The Backstory
During our engagement we began talking about children - how many, boys, girls, when, how far apart, etc - when we discovered we held a common desire to eventually build our family through adoption. Hooray! It is always good to be on the same page. As newlyweds and poor college students, however, adoption just didn't seem possible.
Years went by and we began bringing children into our family. First was Michael in January of 2007 and then his little brother Mathieu in July of 2008. They are each uniquely different and bring a different spirit to our family. Michael is sweet, tender, and caring to all he meets. Mathieu is goofy, light-hearted, and can get a laugh out of just about anyone. We were considering adding a third child to our family when Lauren received orders to deploy to Camp Buehring, Kuwait for a year in support of Operation Iraqi Freedom. Adding a child would have to wait. She was deployed from July 2009 to July 2010. During that time, the massive earthquake hit the already destitute country of Haiti. After many days of watching the news, we both got the feeling that it was finally time to pursue adoption. With the great need in Haiti we wanted to adopt from there but we did not qualify due to the current law that adoptive parents must be at least 35. So, after much research and prayer, we felt the Lord directing us to Ethiopia.
After so many years of waiting for some guidance from our Father in Heaven concerning where we would find our special children, we finally knew!! The Lord blesses his children in miraculous, and often unpredictable ways. We had been college students for so long that we still had very little money to our name. However, due to Lauren's deployment we were able to pay off what automobile and other debt we had and still have some saved up for the adoption. Going into that deployment - a year of mommy being away from her beloved husband and children - we did not see it as a blessing. But it was!! How infinite the wisdom and love of our Heavenly Father. He always knows what is best for us and we need only to plant our feet on His path. We know without a doubt that God has a very special little girl or boy and possibly another child waiting for us in Ethiopia. A child that belongs to our family and whom we have been searching and waiting to find for years.
