“A faithful friend is a strong defense; and he that hath found him hath found a treasure.” ~Louisa May Alcott

A dear friend met her new daughter today for the first time!!!  Not through the miracle of childbirth but through the amazing miracle of adoption!!!  I can hardly sit still I’m so excited!  When we started this journey a year ago, I knew that Laura and her family were adopting with the same agency we were considering.  In fact, seeing Laura post about Lifeline Child Services was another confirmation to us, among many, that they were the right agency…whenever the time came.  Well, the time came quickly when we saw our Louisa May and the Lord opened our eyes to this amazing child.  Laura was one of the first people I wanted to talk to after we got the process started.  It was wonderful knowing someone right around the corner was going through this same experience and we could talk about all the children waiting for families and pray for Laura and Sean as they waited to be matched with a little girl.  In the late fall Laura called me one day so excited ~ they had been matched with the most adorable 3 year old!!!  Texts flew back and forth as they reviewed her file and prayed to make sure this was their little girl.  They settled on it pretty quickly because Lucy Love is just so beautiful and sweet, no one could resist her!  Laura called to tell me all her details and at the very end of the conversation I asked where Lucy was.  Laura couldn’t remember the exact name of the city but she remembered in her file it said Lucy’s last name was the nickname for the city where she lives… then she said the name… I started freaking out~ No Way!  That is Louisa’s last name and that’s exactly the same way they wrote about it in her file too.  I thought my heart would beat through my chest.  I knew it had to be the same city, Laura looked it up and it was.  No WAY!  There are a lot of orphanages in Ch*na and there are thousands and thousands of precious children waiting for families.  Out of all those children the Lord has these two crazy ladies in Mayretta end up adopting two little girls from the exact same place at the same time.  It’s just too wild, it IS a God thing!!!!!  We spent a lot of time laughing and crying about this awesome craziness!  But it got even better!

As both our families were trying to move as quickly as we could through all the Mountain of paperwork, Rob and I had been praying hard about adopting Louisa’s precious, beautiful, sweet little best friend from the orphanage, now our Lili Claire.  It was a huge decision to adopt two little girls at the same time, a completely crazy, out of our minds decision.  But the Lord, who loves these children fiercely, would NOT let us sweep this decision under the carpet.  Oh, how I praise Him for not letting us push His prompting away, so soft and gentle yet steady.  Our agency offered to ask the orphanage for updated pictures or video of Lili Claire.  The orphanage had been saying they wouldn’t do videos or pictures right now, so we didn’t know if they would have luck.  Just a few days later we got the most adorable and endearing videos of Lili Claire, not with Louisa but with Lucy!  Laura and I had hoped and prayed that somehow the girls would get to meet before coming home, we had no idea if ages even mixed in the orphanage, its a really big one.  These videos not only convinced Rob and I that this little girl is a treasure that we could NOT say no to but also was an amazing gift to see our Lili Claire and Lucy forming such a special bond!!!!

You have got to go watch these precious videos!!!      https://vimeo.com/70990842  and   https://vimeo.com/70992825

Well, as if our girls being at the same orphanage, bonding and getting to know each other wasn’t enough fun, we get to go even deeper!  Laura and I belong to a social media site for our girls province.  An adoption video was posted of a family we didn’t know at all.  But I LOVE watching adoption day or what people call “Gotcha Day” videos, so I was definitely watching this one, especially since they had just adopted their child this year.  So, I’m watching, totally loving it because it is one of the best ones I’ve ever seen and there lo and behold Lucy’s beautiful little face pops up.  No Way!!  This family is sitting with their daughter, a foster mom and a few other children ~ one of them being Lucy Love herself!  So of course I called Laura immediately and she watches and we’re so excited and trying to figure out how in the world to contact this woman we don’t know who’s video we’re watching over and over again.  Laura finds out how to email this family and so I send her an email too, with my girls names and their pictures.  Her daughter is a little bit older, so I thought she might recognize them.  The sweet mom, Kim who is my new friend and is so awesome, wrote Laura and I back together to tell us that her daughter got super excited when she saw Louisa’s picture and that Louisa was her foster sister and that Lucy was her foster sister too.  Which means…that Louisa and Lucy have been cared for and raised by the same foster family at the orphanage!!!!!!  They only have a few of these foster family situations on the orphanage grounds, so it just really is NOT likely that Louisa and Lucy would have been in this same family.  We’re not sure yet if they were both living there at the same time BUT for Louisa and Lucy to have this even deeper common bond just blows my socks off!!!!!!!

Kim’s daughter pictured with Louisa on left and Lucy on right. Please go see her adoption video, it’s beautiful!!!

Adoption Video

 I mean, come on…God YOU ARE AMAZING!!!!!!  I truly weep at His goodness.  He loves us so, so tenderly.  He loves these dear, precious children without mommies or daddies.  That He would allow Rob and I to become part of His kingdom work in loving His children is quite simply the highest honor I could ever ask or hope for.  There is no house, car, experience, earthly glory I would EVER trade this for.

God, You ARE good and Your love endures forever!!!!! Psalm 136

~K