Beginning Our Adoption Journey

This is what Jim and I have been staring at for the past few weeks. This is the paperwork for our adoption applications--just the applications!

For those of you who had no idea that Jim and I were considering adoption, well, we are :)
For some time now, we have felt God's calling on our lives to adopt. I think we both thought it would be a little later in life after we were done having children of our own. However, our plans are certainly not God's plans and we both feel that he is urging us to pursue adoption at this time. We have decided to adopt internationally from the Democratic Republic of the Congo in Africa. After prayerfully considering other countries, we both feel a calling to this country. It is a country with very few resources and the children are living in very poor conditions. Many of them have malaria and parasites because of the lack of medical treatment. Jim and I feel that God has provided us with so much, that we need to help a child who has very little.

We have started our home study process. For those of you who don't know much about the adoption process, the home study is the first part that needs to be completed in the adoption process. We have to meet with the social worker 3 times and she asks a lot of questions about us. We also have to have physicals done, fingerprints taken, and give them all our financial information for the past few years. It seems daunting, but I am just trying to stay focused on why we are doing this.

I'll try and post when I can to keep everyone informed. Right now, Jim and I just ask for prayers as we step out on this journey. We know that God is in control of this and guiding us as we go along.

Here's our current family...it will be exciting to see what it looks like a year or two from now :)

Religion that God our Father accepts as pure and faultless is this: to look after orphans and widows in their distress and to keep oneself from being polluted by the world.

James 1:27