When God Shuts One Door...

Hello friends and family! I have recently returned from an amazing missions trip to Uganda and was there for two weeks with a team of about 15 people. (You can read about our trip here.)

What's really neat is that I got to meet Sarah (from Minnesota), who is the mother in the family I wrote about on my first posting on this blog. It was her family that gave me the hope that we could actually adopt from Uganda. I had heard their story and how they didn't live there for three years like I previously thought you had to in order to adopt. I found out she was going to Uganda to adopt their son at the same time I was leaving Oklahoma and we were even on the same flights from the States to UG together. We got to meet and share stories - I just thought it was so cool how our newly-formed relationship had come full circle.

Our trip to Uganda was awesome and hopefully I'll have lots to write about for a while on the Project Hope Worldwide blog (a volunteer assignment I took on about 1 1/2 years ago). We currently have 16 children getting ready to move into Calo Me Lare (the orphanage that PHW built) that will need sponsors ASAP. Please prayerfully consider this need and if you feel so led, you can sign up easily online here. Your sponsorship will help take care of the essential needs of a child living at the orphanage and you will have the unique ability to develop a relationship with your child through writing letters, sending small gifts, and you may even have the opportunity to meet your sponsored child on a missions trip as I did (see picture to the upper left) and Steve did this past July.

While I can't write specifics here, I can tell you when God shuts one door, He opens another. We still feel very strongly that God wants us to adopt from Uganda and a different adoption opportunity has presented itself since my last blogpost. Since then, our home study has also been completed and approved. We have been educating ourselves on the adoption process, as well as on the time with your child after you adopt. And we continue to look forward to our next steps and pray that God guides our path.

We ask that you please pray the following things for our adoption...

1. That God will continue to show us clearly what our next steps should be

2. That our adoption will be 100% ethical

3. That God would prepare our hearts to accept a new person into our family

4. That God would shower His love, protection, and blessings upon our "child to be"

5. That favor would be shown upon our adoption process and that things would move along smoothly


We thank you for your thoughts and prayers during this new journey in our lives! More updates to come ;-)