Little Josiah’s adoption began to move forward, though it was slow going, and as the months went by we began to feel our hearts heal little by little from the loss of Erick. We still missed him but we were starting to get excited about bringing Josiah home. For some reason I also suddenly developed a very strong interest in the country of Liberia. I was looking at adoption programs, talking to adoptive families, etc and the whole time wondering why on earth I was interested in Liberia when we didn’t even have our Guatemalan child home yet. Still, I kept asking questions and soon one of my emails made it to a small ministry that was working in several orphanages in Liberia and helping to process adoptions. I emailed them and asked for information, mentioning we were open to special needs, and they sent back information about their deaf orphanage along with several pictures of children waiting for families. I glanced through the pictures and was captivated by one five year old girl with a brilliant smile. Later that day I got out the computer to show the pictures to my husband. The moment I opened the file with that little girl he said “That’s our daughter!” He was completely, absolutely sure that she was ours.
It took me a while to agree with him. Could we handle an older child? A deaf child? We didn’t know sign language. We didn’t even know any deaf people! But, my husband was steadfast in his conviction that this was our daughter. I began some serious praying and soon God spoke to my heart and I knew that Laney was ours.
So now we were adopting two children. Everyone thought we were crazy. We thought we were crazy! Yet, sometimes God leads us to do crazy things because He can see how it all works out and He plans to bless it in the end. That’s exactly what happened for us.
Josiah’s adoption took much longer than it should have (for a lot of different reasons that I won’t go into here) but finally in January 2007 it was time to travel to Guatemala to bring him home. We were finally parents. What an amazing feeling!
We brought Josiah home and began to settle into life as a family of three. We expected to become a family of four in the next few months as we had been told Laney should be ready to come home in February or March. That’s not exactly how it happened. We never did end up being a family of four. You’ll have to wait until tomorrow to learn more.