Caring for TWO!!!

In just about 3 weeks we should be on a plane to India and holding our sweet girl! Can you believe it? It's finally here! For awhile it felt like it might not ever happen. When we FINALLY received our No Objection Certificate we began to see some light at the end of the tunnel. But when we unexpectedly and miraculously got our Court approval in only 2 short weeks, I began to hyperventilate. This is REAL! THIS IS REAL!! I am just so excited and we know that our Bella is too! She has been waiting just as long as we have.... eagerly anticipating our coming for her! Oh the JOY!

When we began this journey almost 4 years ago we had no idea what in the world the LORD had planned or was in store. As I blogged about before....we started out with the intention of adopting a baby girl. BUT GOD had other plans. He changed our hearts in many ways during this LONG journey and changing our hearts from adopting an infant to an older child was definitely something HE communicated very clearly as we listened to His heart as we walked forward with Him in faith. (I'll blog about that sometime soon)

Another thing the LORD changed our hearts on.... was the number of children we wanted to adopt. Not only did we change our home study to reflect a much larger age range in a child, we also opened our hearts to the idea of a sibling group. We were willing to be used anyway the LORD saw fit for our family concerning the orphan. and if that meant two at one time...we would gladly do it!

And then the time came when we finally received our referral (of an older child) for our sweet girl Bella. Our referral consisted of one child. HOWEVER, what some of you may or may not know is....Bella has a brother. YEP. There are TWO children! We inquired about this immediately and were told right away that her brother who is older than she, was un-adoptable. As happy as we were to finally see and know our daughter, our hearts broke as we stared at the picture of this precious boy and wondered why we weren't able to adopt him too.

Though the reasons for him not being cleared for adoption are still unknown to us, we still hoped there was something we could do. We asked if we could keep in contact with this child and care for him from a distance for any needs that he might have and the answer was YES! There are a couple of neat ways (that God has orchestrated) that we can go about doing this....and so we anxiously await what He has in store. Who knows what might come of all this later down the road. But we are happy to be able to take care of this sweet boy on some level.

So with that said.....we will be CARING for TWO! :-) and not to mention this certainly turns into requested prayer for us and for sweet Bella. We will be able to visit with her brother one last time before we bring her home. This will be a sweet visit but also as you can imagine a VERY difficult one for all of us. My heart breaks already just thinking about it and the hurt our daughter will have leaving her brother behind. So, we ask for your prayer support over this matter.
We are sure there will be some difficult days ahead, but OH....the JOY that is set before us is worth it ALL!

With JOY!

Psalm 126:3