I can hardly believe I am typing these words.... but tonight, Aaron & I prayed about adopting from Taiwan during our wait for Selah and we both felt tremendous peace to pursue it!
As many of you are aware, the wait time for China has been creeping up every month. It is likely that we will not see little Selah's face for atleast 2 years if not more. Since we tried last January to pursue the adoption of the Indonesian girls and the adoption not working out, we have been awakened to a desire to have more than one daughter in our family....
This led me to begin searching other adoption routes and up until today, Aaron had not felt any peace pursuing other options I presented to him. In his heart and mine we have felt called to adopt from Asia partly due to my Asian heritage and just the desire God's given us.
About a week ago, I received an email from a family we know in Portland that has adopted 2 girls from China. They worked with an agency in Portland that very recently began working with Taiwan. She emailed me to ask me if I was interested in finding out more about their new program. So, I emailed to inquire about it and received the info in the mail after Thanksgiving in Portland. As I read through the information, it seemed we would qualify and that they would allow us to keep our dossier in China for Selah so I casually... almost jokingly approached Aaron and said "Do you want to adopt from Taiwan?" It has become somewhat of a joke around the house lately with me constantly asking him "Do you want to adopt from Guatemala?" or "Do you want to adopt from India?" So in the same manner, I approached him with Taiwan and to my surprise, he seemed somewhat interested... I thought he was joking so I asked if he was serious and he said "It's definitely more in line with the passion God's given us"... I still didn't really believe him so I began to tell him more details about the costs, timeframe, etc. and he grew more and more interested... lastnight, he asked me a few questions and asked me to ask the lady at the agency about it... one of the things he wanted me to ask was how long of a line there was currently for Taiwan... Knowing that they only accept 3 applicants at a time for Taiwan made us hesitant to start since we really didn't want to go on a long waiting list. So when I asked that questions, the agency told me we would be the 3rd applicant in line and they have increased the number of applicants to 4. This was good news to me because our homestudy would only require an update rather than the full study so we could easily have our homestudy done quickly. I also asked if we could request a girl and they said yes to that. I started to feel so much excitement over it and called Aaron and he said "Let's pray about it tonight" and then he said that he felt alot of excitement about it. That is so huge because Aaron is not one to make decisions on a whim and generally speaking, when he feels peace about something, it's a very good thing because he doesn't rely on his emotions on making decisions.... he's been very trustworthy to make decisions based on peace from God. So, when he came home tonight, he was ALL SMILES and I asked him if we were going to pray and he said OK and we did a quick prayer huddle.... He already felt God's peace about it and said he felt like it would be good to proceed! That was it! I had felt immense peace all day long and seriously felt like I could go either way with it and gave it up to God all day long... so I was feeling peace already too, but to have Aaron tell me he felt God's peace was BIG.
I am really excited because if everything goes well, we could have 2 girls from China... one would be from Taiwan and the other from mainland somewhere...they would share the same heritage and would have a common bond... I am also excited because Taiwan is an island south of China and it is directly EAST of Okinawa, Japan the island where I grew up . My entire family still lives in Okinawa and my sister travels to Taiwan often. She told me that it only takes about 2- 2-1/2 hrs plane ride from Okinawa to Taiwan. I have been wanting to visit my aging mother and for her to meet my children and this would give us a wonderful opportunity to do that...
So, tomorrow, we will send off our application to our Taiwan agency. Who knows what road this will take us, but I am excited. I want to remain in His rest during even this time of excitement.
God, thank You for Your mercy.... You are so faithful even when we're not, You are truly a miracle-working God. Thank You for leading us to this. Keep us on a tight leash so we don't get ahead of You. AMEN!
As many of you are aware, the wait time for China has been creeping up every month. It is likely that we will not see little Selah's face for atleast 2 years if not more. Since we tried last January to pursue the adoption of the Indonesian girls and the adoption not working out, we have been awakened to a desire to have more than one daughter in our family....
This led me to begin searching other adoption routes and up until today, Aaron had not felt any peace pursuing other options I presented to him. In his heart and mine we have felt called to adopt from Asia partly due to my Asian heritage and just the desire God's given us.
About a week ago, I received an email from a family we know in Portland that has adopted 2 girls from China. They worked with an agency in Portland that very recently began working with Taiwan. She emailed me to ask me if I was interested in finding out more about their new program. So, I emailed to inquire about it and received the info in the mail after Thanksgiving in Portland. As I read through the information, it seemed we would qualify and that they would allow us to keep our dossier in China for Selah so I casually... almost jokingly approached Aaron and said "Do you want to adopt from Taiwan?" It has become somewhat of a joke around the house lately with me constantly asking him "Do you want to adopt from Guatemala?" or "Do you want to adopt from India?" So in the same manner, I approached him with Taiwan and to my surprise, he seemed somewhat interested... I thought he was joking so I asked if he was serious and he said "It's definitely more in line with the passion God's given us"... I still didn't really believe him so I began to tell him more details about the costs, timeframe, etc. and he grew more and more interested... lastnight, he asked me a few questions and asked me to ask the lady at the agency about it... one of the things he wanted me to ask was how long of a line there was currently for Taiwan... Knowing that they only accept 3 applicants at a time for Taiwan made us hesitant to start since we really didn't want to go on a long waiting list. So when I asked that questions, the agency told me we would be the 3rd applicant in line and they have increased the number of applicants to 4. This was good news to me because our homestudy would only require an update rather than the full study so we could easily have our homestudy done quickly. I also asked if we could request a girl and they said yes to that. I started to feel so much excitement over it and called Aaron and he said "Let's pray about it tonight" and then he said that he felt alot of excitement about it. That is so huge because Aaron is not one to make decisions on a whim and generally speaking, when he feels peace about something, it's a very good thing because he doesn't rely on his emotions on making decisions.... he's been very trustworthy to make decisions based on peace from God. So, when he came home tonight, he was ALL SMILES and I asked him if we were going to pray and he said OK and we did a quick prayer huddle.... He already felt God's peace about it and said he felt like it would be good to proceed! That was it! I had felt immense peace all day long and seriously felt like I could go either way with it and gave it up to God all day long... so I was feeling peace already too, but to have Aaron tell me he felt God's peace was BIG.
I am really excited because if everything goes well, we could have 2 girls from China... one would be from Taiwan and the other from mainland somewhere...they would share the same heritage and would have a common bond... I am also excited because Taiwan is an island south of China and it is directly EAST of Okinawa, Japan the island where I grew up . My entire family still lives in Okinawa and my sister travels to Taiwan often. She told me that it only takes about 2- 2-1/2 hrs plane ride from Okinawa to Taiwan. I have been wanting to visit my aging mother and for her to meet my children and this would give us a wonderful opportunity to do that...
So, tomorrow, we will send off our application to our Taiwan agency. Who knows what road this will take us, but I am excited. I want to remain in His rest during even this time of excitement.
God, thank You for Your mercy.... You are so faithful even when we're not, You are truly a miracle-working God. Thank You for leading us to this. Keep us on a tight leash so we don't get ahead of You. AMEN!
Comments
We also have three boys and wish for a daughter to complete our family.You are very brave to do two adoptions and have 6 kids! I wish you luck and hope it works out for you.
Take care
This is so amazing...I am so happy for you! Let us know how it goes....
happy holidays,
Ashley LID 11/14/06 for China