This is the beginning of our journey to adopt. We have already been blessed with five children of our own. We have Rebecca (9), Daniel (7), Joel (4), Ethan (2) and one due in about three weeks. Six weeks ago, adoption was the furthest thing from my mind. I had always thought that if we were to adopt we would get a baby. But that just didn't excite me. So since I had no passion for it, I figured that we just were not called to adoption. I discredited the idea of bringing older children into our home, because their history probably would not be that great. And I didn't want to endanger our existing children. But God started opening my heart to it back in May and he didn't relent. He gave us this crazy idea to adopt older children that set my heart on fire until I could do nothing but say yes to his plan. After a late night talk, Matthew and I agreed to pursue foster-adoption and see how far God wants us to go with it.
We decided to go through Koinonia Family Services. (www.kfh.org) They are a faith based organization who acts as a middle man between us and the state foster care program. We have heard only good things about them through our church. So we knew this would be the way to go. The director of adoption services with Koinonia goes to our church. So I put a call in to him and he was very encouraging to me that as we take each step in obedience to God, he will open and close the doors as he wills. So we sent in our application and began the wait for them to process it.
Over the next week, I went from being excited to terrified to excited again about this new journey we are on. But God is so good to reassure us of our path. One week after I had sent in the application, I was at a birthday party. While I was there, I met a couple who had adopted their two year old son. Not only that, but they are actually the first couple to have ever adopted through Koinonia! You see, Koinonia used to be a foster care agency only. About two years ago, they added adoption services to their program and this family was the first one to complete an adoption through them. I once again was amazed at how God was confirming his desire for us to pursue this. I went away from the birthday party with a new excitement.
Since then, I have been able to talk to the person who will be coordinating our foster placement. She is coming to our house the 10th of July to do an initial assessment of the home and what we will need to do to make it ready for a foster child. We know there are things like having all medicines, cleaning supplies, yard chemicals and paint locked up. And we'll find out what else we need to do at that meeting. We also are going to be attending our first class, which is a foster care orientation class on July 12th. So we are very excited to see this dream moving forward.
We are not sure where the money we need for all this will come from. The fees alone for various classes and paperwork total $740. We need $570 of this pretty quick. However, we have been able to come up with about $320 of it so far. And God is the one who came up with this whole idea in the first place. So if he wants it to happen, he will provide what we need when we need it.
We also need a bigger vehicle. We could technically take on one foster child with our current van. Our family would just have to take two cars places if we were to all go somewhere together. But we're really hoping for two children, a sibling pair. So a bigger van seems pretty important. I have found that we could get a used van pool van from Enterprise for about $15,000. I have NO idea where we're going to get that money from. But again, God will show us the way as he sees fit. So I'm more excited to see how God intends to show his glory than worried about it happening. Who knows but that someone has a van sitting there waiting to give it to us? :)
I am going to be spending the next two weeks working like crazy to get as much paperwork as I can done before our first walk through. But if anything interesting happens, I'll be sure to post it. Please, pray for us as we are not only preparing for the birth of our new baby, but also the birth of a new dream.
