Our Story

January 20, 2011

I guess it's about time I posted our story on the blog. Our story of our faith journey to Anya (Emily) began when we saw her picture back in February of 2010. Tim and I have been married for 27 years and have 3 wonderful biological kids-Christopher 27, Danielle 24, and Jordan 17. We followed the call to adopt for the first time in 2004 when Hanna Fusong Faith joined our family from the Yunnan province of China. In 2005 we followed the call to our first special needs adoption of Caleb Adam YaBo from the Henan province of China. His special need was a heart defect called ventral septal defect. This was repaired and he is a healthy energetic 7 year old. In 2007 we brought home Gracie Yuhong Hope also special needs from the Hunan provice-our spicy girl. She was failure to thrive, developmental delay and had syndactyly of the hands and feet. After surgery and much Physical and Occupational therapy she is a thriving 7 year old too. Then in 2009 we were called to our precisous Gideon James Meng Niu in the Jiangxi province. He was physically handicapped with a condition called arthrogryposis multiplex congenita. He has had 2 surgeries since coming home, been casted more than he cares to and goes thru much physical and occupational therapy. He is our mighty warrior at a sweet age of 4. So now we are being called way out of our comfort zone. We are not going back to China. Our sweet girl is in Eastern Europe. She is 8 years old- the oldest we have adopted. She is also a little girl with a diagnosis of Down Syndrome. There have been those that question whether we are doing the right thing or not. They feel we have too many children already with too many needs and that they will suffer if we bring another child with special needs home. The expense-well we don't have the money this is true. We are too old. But God didn't ask us if everything was perfect for us to follow him. He just said follow. We are being obedient. We know he is calling us once again to a beautiful blessing and we don't want to miss out on what he has planned. So let me introduce you to our beautiful little blessing-Anya Elizabeth.