I don’t even know how to begin explaining the events of the last couple of weeks. I will begin with this past Thursday and then I can go back and feel you in on the details leading to Thursday. We received a call on Thursday afternoon from our home study provider. Of course, I was hoping she was calling to say our home study was ready but that was wishful thinking. Instead, she informed us that she would not approve us to adopt two unrelated children. Apparently, there have been a few families recently that adopted unrelated children that resulted in disrupted placements. Sadly, she has decided to generalize those situations to all families and will no longer be approving families to adopt older unrelated children. We do not agree with this decision. BUT after looking back at the events of the last couple of weeks we can see that God had other plans for our family. She did approve us to adopt a sibling group of children or a single child. We were also approved for a child with special needs. Unfortunately this means that we will not be able to adopt the two little girls we have been talking about, Hazab & Debora.

Now, let’s go back to the beginning of this adoption journey. About three months ago Darren & I started talking about adopting again. We have since the beginning felt God has continued to lead us to children with special needs. We began looking at the list of waiting children. There were several children on the list that were within the age range we were considering. The only children with special needs were children with HIV. We talked about all the options including sibling groups, two unrelated girls, girls that were HIV+. We chose Hazab and Debora because they were very malnourished and looked very sad. They touched our hearts.

God Incident #1
Shortly after we accepted the referrals for these two little girls we prepared a package for the girls. We mailed the package to a family who would be traveling soon and had agreed to deliver the package for us. Oddly, the mail was unable to make deliveries to their neighborhood that week due to flooding so the girls never received their package.

God Incident #2
We found out at the younger girl was thought to be HIV+.

God Incident #3
We received Hazap’s medical report which said she was 4 years old. We still don’t think that is correct but we thought we were adopting a child who was 7 years old. BIG Difference!!

God Incident #4
I know this is petty but I still think it is odd. Faith’s room is decorated in lady bugs. The entire room’s décor revolves around her bedding. So I went to order another bedding set for Debora’s bed and it had been discontinued. I had checked on the bedding just months ago and it was still available. ?????????????

OK back to Thursday night. After finding out that we would not be able to adopt Hazap & Debora as a pair we then had to decide who we would adopt. We decided we could not decide between the two of them. So we begin the review the list again. We spent Thursday night & Friday in prayer to consider each girl on the list.

God Incident #5
There was a little girl on the list who had been being seriously considered by a couple of families but no one had made a commitment to her.

It was apparent to both of us that there was only one girl for us. Her name is Elshadaye and she is almost 6 years old. She has big beautiful dark eyes and long shiny braided hair. Elshadaye is living with HIV.