Update and Memorial

Many of you receive our newsletter, but for those of you who don't, I wanted to post our most recent one. We wanted to share some of what the Lord is doing and future plans for our family:

We would like to take the opportunity to let you know about one of the ways God has been moving in our lives, personally, throughout this last year. As you know, we have lost a child, our sweet, baby girl, Payton. Many of you have been through similar experiences yourself or walked through them with a loved-one, and you know the emotions and feelings that are part of those kinds of situations. However, as believers, we also know the power that our precious heavenly Father has to restore our lives and give us hope for the future as we walk with him by faith. We have walked with God long enough to know that he does not take the lives of people we love simply to teach us a lesson. But at the same time he is too good to let the deaths of those we love remain without positive effect. So he brings about good in our lives as he gently heals us. He is sure to use these powerful events as catalysts to conform us to his image. We trust that he has done this in your lives. He is doing it in ours. God has worked many good things from Payton’s life and death, and we want to tell you, specifically, about one of those things.

God began to move in our heart while we were in the hospital with Payton. He first introduced us to a couple who also had a baby in the heart unit. We learned that they had two other children at home, and one of them had had heart surgery as a newborn as well. As we got to know them they told us of how God had moved in them after having their first child to help another child with heart defects. So they adopted Ben, a 17 month old with half a heart, from Korea. Meanwhile, at Mayo, we saw several babies come into the hospital who did not have parents who loved and cared for them. God was breaking our hearts. We had talked about adoption before, but God began to confirm to us that this was his plan for us.

Shortly after Payton died, we attended Fall Retreat with our students. Here God spoke to us again through the speaker for the weekend. He spoke about God’s heart for widows, aliens, and the fatherless. God was again challenging us to sacrificially take care of those who were uncared for to be a part of his plan to redeem them, to bless them, by bringing them out of their situation and into our family. For the next few months it seemed like every time we turned on the radio or TV adoption was the topic - families who had adopted, grown adopted children, foster parents, children from orphanages. We could not get away from talk about adoption. We continually found ourselves in tears together, when a year earlier we would have felt every freedom to change the channel. God continued to break our hearts with what was on his.

We wish we could tell you all that he has done over the past several months to confirm his call for us to adopt. After wrestling with him for some time about having biological children first we submitted to God’s plan to pursue adoption first, and we have recently applied to adopt internationally (Ethiopia, India, or Korea). And because of how God equipped us during Payton’s life, we have asked for an infant with a repairable (minor) heart defect.

We are so excited for this process. We know that it may be hard and that emotionally, financially, and time-wise the cost will be high, but we are excited to trust the Lord through it. The Lord led us early on to use the majority of Payton’s memorial to go toward the adoption as a living memorial, but we are trusting God for the remaining amount. We greatly appreciate you and your partnership in this ministry, as well as in our lives. We continue to praise the Lord for blessing us with such outstanding ministry partners!