The Big Table

When we bought our first house 14 years ago, we felt we needed a new dining room set. Up to that time, we had a small table and 2 chairs, adding in a highchair when our first son came along. We hadn't had a dining room in our apartment anyway. When we moved into our house, replete with an actual dining room, that little table looked pretty inadequate. At this point, our little family of 3 was about to expand to 4 and we figured it was probably time to break down and buy something that would seat our growing family indefinitely. The set we picked out would seat 6...that would be plenty of room for probably forever.

Funny how things work. We haven't been able to all fit around that table for several years now. We outgrew the "big" table we thought we would always fit. We always hoped to have several children, but never imagined we'd have a family of 8. Recently, David decided he was going to build a new table for our family so we could all actually eat a meal together in a comfortable fashion, so we sold our old dining room set and David started building. With the whole family pitching in, here is the end result (minus the benches that are in the finishing process):

 

We now have a dining room set that seats 10. That is indeed plenty of room for our current family of 8, plus the 2 new little ones we are planning on joining us in the not-too-distant future.

If you were paying attention, you may have caught that last line about 2 new ones...you read right! We knew we wanted to adopt from China again eventually, but were unsure of when that might be. We figured it would be a few years down the road before we did, but it seemed like God was leading us to do it now. We took a month to pray and seek God's will about this, and He sent confirmation after confirmation that the time was now. We received our application approval last week from CCAI (the fantastic agency we used last time) and are so excited to be on the journey to finding our 2 newest littles and following God's call on our lives. 

Our hearts break for these children, not just in China, but all across the world. We know that we can't fix all of the reasons behind why children are orphaned, but for a few we can follow God's calling on our lives to be His hands and feet, loving and caring for these precious little ones. Please pray for us as we begin our homestudy and dossier paperwork, that we are matched with the children that are meant for our family, and that God provides the necessary funds to bring them home. Most of all, pray that God gets all the glory!

 

We also want to acknowledge how blessed we are with children who see the bigger needs and are excited to get their new siblings. They are 100% behind this and actually were prodding us to adopt again way before all of this came about.  We are so thankful for this crew....they are some pretty amazing kids.

 

Thank you, dear friends, for following along and being part of this adventure that God has set us on.  We love you!