Promises Spoken-part 1

I am so thankful to finally be able to post this story.

Or at least the first part of it!

It has been almost two years in the making for us but yet planned before the beginning of time by God.

While we were in China adopting Jackson, Kurt and I both felt God beginning to speak to our hearts about adopting again. We had such a wonderful experience with Jackson's adoption and we knew that we wanted to come back to China.

Our friends that we traveled with while in China were all adopting older children...one family was adopting a 7 year old boy with a cleft lip/palate, another family was adopting a 4 almost 5 year old boy with limb differences and the third family was adopting a 4 year old girl that was deaf.

God was truly opening our eyes and hearts to older child adoption as well as opening our hearts to different special needs.

On Gotcha Day we sat and watched our new friends experience a heartbreaking Gotcha Day! We sat for 30 minutes fighting back tears for this little boy who was so scared! And fighting back tears for his new parents and little brother as they had to endure his pain and fear! All the while we were waiting in anticipation for Jackson to arrive. It was all the things you pray that you wouldn't have to experience. But God was in our midst. And God gently held this boy and transformed him before our eyes.

I am sure that all of us can say we haven't been without adoption struggles this past year and a half. But here we are, coming out on the other side.

OUR original plan was to begin pursuing another adoption after we had been home for 6 months. But we began to hear God whispering to us to be still and know.

I have to honestly say that I was having a difficult time "hearing" that or perhaps I was struggling to listen.

Thankfully God blessed me with a husband that I can fully trust. A husband that I know God is leading.

And so we waited.

Shortly after mid-October China began their new policy to allow families to begin adopting a second Special Needs child using the same dossier we had just used for Jackson.

And so we searched, and I obsessed! And Kurt waited. And Kurt was still.

Then we found out that our fingerprints had expired.  (We had no idea that you could file a free extention the first time)

And by then it was mid-January and we found out we would have to use our dossier by our Gotcha day (a few weeks away)  Meaning we would have to have found our daughter and submitted a Letter of Intent for Pre Approval to adopt.

But we had not found our daughter.

And so we were still.

Well, Kurt was still.

But, I...not so much!

Kurt called it an obsession.

I called it a Mama's heart longing to find her daughter.

A Mama hanging on to the promises that God had spoken to her many years before.

By now it was spring and we began searching for our daughter.

I can't begin to tell you how many files we poured over.

But it wasn't the same as it was with Jackson. When we saw him, we knew he was our son.

Our daughter was no where to be found.

At least not here.

And that's when China changed it's rules.

And God changed our hearts.

We hope you'll check back tomorrow (hopefully) to hear the rest of His story!