Its a girl!

 (This is a note from April 2011 - I am posting it to update folks who may not know our story to this point.)

May  2011

Hello dear family and friends,

We are excited to share that we are expecting the arrival of our daughter, Sara (sometime in the fall or winter)!!!  She is a beautiful 13 year old girl from Ethiopia (she is 4’ 10” tall and 80 lbs).

Wow, we are just marveling at the Lord and how He has so lovingly brought us along on this journey of His.

• We had talked through the years about how great it would be to adopt, though never actually knowing anyone who had done it and never really pursued how to go about it.
• When we lived in Kansas we talked a little bit more about it… and talked a bit more… continuing to float the idea around…
• When in Texas we had some friends who had adopted and we began our “informational interviews”. 
• We were blessed with Zayden and began seriously praying and asking the Lord if sending Zayden meant it may also be the right time for us to continue to grow our family through adoption.
• When we moved to Illinois we searched for a house that had another bedroom for our adopted child that we were seeking the Lord to send to us.
• Once we got settled into our home in Illinois we looked into adoption agencies, support groups and read as much information as we could (packets from adoption agencies, websites, books, more informational interviews etc.)  God sent us a lot of people who had adopted children of various ages that were adopted both domestically (from US) and internationally.
• After six months of extensive research we felt we knew the agencies that God wanted us to use (one agency to do our “home study” and another one to be our placing agency that would match us with our child).
• Our initial idea was to seek a little girl a couple of years older than Zayden. After more research we found out there are over 147 million orphans in the world… We realized that these children who not only don’t get hugs, kisses and needed guidance … but many of them don’t even have  food to eat (they do once they get to orphanages but many of them have to survive on the streets until someone takes them in to be cared for.  Not just older kids but little ones too.) Our hearts ached. We went to the Lord and said yes to Him to whomever He wanted to send us… a little girl, siblings… whomever… it was up to Him. We told the Lord yes to more than one child, we told our agency that we were open to a sibling group … a younger boy to share a room with Zayden and an older sister who would have her own room (as we look back we see this is the point when God began opening our hearts to an older girl).
• In February 2010 we stepped off the edge of “comfortable” and began our journey of discovery through adoption. Swimming through the sea of paperwork, and jumping through various hoops (finger printings, background checks, official documents etc.). Though at the beginning it all seemed a bit daunting, no step was too big or too difficult, and before we knew it each item had been checked off the list.
• We began the process to answer the ache on our hearts that God gave us to adopt. We told Him that we need His help to: do all the steps that were needed, to choose the child/ children He planned for us to be matched with and for Him to make a way to finance it ($30,000).

This is where we are just a year later in our journey…

• God helped us traverse through all the paperwork and the “to do list” with ease.
• God provided us with the peace of who He has chosen to match us with, beyond a shadow of a doubt. We had no idea how this part was going to work. We got to the point of being a “waiting family” meaning all of our paperwork was done and we were ready to be matched. God ached Chris and my hearts, in an overwhelming way, that He didn’t want us to wait to be matched He wanted us to search the children that we ready to be adopted.  There are many amazing children, all adorable, all lovable… I remember telling the Lord point blank in my prayer time… “Lord, I can’t choose a child, I want to love them all… please Lord make it clear to us who it is.”  Through a series of circumstances we were shown a girl’s picture who didn’t “fit the idea” we thought we were to follow in adoption… she wasn’t close to Zayden’s age, she wasn’t part of a sibling group, she was actually close to Molly’s age… this was from far in left field… but the second I saw her picture I couldn’t get her face out of my mind. We asked for her information. They sent us pictures, information and a video of Sara. The second I saw the video I had a feeling I had not experienced before…it was relief, ache, joy and knowing all at the same time. After Chris saw the video he turned to me and said “well, that is her”. Later we showed it to Molly and then a little while later to Daniel (separately) and both of their responses were about the same, verbatim, “I want her as my sister”. Each one of us, in our own moments, the Lord showed us the discernment and clarity that we had sought.
• The Lord made a way for the money to be there. We have paid all of our adoption fees. We are just at the point now of traveling. We have between now and the fall and we are confident the Lord will send the money for that too. We are hoping that Daniel can go on one of the trips and Molly can go on the other (while we have our family or dear friends who are “family” stay with the kids while we are gone.)

We will be traveling in the fall / winter time frame…

• On the current court dockets (as of Feb. 2011) there were more than 800 cases they needed to process.  Due to each one of these cases needing to be investigated fully to make sure all of their information is accurate, the process takes awhile (things there are also done by hand and traveling to verify information is very complicated and time consuming).  Our case is behind those 800 and they close the courts for their rainy season which is in our August / September time. We are hoping to get a court date as soon as possible and we are thinking that the earliest possibility would be in October, though we won’t know until things get closer. We are just trusting in the Lord’s timing for all things to come together at the time He has planned.

