….a very good place to start! From the time that we started the process to adopt Ami (Feb. 2005), I knew in my heart that we would one day be adopting again. God had placed on my heart the sincere desire to grow our family through adoption and I felt in my heart that it would likely be an older special needs boy, a brother for Benjamin, and another child to love. Fast forward to June 2007 when we decided as a family to stay connected with orphans in China by sponsoring a child. Chris wasn’t ready to adopt again, but we wanted to follow God’s command to care for orphans, so this was a small way that we could be involved.
I had heard of the Philip Hayden Foundation from someone in the China adoption community. It seemed like a good Christian organization and they had children in need of sponsorship to help cover the costs of their care. So as a family we looked at the sweet faces on their website. We thought it would be neat to choose an older boy since “someday” we would like to adopt a boy. We saw a child given the sponsorship name of “Elijah” that was eight years old (at that time, the same as Benjamin) and decided together that he was the one. Little did we know that God used that evening together around the computer to introduce us to our future son and brother! Here’s the first picture we saw of Elijah.
Elijah’s short bio on the PHF website stated that he had a complicated heart problem that had been previously diagnosed as inoperable. He had only been at PHF a short time and they were preparing to have him evaluated by doctors at their local heart hospital to see if there was anything that could be done. We printed his picture and began to pray for him daily and sent our monthly financial support.
I’ll save the next part of the story for the next post, but here are some pictures of Elijah during the summer months at PHF.
Tags: Elijah