5 Years Ago Today My Life Was Changed Forever!!!

I was on vacation with my friend Sharon in Burnaby, British Columbia. She was there to conduct piano exams and I was there to enjoy a beautiful city!

Little did I know that morning after saying good-bye to her what God had planned for me! I remember sitting on the bed reading my Bible and praying when it happened. God spoke to my heart and said that I should pursue adopting a precious baby girl from China! It was something I had thought about in the past, looked into and prayed about but those other times I had always allowed the challenge of the finances to scare me off. This time it was different as that little nudge in my heart grew and grew and I truly believed that I should do this!

January 2005 was before I owned a laptop so I made my way to an Internet Cafe across from the hotel and began looking into adopting from China. I discovered that there were 3 agencies in Ontario that facilitated adoptions from China and began to contact them. (In the coming weeks I would be told by all 3 of them that their singles quotas were full and that it would probably be 3-5 YEARS before I could even go on a waiting list. Yikes!! Little did I know at that time but one agency would have room for me to go on their singles waiting list before January would be over! God is SO good!!)

Returning to January 11, 2005, I spent much of that day praying about this decision, surfing the net, wandering the mall attached to the hotel which was full of beautiful Asian babies as Vancouver has a large Asian population and, praying about what God had planned for me. From the very start I wanted this entire adoption to be given to God and I was following His leading.

When Sharon returned home from work that day I shocked her when she asked how my day was. I said, 'Great!! I'm going to adopt a baby from China!!!' Her first response was, 'Have you called your mother?' :o) I hadn't but I did call Mom and Dad the next day and when I shared the exciting news with them they were both on board 100% and mom confessed that she had thought about this for me and had been praying about it. I love that!!

I took a look back to see what pictures I might have taken that day and was surprised by what I found...and smiled! What had I done January 11th? I'd bought flowers to brighten our hotel room! How fun is that as once my file had been logged in China for 6 months, it was flowers I chose to purchase each month to celebrate my Hannah~versary!
It's 5 years later and I now have my precious Hannah home with me and God has led every step of the way! While it might have taken much longer than I imagined, it happened in God's perfect time as Hannah is the child He had prepared for me. I am amazingly blessed to have this beautiful little girl as my daughter....a match prepared in Heaven!!