• We need to travel to Ethiopia in two trips.
• The first trip we will get to travel to Sara’s orphanage and meet her. I am not certain how much time we will get to spend with her on that trip, perhaps we will get to see her for a couple of days. When we are there we will also need to go to court to finalize more adoption documents for the Ethiopian and American governments; stating that yes we have met Sara and we want to adopt her. After we do this we need to travel back to the US.  While we are gone they will move Sara to another orphanage where she will be with children from our agency that are waiting for their adoptive families to come get them as well.
• The second trip will be after a period of 6-8 weeks?? (could be longer) we will travel back to Ethiopia (once we have another court date). On this visit Sara will stay with us in our hotel for a week J. This will be a period of bonding while waiting on the last official documents to be completed (her visa etc.). At the end of this week we will get to bring Sara home to be with us as our “officially real daughter”.

Throughout this journey God has taught us many things about Himself.

• He is.  He is real. He is in control. He makes a way where there seems to be no way.
• Our job is to be obedient.
• e willHe HHe will answer prayer. His way. In His time.
• He is HHe is amazing and it is very easy to see that when we are looking.
• He iHHHe is the giver of all good things.  Yes He has been the one who has provided our knowledge by the various means, He is the one who has provided us the support (financial, other adoptive families, agencies etc.) He has also provided us peace of what agency to use, what country to adopt from, and who our daughter is. He has provided us a new ache in our hearts… one that is from the love that He has already given us for Sara. We are in love with her already just as parents are from the news of their pregnancy, from the view of them from the ultrasound and the embrace when they hold them for the first time. Being seasoned parents we know the joy of meeting our child, we know the joy of holding them. We long to hold Sara. We long to share our lives with her. The idea of adopting a 13 year old a couple of years ago would be like adopting a stranger, someone I would need to grow to love… now God has already blessed us with the parental love that comes from having a child… it is amazing… she is not being “birthed” by me but she is being brought to me… chosen by our Heavenly Father just as the other 3 children were.
• SomSomeone asked me a bizarre question… or so I thought it was at the time… “Do you know what her name means?”… in all the excitement and busyness that thought to look it up never occurred to me.  I later did look it up. It means “princess” in Hebrew.  This princess was chosen by the King Himself to be joined into our family forever more.  It made me realize that adoption is such a beautiful way to enter a family. God Himself only having One Begotten (natural born) Son (John 3:16) had chosen out of His rich mercy and amazing love to adopt those of us who believe in our hearts that Christ died so our sins would be forgiven and so we could live a full life here on earth seeking to please Him and do His good and perfect will before we get to spend an eternity with Him in Heaven. I praise our King for adopting each of us so we can be part of His royal family; living as princes and princesses in His forever Kingdom. 

We have had folks ask us if they could partner with us in bringing Sara home…

• We urge people to pray.
• Pray for our travels to be safe and our bonding be smooth.
• Pray for our children we are staying in the US to have a fun and safe time.
• Pray for all of our finances to continue to work out.
• Pray for more people to answer the call of adoption. (At our placing agency they had over 150 families waiting for children and we were the only family seeking a child over 5 years old.)
• Pray for how you can help with the orphan crisis in the world. (Ways to help – here are some great websites that can give you more information: WACAP (our agency) – help make adoption more affordable and help with care of orphans in orphanages, Holt International – support a specific child until they are adopted, World Vision – you can support a child so that they can stay with their family.
• If folks want to help us financially you can send $ to us for our adoption account. We have managed to pay all of our adoption fees except our travel expenses (from our savings and we have taken out a loan). We still need to buy our airline tickets and pay for our 2 stays in Ethiopia of 1 week each so if anyone feels lead to help us with those expenses it would be a great blessing.
• You can send us $ for items or send us items for us to bring in our extra suitcases for the orphans (formula, medicines etc. Email me if you want more details on this).

We Praise the Lord what He has done and is doing.  We pray that we would be sensitive to His leading throughout this whole adoption and that He will receive all the glory and praise as it all comes together and as He unites us with our precious daughter.

Please pray also for all of our children to grow closer in Christ and for their, and our physical protection for our health and safety throughout this process.  We specifically lift up our Sara right now that the Lord would comfort her heart and give her joy and peace that He has chosen a family for her to belong to (His heavenly one and His earthly one here in Illinois J).

Thank you for all of your love and support!

Love the Illinois Robbins Nest  J J J J J …….  J 

Ephesians 1:4-6 (New International Version)

⁴For he chose us in him before the creation of the world to be holy and blameless in his sight. In love ⁵he^[a] predestined us to be adopted as his sons through Jesus Christ, in accordance with his pleasure and will— ⁶to the praise of his glorious grace, which he has freely given us in the One he loves.

         

Father to the fatherless, defender of widows — this is God, whose dwelling is holy.
God places the lonely in families.

Psalms 68:5-6

Romans 8:15 For ye have not received the spirit of bondage again to fear; but ye have received the Spirit of adoption, whereby we cry, Abba, Father.