Ethiopia and feet to the ground

Sometime soon I'm going to come back and add to this post about our trip to Ethiopia, which we took in June 2011. It was our first international trip together and though we didn't understand why we were asked to be a part of the team at first since we had absolutely no adoption experience other than an open heart to love the orphaned be willing to follow when God moves, it proved to be part of God's plan to help us open our hearts even more so that we could return home and put feet to our heart's words.

We traveled with two great families – both who have experienced adoption themselves. One family has seen God's hand in two international adoptions; the other couple has been blessed with two domestic adoptions; and then there was us – the couple who was 'thinking' about adoption, but hadn't really started the first step. God still used us though and he worked through the two couples in our lives on that week-long trip. Between walking the plane aisles to stretch our legs, go the restroom, or catch a glimpse of the sunset on the 12-hour trip, both of our new friends answered our ga-zillion questions on both domestic and international adoption with a smile. And I even finished an entire book, Adopted For Life by Russell D. Moore, on the way there.

We had been studying the Bible looking for all the scripture and stories of adoption of God's people and his command for us to follow his model. We met as a team to go over the plan for our day-long meetings we were going to have with local church leaders and interested Christian families who were thinking of stepping up and fostering.

You think we were only preparing to encourage and show God's command to the Ethiopian families? No, God was surely prepping us as well for many blessings to come ... if we were ready to surrender.