Wednesday, November 28, 2012

How It All Began

I wanted to share with you the blog post that started this adventure for me. If you haven't had a chance to look through the other pages on our blog, then you haven't heard how our adoption journey started. I plan to make it easy for you by sharing it here in a shortened version.

I was sitting around on facebook one day in the summer, and came across a link to a blog that my wonderful relief society president had posted. This blog shared a story about two 13 year old girls and their experience having their very first hair cut. I was so touched by their story, I KNEW I had to meet them. Here is the post I read.

After chatting with the Mr about the possibility of having one of them stay with us, I called and was told that they had a bunch of boys that needed families. I was very willing to have one of these boys in our home, but something kept telling me that I needed to ask about the girls I had seen. I usually am not great about following feelings like these, but this time I did. I awkwardly (i say awkwardly because I didn't want them to feel like I was unhappy with being offered a boy) asked if one the girls in the picture were available. I had feeling I wanted to meet one in particular but I would have been happy with either. Luckily for me Rob told me the girls were staying with him and he would be glad to have Olena come to us. I KNOW that if I hadn't have followed the prompting I was given, we wouldn't have met Olena and it would have been a very different experience for us. 
After meeting Olena, the Mr and I discussed the possibility of adopting her and he reminded me of the comment made to us by Rob "Don't think of adoption unless you truly believe that the child is meant to be part of your family. There are cheaper ways to help these kids." This comment ran through my mind over and over again. We decided that we needed to know if she truly was meant to be with us or if we were just trying to be good Samaritans and save this girl. So, we fasted all day one Sunday and then prayed very fervently to know if she was our daughter. We both felt very strongly that she was in fact our daughter and there was no more discussion about it. We just went on with life with the knowledge that we were going to be adopting her. We had no idea how we were going to pay for it (which was a big reservation of the Mr. He doesn't like to be someone that jumps into things without a plan, hoping the Lord will somehow bail us out) But we knew it would be okay.

We still believe that. We know that somehow we will find a way to make this happen. We are rapidly approaching our deadline and hoping and praying for a miracle to help us pay the fees that are due.
I struggle to ask for help from people, but have found that with this journey I have had to step far out of my comfort zone and ask and beg and plead for peoples assistance. It has been a humbling experience to say the least. I know it will continue to be just that, humbling. So, I HUMBLY ask again, for you to share our story with everyone you know during this holiday season. Email people a link to our blog, ask them to help us by donating. What ever you can do would be such a blessing to us, but most especially to Olena. She longs to see us again, and I am told by the director of her orphanage, that she asks about us everyday to make sure we haven't forgotten about her.

Please help us find our way over to her, so we can giver her a family. We sincerely appreciate you all.

No comments: