For the least of these: Lord, we hosted Lidiya as "Host Only" for a reason...don't you remember that?

I must rewind about a year in order to explain the title of the blog. I'll make it brief but for those of you who don't know or don't remember...this is an important detail.

Danny and I had talked about adopting for quite some time. In October of last year, I went to a Women's Retreat with our church that I did not buy a ticket to attend. I wanted to but money was tight and I just didn't feel that it was something I should spend the money on. Well, someone in our Sunday School class had sent an email out saying that she bought a ticket but could no longer go and asked if anyone wanted to go, in her place, for free. I wasn't even supposed to get that email but just 4 days earlier, I had written a little note on our class' sign in sheet that I wasn't getting emails and asked to be added. I was added to the class email list on October 12 and she sent the email out on the 13th! Soooo....I ended up going on this retreat and that is where I met Nicole Dewberry. She was sharing with the group about New Horizon's For Children and how she planned on hosting a child from the Ukraine with plans to adopt him. I looked through the list of available children and found a sweet boy from Estonia named Kirill.

I immediately emailed Danny his picture and asked him to pray about it. When I got home, I went onto New Horizon's website only to find Kirill was gone. Estonia had been pulled from the hosting program because of some kind of processing issues. A couple of weeks later, Danny decided to check the photo listing again and found another precious boy from Russia named Sasha.

Well, we went ahead and paid the fees for hosting him (after receiving the financial support) and expected him to arrive for the Christmas 2010 hosting. We also were highly considering adopted this precious boy. About a week before he was set to arrive, I received a phone call stating that he was not coming. Russia decided to pull the hosting because of some issues regarding adoption. I don't really recall all of the details but really, the details don't matter.

After all of this (and some other details that I won't go into), we really felt the Lord telling us to "wait" regarding adoption. So, when the new photo listing came out for the summer 2011 hosting, we purposely picked a "host only" girl...meaning she could not even be considered for adoption. Perfect! Now we won't even be tempted to try and adopt because "we always know better than the Lord"!

Well...that is when we met Lidiya. A 13 year old teenage orphan from the Ukraine. Did I mention that she is 13? We hosted her this past summer........and did I mention that she is 13? Haha! She was definitely all a teenage girl is expected to be! But nevertheless, we fell in love with her. We knew that she had 2 brothers, Andre who is 11 and Vlad who was getting ready to turn 15 in August. So, then I went on this mission trip and I got to see Lidiya again and meet her brothers!! Oh and guess what I found out while I was there?!?! She IS eligible for adoption WITH both of her brothers!!! WHAT?!?!? Well....that sure puts a new spin on things. Do we hear the Lord saying, "OK...........now?" Well, we aren't quite sure exactly what He is saying yet but what we do know is that we are going to try and host all three children this Christmas (so long as their director approves it). Our initial reaction to that was "no, we can't afford it" but "We can do all things through Christ who gives us strength" Phil 4:13. We surely can't turn away three orphans simply because "we can't afford it"....we are giving the Lord no room to work. Sooooo...we are going to do what seems completely and utterly impossible........we are going to host three orphans for Christmas and with that we need to raise approximately $10,000. Ummmm....yeah....that is not a typo. There is not an extra zero on the end of that. The comma IS in the correct place.....$10,000!!! So we definitely have a lot of work.

I absolutely hate asking for money. Despise it. It makes my stomach hurt just thinking about it. But that is prideful. There is nothing more humbling than asking for money and receiving it. When I was asking for money to support my mission trip, I had people that I had never met deposit money into my Paypal account. I had friends who were in another country trying to adopt with money they had to raise themselves, deposit money into my Paypal account! I also had people that I had never met, who are on a long term overseas mission trip deposit money into my Paypal account. Those people are living on monthly support themselves, yet they felt the need to help me! Talk about humbling. Humbling yet very encouraging. So, thank you to those that have supported us in the past with hosting and missions and thank you to those that will support us during this hosting.

Will we end up adopting these three children? I don't know. The Lord knows and all I can say is that we will do whatever He asks of us. If He asks us to adopt, we'll adopt. If He asks us to let them go for someone else to host/adopt, then we'll let them go. We are just on a journey to serve the Lord Jesus and we aren't sure what that looks like beyond right now. However, I can't wait to see where He takes us!!

The day we picked Lidiya up at the Charlotte Airport