Our story to AJ

Announcing our son: Alden Josiah. Alden meaning old friend (reason revealed below), and Josiah meaning God heals and sustains.

This story has been almost a year in the making, but I will try to make it brief.
We met AJ when we were in China getting Wes. They were at the same foster home -Amazing Hands, and had been friends for several years.

Wes, Avery and AJ

When we went with the kids to the playground, David and I tried to split up. As much as we wanted to play with Wes, we also wanted to show a few minutes of attention to the other kids. AJ was the oldest, and it was obvious that he knew his friend, Wes, was getting a family....and he wasn't. He had gone throught this many times. It got to be so hard for him, that the nannies started taking AJ on outings on days when another child was being adopted. Can you imagine, parents wanting all the other kids; but not you?

David was especially touched by AJ, and his sadness. We were already in the process of adopting Waid, so all we could do was pray for AJ. His file had just been released to the shared list, so maybe some family would find him.

After adopting Waid, we were back and forth with "are we done?". We had finally decided we were done, at least for now. Perhaps the Lord would lead us to adopt older kids in a few years. There was a long list of "why's" not to adopt at this time.
In November, a fellow Amazing Hands mom contacted me. She knew we had done lots of fundraising, and wanted me to speak to another mom, and give encouragement on the subject. She was also advocating for a few of the kids still at Amazing Hands--including AJ. I told her how we had played with him, and how our heart ached for him; it was sad to know his file had been on the shared list for almost a year.

God was nudging us--why didn't we adopt AJ? Well, among our reasons were: no money, retirement acct was cashed out for the boy's adoptions (it was just sitting there doing nothing anyway in this economy), rotting eaves, due to bad roofing job, need replacing and trim on house needs painting, upstairs furnace over 21 years old- needs replacing, 2 year old roof has issues that need fixing, deck beginning to rot, den furniture 10 years old (and looking like it) and the list went on.... Most of the reasons had to do with money (or lack of), not our willingness to serve and obey God. We get a nice tax refund check, but--umm--look at that list, I can live with an old sofa for another year, but you cannot neglect home maintenance! I told the lady that if a check for 30K appeared in the mailbox, we'd adopt AJ--yeh, right, like that would happen.

The next day we got an email from an incredible woman who has dedicated herself and her resources to help orphans. David led me to the computer and told me to read the email. Then we stared at each other in awe. She wanted to donate 15k towards the adoption of AJ.
(Psalm 50:10). ONLY GOD COULD BE BEHIND THIS! If this beautiful woman was led by God to give this money, how could we NOT step out on faith for the rest??

I have felt for sometime, that if we adopted again, it would be 2 kids. I mean , we can't keep going back to Ch!na over and over; it has to end sometime doesn't it? David would like to retire one day. Amazingly, Ch!na is beginning to allow 2 kids to be adopted at once. So, we are looking for a little girl to join our family also, and pray that Ch!na will grant us permission.

SO, here we go again, stepping out on faith. It's like climbing a mountain and looking up at the beauty of the peak, with excitement, then looking down, and being sick to your stomach. God did not promise "easy", did He?