“Several years ago, we met a family who had just brought home two precious little boys from Russia. It was through this encounter that God placed a desire in our hearts to adopt. We had one biological daughter at the time and knew we wanted more children, so we began to pray. Almost eight years later, after having two more biological daughters, we could no longer deny God’s strong tugging on both of our hearts that the time was right to adopt. So, after intense prayer and consideration, we decided to adopt from Ethiopia.
“A major concern with our adoption was the cost. We did not have a huge savings account to draw from, but we knew that the Lord would make a way. In fact, through various donations and fundraisers, we saw God provide. One major blessing was receiving a generous adoption grant from Show Hope. We are tremendously humbled and thankful to the donors who made this grant possible and allowed our family to welcome our precious son into our home.
“On April 8, 2011, we were matched with a 2-year-old little boy, and we were thrilled! We met our son in July as planned and then returned home to wait, but our case, for unknown reasons, experienced delay after painful delay. That time of waiting was one of the most difficult challenges we have ever faced as a family, but all we could do was cling to God, trusting Him to uphold us. Psalm 27:14 says, ‘Wait for the LORD. Be strong and take heart and wait for the LORD.’ This verse gave us daily strength during the long months of the unknown.
“Earlier this year, our sweet 3-year old boy was placed in our arms forever. We kept his Ethiopian name, Seefen, which means ‘for you’ because we knew that this little boy was from God, ‘for us’, planned long ago. Ultimately, we may never know why God led us to adopt when He did or why we experienced so many delays along the way, but He does not ask us to understand why. He simply asks us to obey. We are so thankful that He allowed us to be a part of His beautiful plan to place orphans in families, and we are forever grateful to Show Hope donors for blessing us and being such an important part of our journey!”
-the Russell family
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