Announcements

We announced to our church the news about Nathaniel today. David, Brandon and myself created a power point presentation. It started out by us talking abut the number of orphans in the world. And then the number of orphans in Africa. And then the number of orphans in DRC. We talked about how DRC was a beautiful country, but it was ravaged by war. And that it is one of the poorest countries in the world. Then we said but there is hope and showed James 1:27.
Then we said that there is one less orphan in DRC because.... (Here we had a picture of Nathaniel.) He will soon be adopted by... US!!!!( Here we had a picture of ourselves.) At this point everyone starts clapping.
After church I got hugs from many of the ladies congratulating me. My heart swelled with joy.

After church we had a family dinner at my mother's house. I announced to all of my brothers and their wives about Nathaniel and let Desi pass around a picture of him. One of my brothers asked Desi who the picture was of and she said "our baby".  I was so proud. Most of my family were very happy for us and very supportive, but there was one comment that annoyed me. One of my brothers asked " Aren't there enough kids in the country to adopt?" My answer was, " We tried for 6 years to adopt from this country." I was shocked by his question and didn't know quite what to say. Now that I have had time to think about it, what I should have said is, " Yes there are children in this country to adopt and we tried that. But God had another plan for us. He put a longing in our hearts for Africa. He has always known who was meant to be our child and that child was in Africa."

Blessings,
Melissa