Why James 1:27?

We chose to call our blog Our James 1:27 Life because it represents our family well.

"...to take care of widows..."

When we got married we moved into a house on 5 acres right next door to David's parents and their 5 acres of land. When David's father died 5 years later, we made a vow to take care of his mother in anyway we could. Over the years that has meant fixing things that were broken, cutting grass, and taking her to the doctor. Last year a situation arose where it became necessary for us to move in with her( we moved into her house instead of her moving into our house because her house is much larger and she just plain didn't want to move).

Melissa's parents moved a trailer onto our property in 1994. Her father died in 2004 after a 9 year battle with cancer. We made the same vow for her mother. We have stayed with her during illnesses and surgeries, done maintanence on her house, cut grass and anything else that was needed to be done. It might be necessary for her to move in with us  sometime in the future as well.

"...and orphans in their distress..."

In 2008, our oldest child and only daughter, Tina, no longer wanted to live by our rules and so at the age of 19 she moved out. She not only walked away for us, but she also walked away from her faith which broke our hearts. After less then a year on her own, she found out she was pregnant. When she told us, she said that she did not want to be pregnant and was not prepared to be  a parent. We thank the Lord that she chose not to have an abortion. She knew that we were trying to adopt and said she would like us to adopt her child. We were, of course, willing. But the birth father was not. He refused to give permission. And so in February of 2010, our first granddaughter Desiree was born. Tina decided to parent her child. She tried to be a single parent (with lots of help from us) for 4 months,but she was not happy. She finally came to us and asked if we would raise her daughter. Desiree's father agreed to give us guardianship of her and she has lived with us ever since. She is our little princess. Tina and Desiree's father are still in her life, but we are her primary care givers.
And now,as I mentioned in yesterday's post, we are adopting an orphan from Ethiopia.

So our house is pretty full with 4 generations living there and hopefully it will be a
multicultural one as well. 

Blessings until next time,
Melissa and David

Welcome to our blog! We are David and Melissa. Let us tell you a little about ourselves. We have been married since 1988. We have 3 children : Tina, Josh, and Brandon. We are also raising our granddaughter Desiree ( we'll explain that on another post). And now we feel called to adopt a child from Ethiopia.

It has been a long and winding road to get to this point. All 3 of my pregnancies were high risk and after our last, my doctor advised me not to have any more. We agreed and I had my tubes tied. But I still felt the desire for more children. I felt called to adopt immediately, but David wasn't quite ready. I prayed for 6 years and God finally changed David's heart. Even though I felt called to adopt from Africa, we were frieghtened by the cost. So we decided to start the process to adopt from foster care. We waited for 2 years and never had a placement. We knew that foster care wasn't right for us. Then we changed to a private agency for a domestic infant adoption. We waited for almost  two and a half years with no placement. Our social worker suggested that we look into other agencies.

That is when I began to feel the pull toward Africa again. I did research for months and did a lot of praying. Finally, we decided to just trust God to provide and took the plunge. We are at the VERY beginning of this journey. We will need lots of prayer and support. Hopefully, we will have many updates as we progress through this process.

Blessings,
David and Melissa