As most of you know, Greg and I have both felt convinced that God was leading us to adopt again. For the past six months or so this feeling has been growing stronger. We began a homestudy in June and waited to see where God would lead. We have never started the adoption process without knowing which child we wanted to pursue, so this was very different for us. Greg liked having the ability to focus on the homestudy paperwork without the pressure of a dossier looming over us, but I had a hard time with it. I really struggled because I didn’t feel like I had a direction to move in. Over the last few weeks, as we have gotten closer and closer to having the homestudy in hand, I had started to feel almost desperate to find our child. Then a few weeks ago when I was praying, I started begging Him to show us what we were supposed to do. I knew that He was calling us to adopt, but I couldn’t figure out which child we were supposed to pursue. And then I felt Him telling me to wait. That He had the perfect child already chosen for our family. That it wasn’t my job to find this child, but He would bring him or her to us when He was ready. I felt like God was telling me to stop struggling and just trust Him completely to bring our child to us.

And the very next day The Shepherd’s Crook got an email about a little girl. She is a beautiful little girl who is 7 years old. Some of her needs sound a little bit scary. She can’t talk or communicate at all. She still wears diapers. She has seizures. She is autistic. Greg and I read through the email and both felt very sorry for her. She reminded us a lot of Jonathan and Hallie. I don’t remember which of us was the first to say, “I think she would fit in here, don’t you?”, but I think we both knew that she was our little girl. We committed to praying about it for a day or two before we did anything. The placing agency was hoping for an adoptive family without small children, so we weren’t even sure if they would allow us to adopt her. Our first step would be to write them and ask if they would consider a family like ours. After writing back and forth several times, they agreed to let us apply for her adoption.

The placing agency is calling this little girl “Shea,” so that is how we will refer to her while we are in process to adopt her. Shea was adopted from Asia several years ago. Her adoptive parents have loved her very much, but were not able to meet her many complicated needs, and they made the very difficult decision to find a new adoptive family for her. The placing agency explained to us that they  would work with the adoptive parents to choose the best new family for beautiful little Shea. We submitted a bio for the agency representative and parents to read. We scheduled a conference call to discuss Shea’s needs and our plan to meet those needs. And we found out yesterday afternoon that we had been chosen to be Shea’s new family!!

Because this is a private domestic adoption, it could move very quickly. We are hoping to have Shea home with us by Christmas time. The biggest obstacle that we are facing right now is money. This sort of domestic adoption is a lot less expensive than an international adoption, but it will still require a lot of money that we don’t have. The total cost including homestudy and travel will be just under $10,000. We have already paid for the homestudy and have part of what we need for the first set of fees. So the total we need to raise will probably be between $5000 and $7000 depending on our attorney rate, the cost of travel, the length of time we have to stay in Shea’s home state, etc. Please join us in asking God to supply that money quickly. We need to pay the $3500 fee to the agency right away, and we only have about $1000 of that right now. We are asking God to send us the other $2500 very quickly, because the agency can’t officially begin the process until they have that fee. As always, if you feel led to help us, The Shepherd’s Crook can accept tax-deductible donations for her adoption. Just remember to write Shea Godwin on the memo line.

Thank you all for your prayers and support. I’ll end with a picture of our beautiful little girl. In an attempt to protect Shea’s privacy, we did blur her face a bit. I can’t wait until she is home with us and we can show you clear pictures of her.