Incredible Connections Part I

Over the last couple of days, I have communicated with some of the most wonderful people. It's quite a close knit community that have adopted or are in the process of adopting a child from another country. Each one has a life story that only He could have woven. It's very similar to how we were led to our Julia:





Mark and I had no plans of adopting a child from China, but God had other plans in mind for us. He used a sixteen year old girl to be the spark for us. She is the daughter of our really good friends plus I was her confirmation sponsor at church. Her parents adopted her two little sisters from China so her heart is very open to God's work. When Lindsay's parents adopted Olivia, Carrie M. was their social worker. As you all know Carrie and her husband now work at NDFH. Lindsay wanted to volunteer at the foster home and spent three weeks helping the children last summer. She was sending videos and e-mails to a whole group of us at church about her experiences. One day she e-mailed Mark and I individually and asked if we would be willing to adopt Julia. It was like God had asked us directly, "Would you do this for Me?" Mark and I did a lot of research about dwarfism and met with a family whose son is a dwarf. We both decided that we could open our hearts and home to this precious soul so we e-mailed Lindsay in China and told her, "Yes, we will adopt Julia."



We were put in touch with an agency who was willing to go to bat for us to find her file. We started that process at the end of July '08; we received word that her file was on its way to the CCAA and would be there by October, November, or December! We needed to do some fundraising to help with the cost. We met with our priest and he was very supportive about asking the parish to help us. He told us that if the Catholic church was going to be pro-life, that included outside-of-the-womb also. He saw this as rescuing a child and wanted us to do a presentation at the end of September '08. Lindsay, Mark, Lydia, and I spoke to all five masses that weekend. Lindsay was especially compelling and showed her videos of Julia eating the m&m's. The parish responded so enthusiastically and donated almost $50,000! Our prayers had been answered! We were so overwhelmed!