Category: family

Amanda and I went to watch Sound of Hope this weekend. It is a story that hits close to home.

In 2008 I took on a position in a Missions board within our Church family. While I grew up dirt poor (e.g., no plumbing or running water), I still lived a sheltered life where God always provided for us, and to be fair, “poor” is a subjective word. We were money poor, but we were family wealthy.

When I became involved in the Missions board, a whole new world of poverty, true poverty, pain, and suffering opened before me. In 2008, a visiting bishop from Kenya prayed over our family, asking God to give us strength in the decisions we were about to make. What decisions?

My wife and I left from services with a heavy heart that drew us, unbeknownst to each other to go home, separately jump on our computers, and still unknowing to the other, we both started searching for children in need. A few days later we finally got the courage to speak out the plans that God placed in our hearts, and providentially, we had both found the same little girl from the same orphanage in Haiti.

Like John, (although somewhat figuratively) I could fill a scroll that stretched from one end of the heavens to the other in describing to you all the wonderful and amazing “God moments” we had over the next two years; it is AMAZING to see God’s power manifest in front of your eyes, and I can tell you with unwavering commitment that God performed many powerful miracles along the way – His only ask for us, was to trust in Him.

Whenever our hard work and efforts came to a dead end (so many times!), whenever we got to the end of our rope, once we gave up and let God take control, the miracles flooded in. It’s funny, looking back, how many times I would try to do things within my own power and strength, only once again having to turn to God in humility and ask. That’s all it took. Ask and you shall receive.

Adoption, is not an easy thing though, with it comes struggles, physical, emotional, and financial. There are so many adjustments needed, there is often brokenness there can be feelings of abandonment, and even medical and psychological issues. But God is good, and what better way to truly understand what it means to be “adopted” into God’s family. Sometimes when the tide of grief comes over one of our adopted children, I have to remind them, that we chose them, how much more so is that powerful bound, where we chose them, just like God chooses us.

Sound of Hope was a tear-jerker through and through. It didn’t just show the happy side of adoption, it showed some of the hard times, the bad times, and maybe even a little bit of the fringe of the ugly, but God is good, all the time.

I commend this movie to you, and hope it will be an inspiration wherever you are in your walk of life and your faith. Perhaps you are already involved in some way in caring for orphans and widows, perhaps this movie might plant a seed to stir you up for even more noble things.

https://www.angel.com/movies/sound-of-hope-the-story-of-possum-trot

Thank you for letting me share a little bit of my story, maybe someday I will share more!