A Destiny Decided By Hours....from Andy

 Imagine this: 14 years old, lived in an orphanage your entire life, your country finally opens for international adoption a few years ago, seeing other younger children find families, knowing that you may be stuck simply because the timing did not work out for you. You treasure your education, appreciate any meal.....you posses infinite hope in spite of unimaginable hardship.

And then one day, a single picture of you and your little brother finds its way in front of the eyes of a single perfect soul somewhere literally on the other side of the planet. You learn that this person is trying to rescue you. Without even hearing her voice, to you, she is already, "Mum". Yes Mum.

Now imagine this: a contemporary American family with three awesome kids, two working parents, one complicated weekly itinerary and zero margin of error for monthly cashflow. So many blessings, so many distractions, so many challenges......so many reasons NOT to make our life any more complicated.

Yet, here we are. Andrea and Evan on a flight to Ghana to see Joseph and Askia for the first time.
In spite of the announcement from Ghana suspending international adoption, it seems that our status is barely on the right side of the cut-off date. Literally by one day. Wow. Think of how that one day changed the destiny of these boys, our family and yes even you- our friends. There are still many obstacles before us. More mountains to move in this very complicated and red-tape infested process.
We are simply taking it one step and one day and one crisis at a time. Through faith.

Why are we doing this?

When I tell people that we have 3 biological kids and we are in the process of adopting 2 older boys from Ghana, the surface reaction is usually something like " wow, that's awesome, you guys are amazing humanitarians , blah blah blah" .  However, I sense that their thought bubble is often saying "seriously, do you know what your getting yourselves into?" In fact, this was MY initial reaction to the concept. Honestly, we really don't know what we are getting ourselves into.

All I know is that I love my wife, I love my family and that our whole life together has been blessed and rewarded for over 26 years through a willingness to take bold action. We acquired a crack house and renovated it ourselves by hand. We got a gas station and turned it into an institution. We bought a 5 bedroom riverfront house in 1994 with NO MONEY and NO CHILDREN. Our life has been defined by crazy faith.

To pull this off and bring these boys here; to give them hope, a family and a future ....we will need your faith too.

Love trumps Greed.

Andy