Why Rwanda?

L:

That's a good question.

As our wait with China continued to lengthen, we began to ask the Lord if we should pursue another adoption while we waited. We were hoping to adopt again after our first adoption was complete. Perhaps we should instead adopt “again” now before our China adoption was complete? As we continued to pray and talk about this, our hearts were pulled more and more to pursue a concurrent adoption.

We wanted to stay with America World Adoption Agency because they are so committed to doing adoption in the right ways for all the right reasons. As we considered the other available countries with AWAA, Rwanda seemed like the logical choice for us for many reasons. However, we wanted to be sure.

When we had made the decision to adopt through China, three factors had come together to confirm our decision- a great need, a fairly smooth process, and China kept coming up everywhere in our lives during that period. With Rwanda, the first two factors seemed to be true again, but Rwanda just really wasn’t in our lives at all.

We decided, therefore, to ask the Lord to bring Rwanda into our lives if that was the country He wanted us to choose. We knew that it might not be His will to reveal His plan in this way. If Rwanda didn’t start popping up in our lives, that didn’t necessarily mean that He didn’t want us to go with Rwanda. However, if He did bring Rwanda to us in obvious ways, we’d know for sure that that was His direction for us.

Well, the next day, Nick was watching football and was flipping through the channels during the commercials. He stopped on a show about gorillas. After several minutes, we realized they were in Rwanda! Pretty cool. The next night, we were at our weekly meeting with our Truth Project group. The video that night included something about Rwanda!! We looked at each other and smiled. It seemed that maybe God was confirming His plan for our adoption to us in just the way we had asked. The next day, I received an e-mail newsletter. I hadn’t opened these e-mails for several months but decided to read this one. It had an article about Rwanda!!!

Three days in a row, God gave us a specific message about Rwanda. He didn’t have to answer our prayer in this way, but we are so thankful that He chose to give us this special gift. The confirmations didn’t continue daily, but He has brought Rwanda into our lives repeatedly since then and we are growing in love for this country and its people. We can’t wait until we get to travel!