THE SIGNS!!!!!!!!

Many people ask me ‘why did you guys decide to adopt’ and ‘why did you chose Ethiopia.”  I am here to share my story!  It all started about 9 months ago!!  At this point in my life Brandon and I were in talks of adding another child into our life!  We wanted to give Alexa a sibling!  Knowing how difficult my first pregnancy was and how strongly we felt about adoption in the first place, the decision of WHAT to do came easy – adopt!  However, even though our hearts and souls were telling us to adopt, we still considered getting pregnant again!  Every TIME the talk came up, and we were serious about it, something DRASTIC would happen (major sicknesses) that demonstrated it was NOT what God wanted us to do!  The NEXT day, after making the decision to not get pregnant, guess what came in the mail?  An adoption letter about why to adopt!!!  

This letter lead to our MANY talks about adoption!  WHEW – this was a HUGE topic!  Hundreds of countries, hundreds of agencies = STRESS!!  We decided to ‘sit on it.”  I watched my sister get super excited about adopting from Haiti!  As she proceeded to tell me about her signs, I told her I wasn’t getting any – so I must not be meant to adopt!  She told me “Ask God, listen and wait patiently.”  I laughed at her (literally), but decided to do this!  Slowly, little things started happening – things that in time convinced me to adopt from Ethiopia!  It started with a co-workers fiancé working with adoption agencies, leading to me opening magazines that had articles about people adopting from Ethiopia.  However, we still persued other countries….and as we did we realized we did not qualify for most (signs?!?) .  We were still unsure until the next HUGE sign happened!    I was walking to my car, from my house and noticed a crumbled piece of paper.  When I picked it up, I almost fell over!  It said, “Why you should adopt from Ethiopia.”  This was like God slapping me in the face saying “Kristen, COME ON, I am giving you signs if you would just LISTEN.”  HAHA!

That was the last sign we needed.  We prayed, watched TONS of videos, and decided to jump in without looking back!!  And the coolest thing is that my sister is doing it right along with us!!!!!!  

In less than a year we will be visiting the land of coffee and waterfalls, getting our baby (God willing)!  :)