Why We Love Adoption:

About one year ago, we seriously began to consider adopting a child into our family.  As we started to look more into adoption, we were deeply affected by what we learned.  UNICEF’s lowest estimate for worldwide orphans is 143 million! To help give some perspective on this number, this equals almost half of the population of the United States!   We also learned that one of the largest populations of orphans in the world is in Ethiopia, where there are about 4.6 million orphans.  To give you an idea of how many orphans this is: this is more than twice the population of New Mexico, more than the entire population of Kentucky, and almost equal to the entire population of Colorado!  We are overwhelmed as we think about these numbers! 

As we began looking at these statistics regarding Ethiopia, and considering what God’s word says about adoption, our desire to adopt increased.  We, as Christians, are amazed at God’s own adoption of us through Christ!  Even when we were rebelling against Him in our sin, God pursued us and rescued us from our helpless state and adopted us into His family.  As Galatians 4:4-5 says, “God sent forth His Son, born of a woman, born under the law, to redeem those who were under the law, so that we might receive adoption as sons.”  So, we want to adopt because God has adopted us as His children.   We also want to adopt because we believe God has called all of His children to be involved in orphan care in some way.  James 1:27 says: "pure and undefiled religion before our God and Father is this: to look after orphans and widows in their distress."

We have been blessed to learn more about our own relationship with God as Father through this process!  We believe that adoption is a wonderful thing, and we are excited about it!  "We want to be like Jesus, who sees what the Father is doing and do likewise.  And what the Father is doing, it turns out, is fighting for orphans, making them sons and daughters" (from Adopted for Life, p. 73).