Hopeful Hearts

The folks that are helping us to adopt run an unbelievable ministry for the orphanages in Ukraine. Their website address is www.hopefulheartsfoundation.org . From their page, I would recommend going to the "Learn" tab and scrolling down to Our Videos and watching one of those if you are interested. I am sure that there are lots of very good and worthwhile adoption agencies out there for parents that are looking for their children, but for Stacey and me, this was the one. (They are not an agency but more of an advisory group that really do most everything an agency would do except charge a fee. They do it as a ministry.) I went to a meeting for another adoption agency while we were still investigating and it definitely was not for us. God just somehow led us to Hopeful Hearts. From the moment that we started that meeting with a prayer, we knew that was where we were supposed to be. I could never do justice to the testimony of the lady that leads this ministry but the long and the short of it is, God led her and her family over to Ukraine on a mission trip. Her husband, a professed home body, was the one that eventually got her to go. She ended up at an orphanage with her daughter holding twin girls. The daughter looked at the mother and said something like, "Mom, we should adopt these girls." The mom replied with something like, "We don't need to adopt these girls" and the daughter's response to that comment was this: "Mom, why is your heart so hard?" Like I said, I could not do her testimony justice but as she described how well off she was, even by US standards, and that there was no reason for them not to reach out to help these girls it was really touching. So she began a journey that took her a long time and mountains of obstacles and paperwork. During this process, one of the little girls caught pneumonia and died in the orphanage. From that point on, she and numerous others have worked tirelessly to help these children. From helping nearly 180 children be adopted to raising funds and mission trips, they have helped a lot of children. There are more that need help. Some are in Ukraine and some are probably in your town.
On a different note, we have our "travel meeting" on Thursday of this week. That is when we expect to learn some of the details of our trip and get put in touch with the folks that are going to help us make our travel arrangements. I am anticipating getting a list of things that need to be done before we leave. Stacey has done a great job of getting the child arrangements lined up for while we are gone. We are so fortunate that both our families and tons of friends have volunteered to help us out. That doesn't really surprise us because we have lots of great friends but it does overwhelm us in a way. God is good. We have actually had more offers of help than we could take. What a blessing.