Choices..

The hardest parts of the application do not include writing down the facts but the choices.

Even some of the choices not too hard just a bit of discussion about references as who knows us the best, or who's seen both sides of our lives [Haiti & USA]. Then you send off an E-mail to ask them and fill in the contact information. Easy.

Hard: what type of child would you consider accepting into your family?

Now we did not have choices like these when the Lord sent us Eli and Anna as He did the choosing.

I remember when I started in High School praying regularly for my future husband and started a list. Yes, a real pen on paper list which consisted of two parts: the non-negotiables and the 'I think it would be nice'.

Non-negotiables included a man of strong love of God with a personal relationship with the Lord and a heart for missions. I knew that the Lord knew my tastes and desires and especially my needs even better than I did. My prayers recognized that I wanted His best choices for me and would trust Him.

Knowing that we would be needing to put on paper some ideas of the children we would be willing to be matched with those prayers for wisdom started at the same time the Lord opened the door to adoption.

We discussed the various options as a family and prayed, and prayed, and prayed..right up to the day that we finished filling in the first application.

We continue to pray  as we finish up with the paperwork part and move on toward the match that we need to remain open to the Lord's direction and learn as we go.

We 'think' we would like siblings, both a boy and a girl under the ages of 4. We remain open to children with special needs while realizing the limitation of our location. We do not believe it would be fair to accept a child who needs long term therapy or extensive medical care unavailable here.

Please join us in praying for 'our little ones' and for the whole process of matching our family with them. With the new procedures and Haitian social services matching families we have no idea how long following the arrival of our translated dossier to Haiti it will take before we match with our children.

[Tropical Dogwood, Mussaenda or Bankok Rose. The pink sepals are fuzzy]