Mike and I had 4 biological children and were very happy with our family. One day I felt inspired to meet with some orphan girls that were here in America on a hosting trip. I organized for one of them to stay with our family for the remainder of her trip. We all fell in love with her and Mike and I decided that adoption was the way to go :)
After months of preparation and mountains of paperwork and hoops to jump through, we were preparing to head over to Ukraine to finalize our adoption and bring Olena home. Along the way we found out that she had a sister that was in a different orphanage, but she didn't want to be adopted. So we decided to go along with our plan to just get Olena. After some hurdles with the Ukrainian state department of adoptions we were forced to meet with Olena's sister anyway. So we made the long drive to her school where our plan was to say hi and no thank you and move on to see our daughter. Turns out that Heavenly Father had a very different plan for us!
After a few minutes talking with the director we were allowed to meet with Nastia and when she walked in the room I was overcome with the feeling that she was my daughter and she was supposed to come too! So we took a huge leap of faith and asked her if she wanted to come with us to America. She agreed and now we have 2 new beautiful daughters.
Our Heavenly Father knows each one of us so perfectly. He knew that Mike and I would never have considered bringing a second child home with us unless we met her. He knew that She needed us and that that we needed her, and he brought us all together.
Our family was recently sealed together in the Provo LDS Temple for eternity. I couldn't be happier. But, this journey has come with many challenges, before during and since the adoption was finalized. This blog is a way for me to share our family's journey to our new normal after adoption. We would love you to come a long for the ride!!
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