Our Adoption Story---Part Three

[If you are just dropping in and are wondering about Part One and Part Two of this story, simply scroll downward.] Picking up where I left off...

...As is our custom with major life decisions, Blake and I began to pray. The primary questions we wanted to ask were, "God, is this idea from You?" and "What do we do next?" Now we don't profess to hear God perfectly, but we had a strong sense that we should pursue this.

The very next Sunday, our church bulletin contained the following announcement:
"Adoption Information Meeting this Friday:
Anyone interested in adopting from Kazakhstan
or Russia, please come to an informational
meeting in Room 120 this Friday at 6pm."

I think an usher must have helped me off the floor and back into my pew after I read this! (Blake was out of town that weekend but I called to tell him about the "coincidental" announcement.)

We already had plans for that Friday evening, but we rearranged everything to attend. We were completely unprepared for what we experienced that night.

We took our seats and the information packets we were handed by the adoption agency director, a warm Ukrainian-American woman with a friendly smile. A minute later we were holding an enormous photo album --- all snapshots of children who had been placed in families---and who now had reason to smile.

We scanned the captions identifying the children's birth cities and I began to cry. Again!?

"Ust-Kamenogorsk....Ust-Kamenogorsk....Ust-Kamenogorsk....Ust-Kamenogorsk....Ust-Kamenogorsk." There were a few other cities listed in that album, but Ust-Kamenogorsk was all I remember.

See, Blake and I used to call Ust-Kamenogorsk our home.