Living by Faith

Well, as those in the adoption world knows, there are many ups & downs involved with the process. Luckily, we haven't had anything too big in the terms of ups or downs. We will take that as a blessing. These minor bumps that we have encountered will be so worth it in the end. But I do think that Satan has used several things that have happened to try to deter us from doing what we know God wants us to do. Let's face it. Wouldn't Satan just love it if a couple of things happened that caused us doubt & fear to the point that decided to not listen to God & follow through with this adoption? Some may doubt that this is how it works  but I am fully convinced that when you are doing something public, like adoption, because of faith, Satan is going to do his best to not let that happen. These minor things, while inconvenient, will not work though. Just when we were doing so good at saving money & getting to the point of being able to put a good chunk of money in our fund, we find out Brian's work car needs all new tires. Then we find out it needs all new shocks, struts & an alignment. Then our air conditioner in the house wasn't working. Then his pickup won't start & has to be fixed. Then our sump pump hose came out of the drain & sprayed water all over the place, ruining our Netgear box for our internet. All these things combined cost us a great deal of money that we were hoping to save.  But we are fortunate that we had the money to begin with & we don't have to wonder where we were going to come up with the money to fix those things. We may have less in our adoption fund but we still have time & we know that God will provide. For those of you that know us & all our basement issues in our old house, you will know that only having a little bit of water sprayed around in our utility room is NOT that big of a deal. Neither is having to have some vehicle repairs. A setback? Yes. A cause for us to stop listening to God. NO!

Also, we decided this week to apply to another agency. After much research we have found 1 that is very similar to Hope for Adoption. Hope for Adoption is a very new agency & they are encouraging their adoptive families to apply to at least 1 other agency.  I talked with both agencies this week & feel very comfortable working with both. The new agency works in almost every state in the US so the only problem that might present is travel. We have now introduced the possibility of needing to fly, depending on the state our birthmom is from. We had looked into this option earlier & had decided that driving was going to save us money since we wouldn't have to rent a car either. But we will just have to wait & see what happens with that. I just hope that if we have to fly, we can find some good rates. So, I ordered more profile books & they will hopefully be here sometime next week. I will let you know the new agency name once we get approval.

Please continue to keep us in your prayers as we continue going through this process. We have been amazed by what God has shown us already in the short time we've been on this journey.