Our journey to adoption:

In 1986 Dave traveled to Nigeria with a music&drama team. As his team performed and led the people in worship night after night, one little African boy was always in the front row of the crowd singing and dancing and grinning from ear to ear. Dave longed to scoop him up and take him home.

Making disciples, helping the poor, bearing one anothers' burdens...these three areas of focus were enumerated in a sermon in 2008 by our friend and mentor Fred Nelson. I (Jen) thought, "Hmm, which one of those is my forte?" Around this time, Harvest Church was starting to plan ways to help with the devastating conditions in Ethiopia. I began to ponder how I could take care of the poor. How about adoption? I couldn't really think of any non-selfish reasons not to adopt. By the time Harvest rolled out their adoption initiative, I was ready.

Dave has always dreamed of having lots of kids, and we are both feeling like we want to add a fourth child to our family. We would like to adopt an Ethiopian boy in the 2 to 6 year-old age range.