His Awesomeness

Photo we found on Frontier Horizon

Photo we took when we 1st met him

Pixelated Photo from SDA office

Whenever we take a step of faith, God always confirms His will to us.  I have heard many people say this and I’ve experienced this many times in my own life as well.  This post is a bit long, but I wanted to share this story because it is just too incredible to keep to myself. 

During our 2^nd appointment with the SDA in Kiev, Ukraine, we were shown about 9 boys around the ages of 9-11.  Brandon’s was the first photo they showed us and I had inadvertently placed his tiny, pixilated photo and the paperwork that went with the photo on my lap.  Frankly, after being rejected by Maxim and Roman, I was a little skeptical that they were going to be able to show us any boys that would catch my eyes no matter how hard I prayed, “Lord, show me in plain path (Ps. 27:11).”  I was broken and weary and I missed my 3 daughters terribly.  I was ready to give up and come home.

As this SDA meeting was taking place, our facilitator was calling Maxim and Roman’s orphanage one last time to see if they had perhaps changed their minds overnight while we had travelled back to Kiev by train.  They had not.  That phone call was more or less for closure on our part.  If we had not heard from the boys again that they definitely did not want to be adopted, perhaps I would have always wondered if we had left too abruptly without giving them enough time to make their decision or even a 2^nd chance.  As our facilitator gave us the news, I hung my head…I wanted to cry…..And there on my lap was this file of a little boy in a black suit with a crooked bowtie.  I looked at his picture again.  Then I looked at the other 9 or so photos of boys spread before us on the little table. I looked back at his photo.  He had a great big smile.  There seemed to be no rebellion in his eyes.  I thought and prayed and finally I handed his file to Tim.  “This one.  I like this one.”  Tim looked closer at the photo and nodded.  It wasn’t until I got home from Ukraine 6 weeks later that I realized that after searching and praying for months regarding the adoption, God had literally placed our son in my lap that day in the SDA office!

We said yes to this little boy, “Sergey,” that morning, I believe around 10 a.m.  He was from a small town called Izmail which is in the Odessa oblast.  When we got back to the apartment around noon, I couldn’t “Google” the town fast enough.  I stumbled across some blogs from families who had recently traveled to Izmail to adopt their children.  I saw on the map that he lived pretty far south in Ukraine and near the Black Sea. It would be about a 10 hour train ride plus a 3 hour taxi ride.  Then, because of a recent fundraiser for a new playground at an orphanage in Izmail, the Christian orphan hosting program’s webpage called “Frontier Horizon” came up on the next Google search. (This non-profit hosting program can be found at http://www.frontierhorizon.org/ if you are interested).  On the very front page for the 2011 Summer Hosting Program was a blond haired boy’s photo.  I admired him and showed Tim the computer screen.  “Isn’t he cute? He looks almost like ‘our’ Sergey.”  Surely it was too good to be true that it was “our” boy.  What are the chances that in all the websites and of all the orphan boys in all of Ukraine (or the world for that matter) that “our” boy would have a very clear and recent photo on the very front page of the website AND I would find this photo just 2 hours after we said “Yes” to meeting him?!?  I set the thought aside and prepared to travel by train to meet this new boy “unofficially” the following day.

We met our son on Sunday.  After we got back to our hotel that night, I was clicking through photos on my laptop from the day.  One picture stood out to me.   It was one of Brandon with his face turned diagonally with a beanie on his head.  I noticed in this photo that Brandon had a tiny mole on his right cheek below his eye.  Then I thought of the picture we had seen the day before. “I wonder if that boy is him?”  I pulled up the picture from Frontier Horizon and this boy, clear as can be, had the same mole.  It was indeed our son!!!  To me, this is a miracle straight from God.  In addition to it being a miracle, this photograph was a gift.  Pictures are so important to me.  My children would call me obsessed with my love for photographs.  Somehow in His AWESOMENESS, God saw fit to confirm that night that this was the indeed the boy He had for us in the form of a photograph. 

I love the promises from these verses in Psalm 37.  Trust in the Lord and do good.  Delight yourself also in the way of the Lord; and he shall give you the desires of your heart.  Commit your way to the Lord; trust also in him; and he shall bring it to pass.  Rest in the Lord and wait patiently for him.

I think that for me the hardest part of these verses is the “waiting patiently.”  There is no doubt that I trust in His promises. However, I often feel like Peter in the Bible when he said to Jesus, “Lord, I believe, but help my unbelief” (Mark 9:24).  It is so hard when nothing seems clear and we feel decisions need to be made right now, to sit still and wait patiently.  So anyway, I want to encourage you that whatever you are facing today in faith, trust me when I say God will place His perfect will in His perfect timing right in your lap.  Not only will God place it in your lap, but He also will confirm it in your heart....because He is awesome like that!!!