The BIG News!!

We'd like to catch you up on what has been going on in our lives lately. In October of last year, Susan and I began to consider the blessings of adoption. We are now at a point where we need to share the news and give you a little history on our story.

We began praying, discussing, and researching adoption at that point. In Early march, still uncertain if adoption was right for us, we went to an adoption seminar to get better acquainted with the adoption process. After that, Susan and I felt an even stronger pull at our hearts to adopt.

It became clear that the first major decision was which country. We prayed for guidance and continued our research. The internet has an overwhelming amount of information about adoption. Through this and the information gathered at the seminar, we realized that there is no shortage of people waiting to be chosen by birth mothers to parent healthy, home-grown babies. The US foster care system is not an acceptable risk for us right now due to the uncertainty of keeping the child placed with our family, health issues (mental and physical), and visitation rights of the child's parents. We were feeling strongly drawn to international adoption. We really want to adopt a child who is truly an orphan, and whose life would possibly be saved by adoption.

One night after lots of research and while listening to the Daily Audio Bible podcast, Susan prayed that God would reveal something to her in His word the next day. We were both feeling some frustration that with we knew about adoption we still didn't know where or IF we should adopt.

The next day, April 18, Susan was listening to the Bible podcast when the word "Ethiopia" caught her attention. She was startled back from the distractions and listened again to the passage from Psalms 87 which mentioned Ethiopia. Then she re-played the reading from the New Testament which was from Luke. It was Jesus telling the parable of the talents. A king goes on a journey and leaves money (talents) with his servants. One servant invested the ten talents and got ten more. The servant with five talents invested and made five more. The servant with one talent buried it and made no money. When the king returned, he praised the first two and cursed the third for not even earning interest on the one talent. (Luke 19:1-27)

When Susan and I discussed this, it was clear to both of us that God was speaking clearly to us through His word. To us, the story of the talents confirmed that we should invest in God's kingdom by adopting someone. The reference to Ethiopia was more than a coincidence. In other translations, Ethiopia is called "Kush." While other countries like China, Haiti, Korea, and even the United States do not appear anywhere in the Bible, we knew that God used the Bible podcast to speak to us. It's touching, scary, and exciting to get such clear direction for the Lord.

We have been accepted by America Word Adoption Associates into their Ethiopia program as of Thursday, May 3, 2007!

Our hope is that you will support and pray for us as we add to our family through adoption, and that your life will be blessed from this also!

Love, William & Susan