Water Walking

If you are familiar with the story of Jesus walking on water, you know that His friend Peter joined Him, walking on the waves. Peter saw God at work and asked if he could join. Next thing Peter knew, he was climbing out of the boat and onto the sea. But as Peter approached Jesus, he got fixed on the wind and the waves. He got scared, and he started to sink.
God could have removed the wind and the waves. He could have made the sea calm as glass, but He didn't.

As we stepped out to start another adoption adventure, God did not remove the waves. 2 days after we signed up with YWAM, the agency stopped accepting families.

The Ministry of Women's Affairs (MOWA) in the region of Ethiopia where our agency's orphanages are located had been closed for the last 6 months while they restructured and restaffed. Our agency kept hearing that MOWA would reopen any day but any day was not coming. So what that meant was no adoptions could be processed, no referrals could be issued, and no new children could be admitted to the orphanages. It was the first time ever that our agency had more families than children-which is crazy because there are million of orphaned kids in Ethiopia (the reasons why in another post). And for that reason, they decided to stop taking new families-2 days after we were accepted to the program.

Like Peter our first reaction was one of fear. Oh no, they are shutting down. Will we be able to get a child? What if we do all this work for nothing? We tried not to worry but wondered if we missed God. And tried to figure out why He would direct us to this agency and then have it "shut" 2 days afterwards.

But just like Peter, God was there to grab us. He quickly reminded us that He was in control. Sure, everything looked hopeless. But this was God's story and we had been here before. We know that when you step out to follow God, you are going to be met with wind and waves. We know that there are no certainties with international adoption (like when we lost the referral of a child during our first adoption). Like Peter we needed to keep our eyes on Jesus. The timing of our journey was no accident.

Last week we received an email saying that the MOWA opened!! We praised God and thanked him for taking care of us and the son we have yet to meet. God's plans are never thwarted by the things that seem too big or hopeless to us!

There will be more obstacles, many. There will be times when it seems there is no way. But that's what it is like when you go water walking.