In the beginning......

In the beginning.... I am at a total loss for how to put all of my thoughts and feelings down on this introduction post of our blog. I don't even know how to blog and am not a great speller. From here on it will be about happenings, thought, feelings and the actual goings ons of our adventure to our Baby E from Ethiopia Africa. I wish I could tell you that I have always wanted to adopt, or we have always had a heart for orphans or that we were even aware of the statistics of orphans or we always knew this would happen we just didn't know when. But I CAN'T, we CAN'T. I have never even considered adoption even in the 5 years it took me to have Cole. Bryan has never even considered it either. What I can tell you is that God softened our hearts towards Africa about 7 or so years ago. We sponsored 2 children, who I now know were a part of God's plan to land us here, more on that later. We have exchanged pictures and letters from these 2 precious girls for the past how ever many years. About 3 years ago, Bryan had an opportunity to go on a mission trip to Uganda, Africa with our church, Lakeside Baptist Church. It was a wonderful experience for him to see that land and to share our Jesus with them. Our hearts were so very grateful that we had won the "birth lottery" and were born here in the great United States of America. ( As bad as it seems sometimes, we live in the best country ever) Still no adoption thoughts - I mean NONE. Fast forward to about February or March of this year. I was reading a friends blog and she had a a link to a post called "I don't want my kids to be happy" (see the exact link at the bottom right on my blog) As a mom who spends a great portion of my life doing flips to make my kids happy, I just had to see what this lady was saying. Well here is where is begins. I read the post and I want you to read it too, but I read it outloud to Bryan. The lady is adopting a baby from Ethiopia. Bryan asked me if I thought we could ever do that. I said, "NO!" he said, "Me either!" and we moved on. We both could not get "over it". We agreed to continue to pray about it because we were in the middle of building our own home and couldn't make any decisions. We both tried to just tell God that we would sponsor more kids. (It is easier to just send money afterall.) Months past and I kept being led to additional posts and videos of people just like us, who thought we had our family complete and were not expecting God to call them to adoption. I watched a video, also linked to the bottom of my blog. I balled my eyes out. I cried in the shower almost everyday, I was overwhemed with emotion anytime I had time to think about it. I later found out that Bryan was also overwhelmed with emotion especially in the shower. Weird - I know. We prayed for signs, even though we aren't suppose to and WE GOT THEM --EVERYTIME. I even got letters from the 2 different organizations that we sponsored through both telling us that "this child is no longer available/elgible to be in this program!!" Those children fulfilled their purpose in our lives and we in theirs. We finally agreed we would follow God's very clear leading in our lives, but when? We couldn't resist much longer- we had thought of every possible scenerio, the good, the bad and the worst but the only reasons we could come up with not to adopt were selfish! And looked a lot like this - TIME, MONEY, TIME, MONEY, the UNEXPECTED, TIME, MONEY, OUR KIDS, TIME, MONEY. We want our hearts to be broken by what breaks Jesus' heart and it is very clear in scripture that the fatherless/orphans, and widows are IT. We spent weeks praying over different agencies, talking to agencies, and talking to people who are using those agencies and already have there children home. We are into full blown paperwork at this time. We have absolutely no idea what the next 12-15 months look like but we are hoping that you will follow us on this journey. A journey that I am most positive that we , Bryan, Averie, Cole and I, will be the ones being blessed by this precious little one God picked for us to raise, probably more than the child will be blessed by us. Right now as I am writing this, I believe there is a woman/family praying that just found out they are pregnant -that someones heart will be softened to the point of bringing their child, who would have no chance at life, home and loving it like our own and raising them to love Jesus so that one day WE will ALL have a glorious reunion in Heaven. Because you see in Ethiopia these families give up their kids so that they can "live" - because the odds of the child living to be even 5 are not so hot. I am just overwhelmed with emotion (even as I write this) that God has chosen us, the Cantrell family, to be that family. My prayer is that God would use us and the real life feelings we have and would use our journey to soften hearts towards the orphan crisis. Please join us on this awesome/scary/excited/blessed/overwhelming/uncertain/God ordained/God inspired journey and please share our story and blog with everyone you know. Because someone shared a blog with me there will be ONE LESS!! One less orphan and we will become a family of 5.