Our Adoption Story

Its late but the only way I will ever get this written out is when the house is quiet. So this is our adoption story that gets overlooked by most people. Once upon a time in a far away land....OK I'll stop! hehe But really long ago (it seems like forever but its only been like 6 or 7 years ago) when Britton and I started dating we would often talk about our future family and all of our dreams. I can't remember who brought it up first but someone mentioned adoption and right away we both thought it would be so fun. Really just like a dream we didn't dwell on that we would adopt cause we knew we wanted to have our own to. Then of course we got married and a couple years later Carter was born and then a couple years after that Brysen was born. I know this sounds crazy busy and fast!! We both still feel so young and we are but when we surprisingly found out we were pregnant with sweet Carter we knew that the Lords hand was in it and we knew we weren't going to stop because we want all of our children close. Adoption kept making its way into our conversation and very casually we would tell a family member or close friend that we wanted to adopt someday and they all would say, "What will you do when he/she gets older?" or "How on earth will you come up with money for that". We would always just smile because we knew that the Lord will always work everything out and we haft to have the mustard seed faith! So then a couple summers after Carter was born and I wasn't pregnant yet with Brysen I got the chance to share with a close friend that we wanted to adopt Lord willing someday. She said REALLY?? we are in the homestudy process right now!! How special!! I was just thrilled and we have became good friends through this process! So then one night after Brysen was born he was like four months we were driving home one evening and Britton looked at me and said, " lets adopt now". He doesn't want me to have anymore of my own and so I had to get over that and it took me a while! But the Lord opened my eyes in a big way! All of the sudden it seemed like everywhere we looked was adoption stories, blogs, newspaper articles, friends adopting and on and on. We saw the great need that the orphans have and the Lord completely opened my eyes! So we decided if we sold our house we would start looking into it. And wouldn't you know we did!! Almost right away! We applied for a packet through America World Adoption but they wanted us to wait to apply until we had our tax paper and we knew we wouldn't have it for several months so we asked Bev what there agency was and we applied through Christian World Adoption Agency and passed right away! We were given a list of countries to choose from and they all had regulations and prices for a child. Some of the countries were China, Kzachastan, Russia, Guatemala, and of course Ethiopia. The ONLY one we could do was Ethiopia and of course it wasn't a problem cause we love us some AFRICA and all the children are so cute!!! When we started this all we were hoping for like 2011 sometime not now or soon we thought we would just go slow :) We laugh now because you know the saying if you want to make God laugh tell Him your plans :) And sure enough I bet He was laughing when our case manager emailed us and told us she had pictures and medicals for a five year old girl from Ethiopia!! Did I mention that we applied for a 6 mo- 5yr girl? Truly a dream!!! God has so blessed us and now I am all typed out and will talk more about Gracie Kaylin Berekete Filbrun and her background later :)