So beautiful I had to share

Vlad.  Our family and the big boys' Conquest Club in San Antonio prayed & prayed for this little boy and we raised & donated the first few hundred dollars in his adoption account with Reece's Rainbow.  I listed him as a prayer of thanksgiving in the sidebar here when I found out from the amazing AMT that he was to be adopted.  This is the link to Vlad's new family's blog.  So, so beautiful.  God is so good, so faithful.  You have to see for yourself.

The story of him in our lives started w/ me looking over the Reece's Rainbow website, talking to God and praying about international adoption.  I have always felt a call to adoption since I was a much younger single woman and Jesse & I talked about it before we married.  But I, we have always felt a call to domestic, foster adoption.  (We fostered two sisters during Jesse's residency who were with us for 2 months over the holidays in 2006/2007, our own "hosting" experience now that I think about it.  They returned to biological family- but that is another story for another night.)  Anyway, I was thinking & praying a lot about international adoption (b/c I had multiple friends interested in it that I wanted to really support & b/c of non-profit work AMT was leading us to do) and asking God to help me really understand that call.  From my own limited perspective, I just couldn't see how families could fall in love w/ a photo of a kiddo across the world and know God's will, God's plan from the beginning.  Not that I didn't believe them, but I wanted to truly understand it.  Well, God answered my prayer.  I truly fell in love w/ Vlad from 1 photo and, most amazingly, so did my husband.  At the time, we thought he looked like such a Gorley!  And we seriously considered adopting him but pretty quickly discerned that that wasn't God's will.  Both of us felt the same way and felt sad but at peace.  We kept praying for Vlad & donated some money ourselves and then the boys' Conquest Club did the same.  We lost a baby to miscarriage and knew that what we wanted, what it seemed God wanted for our family was for us to have another of our own biological children.  Then we conceived Mary.  And Vlad's family found him & committed to adopting him the month she was born.  And again, here he is now: http://bigvandlittlesy.blogspot.com/. 

Praise God.  Thank you for Vlad.  Thank you for Mary.