Back and Forth

My darling husband, Roland and I were talking today.  We were discussing countries.  This seems to be a common discussion for us lately.  Roland absolutely has not wanted to choose a country.  He feels that God has placed our children in another country and that we should not limit God by choosing, and what if we made the wrong choice.  Well, recently we were talking about this and included the children in the discussion.  There were two countries that just kept glaring at us.  The Democratic Republic of Congo and Samoa. 

As we were discussing the differences between the countries the kids got caught up in the beauty of Samoa.  So when we decided it was time to vote, and truly narrow down the country we feel led to, the kids all voted for Samoa.  This made me question if God was truly sending us out to Samoa and it was just my heart that was in the Congo.  I wanted time to pray about it, and allow God to close my heart to DR Congo.  He never did. 

Today, in discussing with Roland, we went back to the beginning.  We started discussing why we are adopting in the first place.  God tells us in Matthew 25:40 "And the King will say, I tell you the truth, when you did it to one of the least of these, my brothers and sisters, you were doing it to me".  This is why we chose to follow God's leading!  To reach out to the least of these and offer to them a life they would never know without us, without Jesus.  We chose to adopt because it is God's heart to care for the orphans, the least of these. 

Now in light of this, we had to ask ourselves, Congo or Samoa.  Why did the kids vote for Samoa that day, why did we even consider it when we felt so strongly to go to Congo?  We even said on vote day that we will go to Congo, it just may be second.  Second... Why did Congo become second?  Well we had to look at everything we had discussed.  The weather in Samoa, the beauty, the safety of travel, seeing New Zealand, basically going to pick up our baby would be more like an exquisite vacation.  We have discussed whether we would even consider taking the children to Congo for gotcha day, but they don't feel safe going there.  Well one would go, the other 2 are a bit worried about it.  Just as a by the way, never let your child watch River Monsters when you are doing a foreign adoption ;)  So I think the children were voting selfishly.  I think we all got caught up in the beauty of where we would be going and forgot the original call.

The level of care that orphans receive in Samoa is far superior to what the orphans in Congo receive.  If we are going to follow God's lead, we need to remove our own selfish desires.  Even if our selfish desires are born out of fear, we need to remove them.  My heart has always been in the Congo and after much discussion, the rest of the family has remembered. 

Now I have to ask God to forgive us, forgive us for second guessing, for forgetting, for becoming selfish.