The Decision

Bring Me Hope camps are unique. They bring in orphans from all over China and pair them with a "family" for a week. The family consists of an American, a Chinese translator, (normally a college student in China) and 1-2 orphans. The purpose is to show the love of Christ to the orphans and the translators, using only His Words when asked. So it's all about walking the walk. The first week they were there their kids were fairly young.But oh my were they cute! Here they are:

Every picture they sent and every story they shared just grabbed me. Oh how I feel in love with the little boy that Eric had! The second week the kids were older.

These children grabbed my attention for a different reason. In China, orphans cannot be adopted after the age of 14. So many of these kids were close to that age. My heart broke upon hearing this. These beautiful precious gifts from God have a huge chance of never having a forever family. As Eric and I talked (before telling the kids) we tossed around the pros and cons of all the children there. We have always said we wanted to adopt an older child. There were two main reasons for this. 1) They do not have as high of chance of being adopted 2) Our kids are now older and we really do not want to start over with a much younger child. We prayed and prayed because we wanted it to be God's decision, not ours. One morning while doing the laundry, Eric came into the laundry room and said he felt certain that God was calling us to adopt 2nd Peter from week 2. (Both of his boys were Peter's. 2nd Peter is Darth Vadar in the picture) I was thrilled! When Eric started to send pictures from China, I felt a connection with this sweet boy. Eric loved all his kids from the weeks but he had a heart connection with 2nd Peter. When we told the kids we had something to tell them, they knew immediately! When we went and told them who, they immediately guessed who! That is so God! Since we had all Peter's information, we thought this would be fairly easy. But God had a different plan (sound familiar?) for this journey. So the search began........