It's a start...

It's hard to say exactly where our adoption journey began. If I had to pick a specific moment when it first came to our minds, I would say that it was during my preparation for my mission trip to Russia in August. I found out from George Bryson, the director of Calvary Chapel Church Planting Mission, that we would be visiting an orphanage while in Russia. Melissa joked that I'd probably come home with a baby sister for Alexander. We both laughed about it, and neither one of us had thought seriously about adopting. Ironically, I did not get to visit the orphanage on the trip, but the idea of adopting was born in our minds; and over the next several months our "joke" turned into serious consideration, and from that it seems to be well on its way to being a desire of our hearts.

Today was a big milestone! I finished the website about our adoption plans! I'm sure I'll fine tune it some more, but for all intents and purposes, it is done! I started the website over the new year holiday, shortly after we found out that we weren't going to be having a baby, afterall. At least not right away. And, now it is finished.

I think that this is a big milestone, because now we can send the link for this site out to all of our family and friends. I am hoping that this will get everyone on board on the "prayer wagon", praying that God will open the doors for this adoption to take place. And, perhaps it will open doors to find some donations to contribute to the cost of this endeavor, as well.

We are now praying about the next step. We need to have a homestudy done and there are a few things we can do prior to selecting an agency. And, we need the Lord's wisdom in choosing an agency. There are 39 agencies accredited by the Russian government, and others that operate under the legal umbrella of the 39. I have requested information from dozens of agencies and we've spent hours pouring over the material they sent us. So far we're not closer to a decision, but there are other things that we can do first, and so we'll cross that bridge when we get there.

More to come...