Ashley's Story Of Why Adoption

It's hard to know where to start. God has taken our family on a journey of loving other people and looking back it's very cool to see how He has changed our hearts and minds over the past few years. About 3 years ago we got involved in Safe Families (it's a program similar to foster care but they partner with churches instead of the state and the goal is to reunite kids with their parents). In the 2 years we did Safe Families (SF) we had about 12 kids in and out of our home. Some stayed as little as 24 hours and one boy lived with us for 5 months. It was challenging in many ways but was rewarding as well. We loved watching our kids love on these children they had never met. Our kids shared everything with these kids (their rooms, toys and clothes), they embraced them as siblings and loved having extra kids in our home. Sometime during our SF years, God was speaking to me about adoption but I just wasn't fully ready to listen yet. I felt very confident that He had other permanent  kids for our family, but they weren't going to from my body! =) Late in 2016 I felt very led to get involved in a different ministry called Beautiful U. This ministry places a pregnant woman with a family with the intention of them being in the home and being part of the family. We had a mom and her new born son move in with us in April of 2017, I thought maybe this was who God wanted us to have as part of our family, I was wrong...

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