The Pursuit of Jonah....

Well Hello!  If you are visiting here, then we must assume that you have heard the news!  We would like to thank you for being willing to follow our long journey of adoption.  It is a road that we have thought long and hard about going down.  We changed our minds at least a hundred times, but in the end, it was very clear what the Lord was calling us to do, and international adoption was it.  Leah and I began talking about adoption around 2 years ago.  We both felt like it was something we would like to pray through and see where it led.  After a few months of praying, we were both sure that the Lord was leading us to adopt.  We were not really sure where to start, so we just began by googling agencies and reading other's online stories of adoption.  Let me give you a word of advice, if you are thinking about adoption, do not read other's online stoires of adoption early on in your process.  They tend to be full of disappointment, heartache, and other things that would scare you off, and scare us off they did.  We tabled the idea, and even began talking about having a baby.

We wrestled with this for a few months, until one day, Leah came home from her small group and said these words to me, "Cory, delayed obedience is still disobedience".  She was talking about the adoption.  See, we had pushed the command that God had made in our life to the side in exchange for the comfort of doing things the way we wanted.  In that moment, we both knew that it was time to begin the adoption process.  The next day we applied for adoption through Christian World Adoption, and were accepted later in the week.  Soon after that we decided that Russia was where we felt led to adopt from.  We were assigned the region of Volgograd.  It's due south of Moscow in the Southwest part of Russia.  We know that we will be adopting a boy and we know that he will be less than two years old.  At this point, that is all that we know.  We are currently covered by a mountain of paperwork that has to be done in order to be referred a child by the Russian government.  Above all things, we know that this adoption is in God's hands.  Nothing happens here that doesn't first pass through his fingers.  There is a lot of comfort in that thought.  We have been told that we will get the opportunity to choose our child's name when we get referred.  We are going to name him Jonah.  Even though we know nothing about him, giving him a name makes him seem like he is already a part of us.  The name of this blog is "The Pursuit of Jonah", and that is what this adoption process is.  We are actively pursuing our son, just as Christ actively pursues us day in and day out.  For this we owe him everything. 

We are going to blog during this experience so that you that choose to follow the blog will know how to pray for us and for the process.  We want to use this blog to be open and vulnerable to you guys as we go through this process. We want to show our friends and family the very grace of God that has brought us to this decision and that we believe is going to lead us through this entire process. We know that there are going to be things and days that are hard, but we believe that by living this out loud that we can somehow show others what happens when we allow others into our own private lives.

We also want you to know that we covet your prayers! We truly believe that God hears our prayers and just knowing that you all will know exactly where we are at and what we need prayer for is so important for us.  Here are the things you can be praying for right now:

1.  Jonah (he may or may not be born yet, we don't know.  Pray for his biological parents also.)
2.  Volgograd
3.  Cory and Leah as we plow through all of this paperwork
4.  The home study process
5.  Finances (This is a very pricey process.  God will provide.  Keep this in your prayers)
6.  Pray that we would be carriers of the Gospel every step of this process.
7.  Our families. 

Thank you so much for your prayers.  Check back frequently as we will be updating this blog regularly.
Until then, the pursuit of Jonah continues.......