Good evening! Please...grab a coke or cup of coffee, sit down and stay a while! We've got some exciting news! :) We are adopting! And now that the word seems to be getting out, we've decided to create a blog....I have NEVER done this before, but I figure it can't hurt to give it a good ole college try!! I (Melissa) will probably be the one updating it most often, because I so enjoy writing...but don't be surprised if you see Nathan's penmanship every now-&-again, especially if there's something on his heart that he wants to say... but for now, it's just me talking for the both of us!

First, to all of our family and friends that we have not been able to tell "in person," I apologize. If we could've, we would have LOVED to tell ALL of you our good news, face-to-face...we told our parents over Easter weekend, and it was physically impossible to get to everyone in that short weekend. So now we're just letting the word spread! Hopefully, too, our blog will help everyone be on the same page - and keep you all updated at the very same time!!! :)

So.....where do I start... ?

What a journey we have been through to get to this point! We have been SO richly blessed, and our life together has been filled with so many open doors! There was one door - though - that, for whatever reason, seemed to be shut tight - and that on the other side of it were our children. We tried all sorts of ways to get through that door, and nothing seemed to work! Recently, we finally stopped trying to force our way through to the other side - we decided that "our way" was just not working, so we stopped, became silent, prayed about it, and it seems that all along, we were at the 'right' door, we were just using the 'wrong' key!

Through a course of events & contacts, we realized that maybe we could have those children we desire so badly...only in a different way than we had really thought! God does provide, and he gave us that key -- the open hearts and minds to yet another way. . .adoption.

We hope that you will enjoy reading the chronicle of our journey to becoming parents! We also earnestly desire your prayers - I'm sure that as we go through the adoption process, we will need many specific prayers. For now, please just start praying for us in general -- please pray for the child that will one day be ours, and for his or her birth family. There are so many more specifics I could probably think of -- but for now, please start with those, and I'm sure the list will be a mile long before we know it!

Please feel free to ask questions -- we want you all, our special family and friends, to know about our journey and to feel as a part of it as if you were going through a pregnancy with us! In closing this post, I want to end with the last little bit of the letter we wrote to our parents:

.......We have recently been accepted by Children’s Hope International adoption agency and want you to be “in on this” from the beginning, so that you can share in our experience of the journey to parenthood! We may or may not ever be able to make an announcement that “we’re pregnant”...but we have come to understand that the blessing is the fact that however parenthood happens, it is a miracle!

Now before us lies the inevitable mounds of paperwork, hours and hours of information gathering, many tears, hopefully even more smiles, and at last...a child. Please pray for us as we now invest more than just our thoughts and minds into fulfilling our dreams...we will need your prayers as well as your shoulders and hands as we begin this journey.

And perhaps in a bit longer than the “normal” 9 months, you will be able to help us welcome a child into the world that is ours!

Love to you all,
Nathan & Melissa

Labels: International Adoption