Departure

Dearest friends and family,

We are currently traveling 567 miles per hour and over Canada. The temperature outside is negative 56 degrees! And I thought PA had a cold winter! We still have 11 1/2 hours till we land in Beijing and we are 6257 miles away! We are flying at an altitude of 35,002. It still amazes me that we are literally flying into the future as we fly into a new time zone 13 hours ahead of our EST.

Having hours of uninterrupted time to pray, to read and reflect has been oh so sweet.

I finally finished a wonderful little book called Adoption and the Gospel by Gerald Clark. I thought I would take a minute to share a bit of what I learned. James 1:27 is the key verse for this book. “An orphans foremost affliction, or distress, is not belonging to a family, and the word visit means far more than just a social call to an orphanage. Visit in the original Greek, episkeptomai, means go in person to “inspect and select” (for the purpose of discovering someone’s needs and to “select” for the purpose of helping to fulfill the needs we discover). “.

He then goes on to explain that “God wants us to visit orphans in their affliction so we will discover their desperate need for love,home,and family. He showed us by his example that fully delivering orphans from affliction includes adoption”. Because of the generosity of each one of you we are able to deliver Sophie and provide her a forever family.

He goes on to say “When we donate funds to help other families adopt, we are emulating Jesus’ sacrifice on the cross to pay for our own adoption. “. Thank you for giving extravagantly so that we can live out James 1:27 allowing one less orphan to be in the world this week. Thank you for being the hands and feet of Jesus to our family and financially supporting the cost of our whole adoption. ALL $40,000! We stand in awe over you all helping us redeem this precious child of God. We pray that you will journey with us over the next 16 days as we bring home precious Sophie.


In the grip of His grace,
Dawn, Conner, Emily and Christian