Following God's Direction

Hello All,

It has been a while since we have had any updates, but now we have some exciting news to share!

In May, we went to Cleveland for our annual Memorial Day adoption reunion weekend. This year we took 18 family members and friends with us and had a wonderful time! While there we learned that the wait period had increased to 4 years for a healthy child from China. While we were talking with the staff they began to explain the special needs program available through China. They told us China has developed a checklist of all the special needs conditions that are available, and they encourage each adoptive family to review this checklist and select only the special need(s) they feel they can handle.

Once home, Melissa and I began to pray and discuss the possibility of adopting a special needs child. Honestly it was a little scary and we still had a lot of questions, but we both felt like God had begun to move our hearts in that direction.

I contacted the agency and found the checklist on their website and printed it off. Then I took Melissa out to dinner and we looked over the list to see what the options were. After looking over the list we developed even more questions because there were several conditions we knew nothing about. Luckily, The International Adoption Center at Cincinnati Children's Hospital is just a phone call away! I called Robin and she said Dr. Mary Staat does a phone consultation to review the checklist with families prior to submitting it to their agencies. The cost would be $385 for this phone consultation.

We knew at that time we had used all the available funds in our adoption account in order to get the paperwork completed, to pay agency fees, and to send our dossier to China. We knew we had a container full of change from the bottles that had been returned back to us. So, we dumped all the coins into a bag and headed to the bank. Once there I began to place the coins in the change>depot and when we were done we were just shy of $500. The Lord never ceases to amaze us in how he always provides for us! Now we can schedule our consultation!






On August 2nd we set up this consultation with Dr. Staat and discussed in depth each condition, what care or treatment might be needed when we arrive home, and what the long term care would be like also. She was very gracious with her time and explanation of each condition, and answered our questions thoroughly! After our conversation with her Melissa and I sat down together and narrowed our list down. We began to pray and ask for God's guidance as we finalized the list.

On August 4th I faxed our checklist to the agency: We selected 11 conditions we felt we could handle. They asked me to give them a top three so they could find the best match for us. We decided on a Heart defect- minor in nature (i.e. hole in the heart), partial hearing loss or a missing/ deformed ear, and a missing limb (preferably an arm or a hand). We still will be getting a little girl and we selected an age range from birth to 18 months.

The agency told me on average the referrals for special needs children is obtained anywhere from 2 weeks to 5 months once they enter the information into the database. And traveling usually occurs about 4 months once a referral is accepted. As of August 5th we were already in the database and our agency is looking through all the available children to find our daughter!

We really have a peace about this decision and are excited to see which little girl the Lord places in our lives. We know everything is in the Lord's hands and that His timing will be perfect! We ask for your continued prayers as we wait patiently. We still have a lot of money to raise in a short amount of time to complete this adoption. However, we know God will provide our every need!

Thanks for following us on this incredible adventure and more updates will be forthcoming as were learn them.

Scott