Our adoption journey actually started back before Randy and I even met, roughly 2005-ish when I (Sarah) started having (seemingly random) thoughts that I wanted to adopt one day. As the years went on my desires for adoption grew stronger and stronger. In 2015 when Randy and I met, one of our first serious conversations in dating went something like this “Randy, I am going to adopt one day, how do you feel about that?” and in typical Randy fashion, he was very open handed to the idea.

After getting engaged, we dreamed of having children one day and knew that at least one of our children would be adopted. Once married, we came to discover that I have a condition that may potentially make it impossible to have biological children. Although this was hard news to bear, we have seen this as the Lord’s way of saying that we should start our family off with adoption.

Our passion and appreciation for adoption has deepened more and more throughout the past 4+ years of our marriage and the Lord continues to surprise us with how He is working through this journey in our life.

One of the ways that Randy’s heart was even more captured by the idea of adoption (both our spiritual adoption into God’s family and the practice of and need for earthly adoption) came earlier in 2020 after reading Russell Moore’s Adopted for Life: The Priority of Adoption for Christian Families and Churches. I am currently reading it as well. We would both absolutely recommend this book to anyone and everyone! We love the way Russell Moore weaves biblical truth, personal stories, and practical advice together in this compelling book.

Now that the Lord has opened doors for us to start our family with adoption, we honestly can’t imagine starting our family any other way. As we’ve researched, prayed about, and pondered adoption, our hearts have become overwhelmed by the amount of children around the world who are without a family. We are truly honored that the Lord has called us, as ordinary and broken as we are, to be part of providing a family for even just a few of these kiddos. Not only that, but we are so grateful that we get to go through this journey with so many amazing, generous, caring, and supportive people, like you!

As we began researching adoption earlier this year, Sarah and I both felt a heart pull towards toddlers, rather than infants. We’re not really sure why that is, but we think it’s likely because most of the kiddos in our lives (nieces/nephews/kids of friends) are toddlers. However, we also feel like it’s from the Lord. We even talked with a US infant adoption agency and came away pretty confident that it was not for us.

As we researched types of adoptions, we found that the primary way to adopt toddlers in the US is through Foster to Adopt, which we didn’t feel was a good fit for us and don’t feel God calling us to, at least not right now. That left international adoption, which we actually were pretty happy with as both of us had felt a desire to adopt internationally throughout our research. It continually breaks our hearts to read about the millions of orphaned image-bearers around the world.

As missionaries, Sarah and I both have a huge heart for the world and we view international adoption as a form of mission – both in responding to God’s call throughout Scripture to care for the fatherless (James 1:27, Isaiah 1:17, Psalm 82:3, etc.), as well as to make disciples of all nations (Matthew 28:18-20, Acts 1:8, Mark 16:15-16, Luke 24:44-48, etc.).

What a unique and beautiful opportunity we have to provide a healthy and godly home for a child (or children) who don’t have one as a reflection of God’s love for us as spiritual orphans, adopting us into His own family by His love and grace in Christ. We also feel that it would expand our hearts even more for the world by giving us a daily reminder to pray for the nations and that the Great Commission would be fulfilled. We believe God has created every culture and every person to reflect His character and beauty, and we would be honored to embrace our adopted child(ren)’s culture and learn how to worship God in a new way through their cultural lens.

Lastly, we view adoption in general, and specifically international adoption, as such a great opportunity to minister to others in our lives (family, friends, neighbors, students in our ministry, etc). Already this summer when we were on a mission trip in Estonia, we were able to share the gospel as we shared about our heart for adoption. Additionally, this semester it has been so sweet to see how students have responded as we have shared about our process - getting to see their hearts for adoption, the world, and the gospel expand as we talk about it.

We are so excited to see how God gives us, and our children, opportunities to proclaim the excellencies of Him who called us out of darkness and into His marvelous light, as well as deepen, challenge, and sanctify us and our faith through this journey!