sonya couldn’t sleep, so she opened our adoption agency’s listing of hard-to-place children. There she saw the picture of a beautiful four-year-old boy named Zi who was born on November 5th. We both knew with stunning certainty–he was our son!

Our call to our agency to request Zi’s file resulted in a stunning blow. New State Department regulations meant that we could not have his file without a completed home study. We hadn’t even started a home study at that point. We were advised that it was unrealistic to try to pursue being matched with Zi and that a better approach would be to start our paperwork and wait to be matched with another child.

But we weren’t deterred and moved forward in faith, racing to secure our son’s file before it was returned to China. Even when the crushing information came that another family had Zi’s file and now had first rights to pursue his adoption, we were confident in God’s plan. In record time we completed our home study, and the other family decided not to pursue adopting Zi. He was ours!

For God’s Glory

God’s glory is always so beautifully displayed through adoption. Through the long months of paperwork and waiting, we felt His presence so clearly. Eight months after we first saw our son’s smile in a photo, we were in China holding him in our arms. We are so blessed!

God has continued to guide us and provide for our needs as we parent Ezekiel, who fits so beautifully into our family. He was meant to be our son, and God allowed us to see that from the beginning so that we would not be scared away by the unknowns of adopting a five-year-old with complex medical needs. Our son is a gift from the Lord–worth every moment we waited.

Pursuing Adoption?