A year ago...

This was the announcement on my blog last year...what a joyful difference a year has made!!!! I amazed by God's perfect timing and His goodness...

FRIDAY, JANUARY 01, 2010

A blessing from above!

Riley and I, along with Gabriella, Malachi & Eve, have some very exciting news we want to share with you. We will soon be a family of 6! Riley and I have chosen to expand our family through adoption and will, in the next year (hopefully), be blessed with a fourth child. We have told many of you already and thank you for the excitement, support and congratulations!

It has been a wonderful adventure so far, and know without a doubt that God has led us in this direction. I felt that it was important to share with you our story so far and why, after much prayer, we have chosen adoption. Throughout our marriage, we have seriously considered adoption and hoped that at some point this would come to fruition. In the past, one of us was always ready and the other not. This past October, Riley and I were at a leadership conference in Atlanta. Throughout the few days we were there, there was an encouragement by several of the speakers to consider adoption. Adoption as a way to give a child a family, to be blessed by that child and extend the grace and love of Christ in a practical way. At one point, Mac Powell (singer for 3rd day) was on stage and brought his wife and new son on to join him. He spoke about the gift of adoption and the gift that his new son was to him. What can only be described as a God moment came next - Riley and I knew in an instant that this is what God was asking us to do. With great excitement and anticipation, we committed to having our fourth child through adoption!

Now, if you know Riley and I, when we commit to something there is no going back. Even on that trip, we began the process of praying and researching adoption agencies, finding out procedures with Saskatchewan and Canada and beginning a to do list (my favorite thing to do!). On a side note, I have to say that I have been amazed and blessed by the leadership and willingness of Riley to do a lot of the leg work through this process thus far! It has grown my love for him to watch him parent our expectant child, even in these initial stages.

On returning home, we spent many late nights and many emails and phone calls, narrowing down the agency we would work with. We knew that we wanted to adopt internationally from Africa (another whole story on its own) but also knew that our options were limited. On speaking to some agencies, we found out the wait or some countries was up to 4 years. This was a little discouraging but also knew that we were committed. We came across a smaller agency based in Ontario that upon reading their website, we felt immediately encouraged by. It is a Christian based agency who works with several countries, but the one that stood out to us was South Africa.

After speaking with the director, we knew this was the direction we were going to take! So, we are adopting from South Africa, a child between the ages of 0-12 months! Then, the process we had to go through began. We were recommended (thanks Jen!) a wonderful home study practitioner who completed our home study in 5 weeks! All of our other dossier requirements were processed very quickly - reminding us to thank God even during the process. Our references (thankyou!) came in very quickly and thanks to all of Riley's computer wisdom, were were able to put together our personal profile, the final part of our dossier. We were hoping to have our part done by the end of December and it happened! Yay! Riley and I were talking one night and felt strongly that anything we could do on our end to make the process go faster, we would. We did not want our child to have to wait on us to complete our paperwork.

Now, we wait! Everything first goes to the Saskatchewan government, then to the agency and then to South Africa.

We know that God is in this process - we are trusting in Him as we navigate through all the details of adoption. We have been blessed to already meet two other couples of have gone through or are adopting from South Africa, further encouragement to us that God has all things in His hand.

If you would like to pray for us, we would gladly welcome it. Please pray for the baby whom we wait for, and the wait time for our family, especially the kids. Pray for strength for us as we see this process through - there are several different dimensions to adoption than with our first three children. Thanks for sharing in our story thus far. We feel absolutely blessed and thankful to have family, friends, and a church community who have been so supportive and excited for us. We will keep you updated as we find out more!

Blessings & Happy New Year,

Riley and Candra

I am still in awe that he is here and absolutely full of thanksgiving!!

Thank you for all of your prayers and support...2010 was truly incredible, becoming a family of 6.

 Happy New Year's 2011  to our little man, our blessing from above - to our Baby Africa!

hanging out in the land of snow...