We're Adopting!

We are so excited to officially announce that we are adopting!!!  We have prayed about this for many years and know that God has called our family to this. 

We chose the name of this blog "Love's Ripple Effect" because we know that in our lives that God's love ripples into everything.  We know how to love because He first loved us.  We want nothing more than to be like Christ.  We strive for this.  We know that God's love for orphans is evident throughout scripture.  We see His heart.  We pray for our heart to be like His.

Eric and I always knew that we wanted to adopt.  But over the past couple of years, God has shown us that He has called our family to this.  When I first started volunteering with Starfish Orphan Ministry in Paducah, KY I had no idea how much my life would change.  My first trip to El Salvador working with orphans was amazing.  There is really no way that I can describe it.  God spoke to me everyday.  When I came home, I couldn't talk about the trip without crying.  Everytime I closed my eyes I could see a face of a child or hear their voice.  David Platt makes a statement in his book Radical that basically says it is easy to talk about orphans and think about them and even easier to ignore them until you see their face and know their name.  (I wish I had the exact quote.)  But he is totally right.  It was easy for Eric and I to talk about adopting and then do nothing in return until I saw their precious faces.  It was easy until I held them in my arms.  It was easy until I got to love on them.

After that experience, it no longer was easy just to talk about.  We knew that we had to act.  So, we started praying and asking God to show us where to adopt from. There are 147 million orphans in the world.  How could you just pick?  Well, we believe you can't.  We believe that God knew before any of us were created that we would one day be a family. 

So, through praying, God lead us to a country in Africa called the Democratic Republic of the Congo (Congo for short).  It is a country that has been through a lot to put it simply. (I will share more details in another post) There are five million orphans in Congo alone.  We have requested a girl or boy younger than age five.  We pray and wait patiently everyday for our child that we don't even know yet.  A child that we already love so much!

You see, adoption is not a lot different than being pregnant.  There is a quote that says, "In adoption, the child grows in it's mommy's heart instead of her tummy."  That's exactly right.  Just like a pregnant mother can't wait for her ultrasound, I can't wait for the day that we get our referral and have a picture in my hand.

We first sent our application to our agency, Compassionate Hearts in June 2010.  We got accepted as clients in August.  We rushed around and got a home study complete in KY in case we were to receive a referral really quickly.  We didn't though.  So we had to redo everything when we moved to AZ.  We have just got it completed again!  So now we wait!

I will update more as we go through this process.  I will also update about things we are doing as a family. 

Please follow along and pray for our family as we follow Jesus to do whatever He asks us to do!

Brittany