what to do....

I know, I know, I am a very bad blogger. I love to read everyone else's blogs but after a long day of work, "writing" is not high on my list of priorities :) But, for our kind friends and family who ask us how the adoption is going, it's going! Not for us specifically at this point, but for many others.

One group of 6 families and their total of 11 children got home last Friday, PRAISE GOD!! There is another group of 8 families leaving May 1 to travel and get their children. More approvals have come through as well. I have seen numbers like 77 and even 91 mentioned on yahoo groups. These are approvals, stating a family has permission to adopt from Rwanda, and the referral, which is info on your actual child, typically comes 2-3 months later. Typically being in operative word :)

One little cog that has been thrown into the works has Matt and I requesting prayer and wisdom. It seems that with all the referrals going out lately, the number of adoptable young children below age 3 has been drastically reduced in the particular orphanage we are working with. The way I understand it, this is the only orphanage in Rwanda that children can be adopted from. This is NOT stating that there is a shortage of orphans in other orphanages, but for whatever reason, only this orphanage allows the children to be adopted internationally. It is AWESOME that so many families have been waiting and these young children and babies now have loving families!
However, few families request children over age 3 and there is a need for families for these children. Could we be a family for a 4 yr old? 4 is the oldest we would consider going, simply because of the ages of our other children, 6 and 4, and we are not sure about having 2 four yr olds. I have read of other families creating these "adoptive twins" and if anyone with such an experience could contact me with advice I would greatly appreciate it.

Maybe God has a beautiful 4 yr old waiting for us in Rwanda. Maybe we are to wait for a younger child. With the millions of orphaned children out there, I assume beds in the orphanage will not remain empty long. We want to do what God wills for our family and at the time we began this process, we felt lead toward a toddler, assuming we would be referred a 2 or 3 yr old. Please pray for wisdom and guidance, and also for patience. It's easy to lose patience with the process and think that we could move ahead faster by increasing our age range, but that very well may NOT be what the Lord has in store for us.

What we know for CERTAIN: we have three beautiful children, a sweet, smart 6 yr old, a cuddly, active 4 yr old, and a lovable little one waiting in Rwanda, be they 4 months or 4 yrs old, only God can lead us.