The last few months have given us so much to be thankful for. We celebrated Forrest's baby dedication at our church November 13th with our family and a few dear friends. It was such a sweet time for our family, and I am so grateful to be a part of a church that embraces adoption. Our pastor, Brad, does some of the sweetest baby dedications I've ever been a part of it, and I say this not because he is our pastor. I said this long before we every joined the church. Our very first Sunday visiting our church we witnessed the dedication of a precious little girl who had recently been adopted from China. I was almost brought to tears by his words and true longing for this little girl to come to know the Lord. Our church also kicked off an adoption/orphan ministry the same weekend as Forrest's dedication. This was an answer to a prayer that had been on my heart for over a year. I longed for our church and community to develop a "culture of adoption" but I had no idea how to accomplish it. Just before Forrest was born we were asked to be on a committee to create such a ministry within our church! God brought a sweet group of people together who all share a heart for adoption and orphan care. What a blessing! Our first meeting brought a much larger crowd than I anticipated, and we are very excited to see where God takes this ministry and what He does in our community through it.
Adoption is not a quick process, even after the baby is born. There are still waiting periods, court orders, petitions and other legal matters that still have to take place. Our court date was postponed a few times, but we were able to finalized the day before Thanksgiving! It truly gave us so much to be thankful for! The court did not tell us anything we didn't know - Forrest was already ours, but there was something about the "finality" of his adoption process that just made our hearts happy. It was also a reminder to me that he really belongs to the Lord. We are simply entrusted with his care for as long as the Lord allows, and for that we are thankful.
Our first Christmas with Forrest was a lot of fun...I think more for us than for him! He really only wanted to eat the wrapping paper! He was a trooper making all the rounds with us to visit our family. We took him to see Santa on Christmas Eve and he didn't make a peep! We thought for sure he would have a meltdown, but not our little man - he sat in Santa's lap and just smiled!
The new year has been relatively uneventful. In early February we made our first weekend trip away with Forrest to a Young Life camp with some dear friends. We had a great time and Forrest did surprisingly well, considering we were often surrounded by 300+ loud teenagers. It was a fun weekend with friends, but it was also exciting to see teenagers encounter Jesus, many for the first time. It was a blessing to see Young Life leaders love on these teenagers not only because they love kids, but because they love Jesus and so desperately want them to know Him.
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