On life, homeschooling, and wait...WHAT?!?

Yes, my friends, you've read that right...

Ind*an adoption. As in, we're adopting from Ind*a!!

Before Mark and I got married, we dreamed about our family. How many kids would we have, what their little personalities be like, would they look like their Filipino daddy, or would they take after their half Ecuadorian, half white girl mama? But, we've always had it in our hearts to adopt. For us, adoption has never been an "if", but rather, a matter of "when".

As some of you may know, the past year has been one of the most trying years that we've endured since being married (I'll save that for a whole separate post), but it's also been one of the most faith growing years of my life. I've always had a strong faith in Christ, but I thank God for this past year (as crazy as that may sound) because its gotten me to this place of completely trusting in God's plan for my life, even if it involves loss, sickness, struggle, and pain. I can look back and see His hand print in every single moment of it. His timing is perfect!

Lately, we have really felt a calling that our "when" is now! We've spent the last month in serious prayer, sought Biblical council, prayed some more, talked to other adoptive families, prayed about it, researched agencies and countries, prayed a little lot more...well, you get the idea.We really wanted to make sure that calling we were feeling to act now was not out of our own desires (although we really do want this to happen), but that we were in line with God's will for our life.

So, we're excited to announce that we're officially in the adoption process!! It's going to be a long journey, but we can't wait for the day we get to bring our little girl home to her forever family!

As you may or may not know, adoption is super expensive. Like $25-30,000 expensive. But we know that since God has called us to this, that he will provide the funds to bring home our daughter. To help with some of the costs, we will be announcing a t-shirt fundraiser in the next couple of weeks (because who doesn't love an awesome t-shirt), and we're going to be having a huge garage sale in October and would be more than happy to accept donations of your "stuff" to sell!

Please be praying for our family as we go through this long process...it's going to take a village.