Our call to adopt started with a call on both of our hearts to overseas missions in our teenage and college years. We both felt led to share Christ with those that did not have the opportunity to hear or know Him around the world. In college, Stacie was able to go serve in Moscow, Russia for a summer and Aaron had the opportunity to serve in East Asia over the course of two trips. After being married for two years and paying off our student loans we were eligible to go do full time ministry with the IMB overseas. God led us to South America and we served in both Buenos Aires, Argentina and Santiago, Chile for a total of three years. Our time serving overseas gave us a global Gospel perspective that showed us, firsthand, His heart for the nations. It was incredible to see how He opened our eyes to see, even more clearly, how adoption was the center of our salvation story. He adopted us, giving us the right and privilege of being called sons and daughters. It was during this time that God began weaving together the first parts of our call to adopt.
When we finished our term overseas, we came back to our home state of Texas and our focus shifted to caring for our two boys with autism who needed our undivided attention to meet their needs. We became involved in our local church that had a huge adoption focus and many of our close friends adopted during our first few years back home. Even though we couldn’t adopt at that time, we felt called to support them and we were able to contribute through our finances, energy, and even helping watch their kids. It was through our friendships with those that have adopted that God began to place a burden on our hearts to help in any way we could. For a long time we didn’t know if we had the capacity to add more children to our family because of our boys and their complex needs; however, God has been faithful in their progress are we are now able to pursue adding another child to our family. Through all of this God was working to create room in our hearts and lives for us to say yes to another child through adoption.
Over the past few years, God has led us to go overseas again on a short term basis with two mission organizations in Africa. Through these connections, God started drawing our hearts to Africa and all that He is doing in that part of the world. In April of this year, as we attended an annual board meeting for one of these organizations, God surprisingly wove another piece of our adoption journey together. Here we met the director of an adoption agency who was sharing with us about the Liberia program and the need of families to adopt children from this baby home. We listened about the great need for forever homes for these precious children and the Holy Spirit began to move in our hearts to prayerfully consider adopting from this baby home. It wasn’t long before God confirmed that this was indeed our next step and to follow Him in the journey of adopting a child from Liberia.
We’ve seen the beauty and the difficulty of adoption through the experiences of several close friends that have adopted. Some of our best friends are our next-door neighbors, who have adopted from Uganda. We’ve been able to learn so much from them about the journey of international adoption and the lifelong journey of parenting children from hard backgrounds. We feel blessed to have a strong community of support to help us parent a child of a different race and background.
We are amazed to see how God has woven our story together and we are now ready and eager to add another child to our family.
Of the $40,000 needed for the adoption, we have earned/saved/accounted for all but $14,000. Would you prayerfully consider helping us financially in this journey?
Thank you!
Aaron, Stacie, Micah, Lucas, and _____________ 🙂