And There Were Seven...

It's so hard to describe in words just how thankful we are to our Lord for the work that has been done in knitting our hearts with our children and making them officially ours today!  

Our morning devotional began with these words:

I, the Creator of the Universe, am with you and for you.  What more could you need?

It ended with this:

Stop all your striving, and watch to see what I will do.  I am the Lord!

For those that have children born of their hearts, you will get this, and for those that haven't, I pray you will.  When God writes the story of adoption, these kids are yours.  Your heart aches, I mean really aches, to hold them.  You find your thoughts wandering to them.  You wonder about what they are doing and who is caring for them.  You wonder if their is someone to love them until you see them.  You worry about them.  You hurt when you hear their story.  You dream for them.  They are yours!   So, when we saw their faces and touched them, every fiber of our being was connected to these sweet faces from another country.  To say that we were nervous about today (or maybe mom) is an understatement.  We knew that we would see the children this morning, but mom's stomach was in knots.  When we sat beside each other and opened our devotional, God had spoke specifically through his Word, and we were so calmed:

What, then, shall we say in response to this?  If God is for us, who can be against us?  He who did not spare his own Son, but gave him up for us all-how will he not also, along with him, graciously give us all things?

Romans 8:31-32

It was settled in our hearts that today would end as we hoped!  

The process was unbelievably smooth!  I mean unbelievably smooth!  We were there for less than 1 hour, and the preceding took less than 10 minutes.  When we finished, there were FIVE children that were no longer orphaned!  Two other families from our agency had court appearances with us!  Jason and I looked at each other and were washed with complete peace...then a few tears!

Thank you for your prayers!  We thought there was no better way to share than through pictures of our time with the children this week!  We love you all!

First Family Photo

This picture was taken minutes after we met our children.  Our meeting was priceless!

Let us introduce you to Samuel Yohannis, Sophie Serkalem, and Titus Fiekre :)

They LOVE looking at photos and naming their brothers and sister!

Samuel Yohannis is absolute sweetness!  

Sophie Serkalem is full of spunk!  Check out her curls!

Seriously!  Do they get much cuter?  Titus Fiekre took a while to warm up, but today, his afternoon consisted of peek-a-boo and open mouth kisses!

Yohannis LOVES to take random pictures.  

He and I decided to make a crazy face!

And guess who couldn't resist the urge to join us!

He's constantly hugging us and saying, "Daddy! Daddy" and "Mommy! Mommy!"

Eat. Her. Up!

We can't believe the personality in this one!

Thank you for sharing in our joy, and praise God for HIS wonderful gifts!