Our Story

Journey to Our Second Daughter:
We are posting this site for our family and friends to be able to follow us on our journey to our second daughter, Lily, from China.

Brief Summary:

God gave us a desire to adopt many years ago (greater than 15). Then, when His timing was right, He showed us to move ahead with our first adoption. It was clear that God was in it because everything fell into place. We adopted Emily in September of 2003. When we were in China Jerry said, “I think we are going to do this again”. I said, “I don’t think so”. It just seemed like a lot to do again...God obviously had His plans.

At the beginning of 2005 I began to feel God wanted us to adopt again. At church the women were studying a book called “Don’t Waste Your Life” by John Piper. The words in the book really spoke to me and I knew we were called to adopt again. A few weeks later I bought a book for our daughter Emily. The book was “Shoey and Dot” by Steven Curtis Chapman. The book came with a DVD about adoption. To me it was a confirmation of what I already knew in my heart. We are to adopt again.

Jerry wasn’t so convinced. After I told him of my feelings he began waiting for God to give him the same convincing evidence/conviction similar to when we adopted Emily (God had made it abundantly clear to both of us that we were to adopt Emily). He (Jerry) was somewhat confused as to why his wife had such a strong conviction about adopting again and he seemed to be getting nothing from The Lord by way of confirmation. He decided to speak to our pastor Tim. Tim told Jerry that many times in the Bible God gave the burden for children (or to have a child) to the women and not the man, there are several examples in the Bible of the women of God crying out for a child like Sarah and Hannah. Anyway, Jerry came away from that meeting with a different perspective and we began the process to adopt our second daughter, Lily.

We started the process in July 2005 after our 3rd son, Aaron, married his wife Lauren. When he moved out it meant we no longer had too many children living in the house, and we were able to begin the adoption process. You are allowed 5 children living in the house including the adopted child. Since we now had 3 sons and 1 daughter living in the house, we had a VACANCY!

We worked on the required paperwork (our dossier) that had to go to China and it went to China on December 20, 2005. The dossier was logged in on January 16th, 2006 in China. That put us in line waiting for our daughter. At the time, the length of the wait from “Log-in” to “referral” (the date you received a picture and profile of your daughter) was between 6-8 months. It is now taking over two years. God has used this time to show us more about the situation of orphans around the world and especially in China. It has been a long hard wait but it is ABSOLUTELY WORTH IT!
As of today, April 14th, China has given referrals up to the log-in date of January 9th, 2006. Our log-in is 1 week away! China has been processing around 5-6 log-in days per month, so, we hope to receive our referral at the beginning of June and hope to travel to China in about 8 weeks from then to GET OUR LITTLE BLESSING, LILY!