The Journey Begins

It started almost exactly two months ago, in mid-June. I went to my friend Jodi’s house for a shower for one of the African Children’s Choir chaperones who was getting married soon. During this shower, Jodi talked about the conference on orphans she had attended recently, and how one speaker in particular was very moving. He was a former African orphan who had been adopted as an older teen. He talked about how not many people want to adopt older children, but what an amazing difference it had made in his life.

As she was sharing that, I just felt such a compassion in my heart for these older orphans, giving up hope of ever being adopted after so many years. I have had a heart for orphans for a long time, and in the last few years have been working with a few different organizations that are supporting orphanages or orphans. I even went to Zambia with Justin and worked at an orphanage there. Orphans have been on my heart; but I have never really considered adopting. But when she shared about the need for older children to be adopted, I thought, “I could do that.” That was all, just a simple thought. But I really felt, deeply, that I could.

So I started pondering that in my heart. A few days later, I opened up my Bible to read. I’ve been reading in the New Testament and Old Testament both, and I was in James and Isaiah at the time. So I first read:

Religion that God our father accepts as pure and faultless is this: to look after orphans and widows in their distress…

(James 1:27)

Then I read:

Enlarge the place of your tent,

stretch your tent curtains wide,

do not hold back;

lengthen your cords,

strengthen your stakes.

For you will be spread out to the right and to the left…

Do not be afraid…

All your sons will be taught of the Lord,

and great will be your children’s peace.

(Isaiah 54:2-4, 13)

I knew that was God, speaking directly to me; I felt really overwhelmed with a sense of his presence, as if he were standing in front of me saying this to me.

A couple of days after that I read:

Foreigners who bind themselves to the Lord

to serve him,

to love the name of the Lord,

and to worship him…

These I will bring to my holy mountain

and give them joy in my house of prayer…

for my house will be called a house of prayer for all nations.

(Isaiah 56:6-7)

He said to me that this would be true about my house.

I started thinking and praying about our financial situation – not the greatest right now – and how we would come up with the money needed for the adoptions, as well as caring for more kids, etc; then read a few days later:

If you spend yourselves in behalf of the hungry, and satisfy the needs of the oppressed…the Lord…will satisfy your needs in a sun-scorched land, and will strengthen your frame. You will be like a well-watered garden, like a spring whose waters never fail.

(Isaiah 58:10-11)

(to be continued…)