thankful and hopeful

I just have to say that Stephen & I are so honored and humbled by your support and prayers. I had no idea we would get so much response about our news to adopt. We are thankful for the community of faith we have in Midland & the friends and family from all over the country that are supporting us and praying for us. It's so cool how God shows you things over and over in His Word that He's trying to teach you & tonight as I sit to do my Teen Community Bible Study lesson I am reminded of the story with Abram & Sarai. They waited patiently on the Lord for decades for a child & right before God was going to bless them with a son he said "I am God Almighty, walk before me and be blameless". I love the commentary in my Bible that says "we are to obey the Lord in every respect because He is GOD, that is reason enough. If you don't think the benefits of obedience are worth it, consider who God is, the only one with the power to ability to meet your every need". I LOVE THAT! We are to obey God simply because He is God! He has the ability to meet our every need, He has the power to bless us and to provide for us. It says later in my CBS commentary on the story about when Abraham circumcised his whole household right after God told him to- "once God's expectations are clear, the best time to obey is always immediately." Not to compare us to Abraham at all, but we feel like Gods expectations for us are to adopt and we want to obey!

I speak for Stephen & I both when I say we aren't adopting because we are "great Christians" but because we feel God has commanded us to adopt a child into our home that doesn't have a family and we want to walk out in obedience to Him because we are commanded to. I hope this doesn't offend you but we don't want or need you to think we are "better people" for doing this. We are simply living out what we feel led to do and all we ask for is your support and prayers (God knows we need them!) We are so excited to see what the Lord does through us and through our experiences & we pray that we can be a voice for orphans and speak up for those who can't speak for themselves. Who are we that God would chose us to walk this road? All we know is we are beyond thankful & humbled that God would chose us for such a task.

Thank you for being you. Already we are humbled and full of joy and hope in the promises of our God. Our God is big & we know He has big things in store for our family. Thanks for being along for the ride :) We love yall!

To make HIM known and to make HIM famous,

W&S