Today, as I continue sharing some amazing families with you during Orphan Awareness Month, I get to introduce you to someone who has been such a huge blessing to me. With every fundraiser I have done here on my blog for children in desperate situations, she has always been one of the first to e-mail me saying, “I would love to help by donating a couple of items.” Elizabeth has such an enormous heart. The Lord has done amazing things in and through her, as you’ll see.
The first of two main things I would like to encourage people with is that God provides financially for adoption, because it is at the very center of His heart. And the second one is that He changes hearts toward adoption. Hearts that were previously cold toward it light on fire when He works in them.
The proof of this is in my husband who just a few months ago wanted NOTHING to do with adoption. After much prayer (on my part, without him being aware) he changed his heart and mind and opened up to the idea, and now we are in the process of adopting from China. Only Jesus can do this. Only Him. I asked Him many times to remove the desire to adopt from me, if it was not His will for our family, but it never went away. It only got stronger. The devil had me believe for a time that it was a selfish desire of mine that had nothing to do with the Lord. In time God showed me that this was indeed from Him, and it made my faith stronger in the process.
So now that my hubby was on board, where were we going to come up with the money for this? We are a family with three children on one salary who lives paycheck to paycheck, so we found no place to take the adoption fees from.
One day I was searching adoption blogs on the internet and found this wonderful blog written by a mom who was making bracelets by hand and selling them to raise the adoption fees for her beautiful daughter waiting in China. This so touched my heart! I had a little bit of money in my PayPal account which I was saving to donate somewhere. I just didn’t know where yet, But each day the Lord kept bringing me back to this bracelet blog and one day I followed His lead and emptied my account into hers. I emailed her with some questions and she helped me so much and encouraged me to keep praying for my husband’s heart to change. A few short weeks later, her bracelet campaign ended. She had all the money she needed to bring her daughter home, and she emailed me to say that she felt the Lord leading her to pass the bracelet campaign onto me!
Only God! At this point we were not even discussing adoption or how we would pay for it, so when I saw the e-mail I began to shake and cry because I just knew this was from Him, a gift from the Lord to provide for our future adoption.
So in one swoop the Lord matched up my heart and my hubby’s heart with His and provided the means to adopt our little one! The enemy does not want orphans to have families. He wants to keep them alone and afraid and without Jesus. It is a spiritual battle that, once we are committed to fighting it, Jesus leads us to the front and always wins!
We have “met” so many strangers through this process; people who have never met us before but have opened their hearts and ordered bracelets or offered to pray for us, or both.
We are hoping that we will be matched soon to our baby girl. We haven’t seen her yet but love her so much.
Our blog address is http://www.jesuslovesorphans.blogspot.com/
