Andrew's Story

As many of you know, we have started the adoption process again, this time for our 6 year old son.  He will be our 6th child.  Six children.  Six.  Seriously, we only planned to have 3.  I guess the important words there are "we planned".  God had something completely different in mind.  He had a different idea of what our family was going to look like.   He brought Evan into our lives as a surprise blessing - and I can't imagine what my life would be without him, he's such an amazing kid.

After Evan, we made sure there were no more surprises.
Go ahead, laugh now.

You can read how Grace was brought into our family HERE

About a year after we brought Grace home, I started to feel it.  I don't think there's a name for it - but it's that feeling that you have another child "out there", another child with your name on them, another child that has a part of your heart.  God impressed on me that we had an older child waiting for us, and it was another son.  I was ready to hop a plane - my husband wasn't.  Finances weren't there.  His job had a possibility of not being there either.  We were tired.  Life was full.
I prayed that God would bring Alan around quickly - and God again impressed on me that He had it under control and when it was time, Alan would know.  So I decided to be quiet.  Not nag, not pester, not hint - just be quiet and let God do His thing.  And man, was that hard.

In November of last year I was perusing some agency lists - looking for "him" (and torturing myself).  As I usually do, I got distracted, walked away from the computer and didn't close out what I was looking at.  When Alan sat down at the computer after I had left the room, he saw a little 5 year old boy with a heart condition on an agency website.  The dam broke.  It wasn't our child - but we were on our way.

At the end of November, Alan found out that his job was safe, and in the middle of December we applied to the agency that helped us bring Grace home.  I had looked at their Waiting Child listing and no one popped out at me, so I figured we were in for a wait.  When we got the phone call that we had been approved, the coordinator asked if I had seen the agency list and if I had noticed a particular child.  I had noticed the child that she mentioned, but nothing had jumped out at me.  I decided to look again and send Alan the link at the same time when he was at work.

When I went back to the agency list - I noticed the child that was recommended, but as I scrolled down the page, another little guy caught my eye. This little boy's photo was not there when I looked at the site  a couple of days before!!   I called Alan, and he was looking and the same little guy caught his eye too.  We mulled, we prayed, we looked.  Finally we decided that we wanted to see his file.  Turned out, he is in the same province that Grace is from.  Turned out his special need is completely corrected. Tuned out his birthday falls exactly 3 years between Evan and Grace, making all 6 of our children 3 years apart in age. We prayed some more, and this little guy took root in our hearts.  We decided to lock his file and start the paper chase on Jan 20.

January 20, 2010.  On February 11, 2010 it was announced that the CC*A requested that all agency specific files for waiting children that were not under review or locked be returned to China so all of the files could go into the shared list program.   Three weeks.  If we had waited three weeks, we would have missed him.  We would have missed our boy.  But God didn't miss him.  God knew that little window existed and moved in that time to start bringing that child home to his family.  Wow.  God's attention to detail just never ceases to amaze me.

He hand picked this child for us.  And us for him (poor kid!!) - again.

We can't wait to see how the rest of the journey unfolds....