In October of 2009, my husband & I (sans kids) were amazingly blessed to get to attend Catalyst 09 - a conference of about 13000 people in Atlanta, GA that is all about godly leadership. Its focus is on young leaders, which I love cause rarely do young leaders get the encouragement and support to go for it! It often seems like there is an age requirement to be a good leader. Maturity is necessary but that doesn't necessarily equate to age.... anyways, it was an amazing, inspiring, crazy, challenging, worship filled conference. Hope we can go again soon!
Throughout the conference, they had people sharing about their life and a continuous theme (although not directly what the conference was about) that kept coming up in these people's lives was adoption. Both of their/our adoption in Christ and their adoption of children into their family. They discussed 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.During some of the breaks, as we were walking around we started discussing it again. We had always been open to adoption and was something that early on in our marriage we had talked about. We were both encouraged to hear about other families adopting and started wondering what if? I went to a couple of booths of adoption agencies to find out a little more but because we were from Canada they couldn't really help me. So, I just thought that this is something we should think and pray about when we get home and look into it a little more. The second last night of the conference Mac Powell was up on stage sharing God's story in his life. And instead of trying to rewrite what I wrote back then, here it is written in jan of 2010 before we had little man home..
Throughout the conference, they had people sharing about their life and a continuous theme (although not directly what the conference was about) that kept coming up in these people's lives was adoption. Both of their/our adoption in Christ and their adoption of children into their family. They discussed 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.During some of the breaks, as we were walking around we started discussing it again. We had always been open to adoption and was something that early on in our marriage we had talked about. We were both encouraged to hear about other families adopting and started wondering what if? I went to a couple of booths of adoption agencies to find out a little more but because we were from Canada they couldn't really help me. So, I just thought that this is something we should think and pray about when we get home and look into it a little more. The second last night of the conference Mac Powell was up on stage sharing God's story in his life. And instead of trying to rewrite what I wrote back then, here it is written in jan of 2010 before we had little man home..
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 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 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.
God's timing is always incredible; it may seem insane or unmanageable at the time but He knows, which is a great source of comfort to me. Following Atlanta, we had 4 more days of holiday in Florida where we were able to pray through this decision and enjoy the moment. All of our paperwork was officially into the agency in January of 2010 and we were offically in the waiting stage of becoming a family of 6! To end with on Part 2, this song has been incredibly meaningful to us...enjoy!
Have a great weekend! Part 3 to come...our referral!
Blessing, Candra
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