Surprise!

Surprise! Matt and I found out that we are expecting a baby boy due in April! We are so excited to welcome this sweet little one into our family. After two miscarriages and a host of medical issues, we had a lot of anxiety about another pregnancy.  But God surprised us, and here we are!  Everything is going well so far, and Livy is very excited to be a big sister!

A few people  have asked us if this changes anything with our adoption. Yes, and no. We are still so excited to adopt a kiddo from eastern Europe! We believe (and it's been affirmed again and again) that God has called us to welcome a child in need into our family.  We are still adopting internationally through Lifeline. The only thing that may change is the country that we adopt from. Right now we are enrolled in their Hungary program. We love Hungary! We're so drawn to its culture and our hearts go out to the marginalized Roma population who make up the majority of Hungary's orphans. All this being said, Hungary requires that you keep birth order (meaning the child that you adopt must be the youngest child in your home at the time of the adoption). It also requires a 45 day stay in country. Both of these things were a good fit for our family when we just had Livy, and the timeline looked like she'd be about preschool age when the adoption would be finalized. This new baby makes that timeline a little more of a challenge. Since we'd have to wait until the baby was at least 2 to be matched (based on the current youngest age of waiting children), Liv would at least be in Kindergarten.  We would be traveling with her and a two year old to stay in Hungary for 45 days. I'd be trying to home school Liv abroad, with a 2 year old running around, while Matt would be working remotely.  In talking with our social worker, we had a hard time envisioning how those logistics would work out and still give us the opportunity to bond well with our adopted kiddo in country.

Our social worker is a wonderful wealth of wisdom and encouragement. After meeting with her and the head of Eurasia programs at Lifeline, we found an absolutely wonderful alternative. Lifeline has a sister program in Bulgaria. The program is very similar and also places mostly Roma children. The cultures have several parallels as well. As we've spent the past few months praying over and considering it, we have come to love Bulgaria with its amazing people and traditions! We will not be officially switching over to Bulgaria until our baby is born in April (just because a lot of things can happen in international adoption in a 5 month period, and our social worker advised us to wait).  We will, however, keep working on the education requirements of our adoption process while we work with a local agency to schedule our home study.  Our social worker has also advised us to keep our fundraising going strong! 

We are doing another push towards completing our puzzle fundraiser this month. We hope to have 200 more puzzle pieces sponsored by November 30th! Please join us in helping us reach this goal! 
 
In our next update, we'll share a little more about Bulgaria and its beautiful culture, as well as the needs of its waiting children. Stay tuned and please pray for our family as God leads us on this amazing adventure!

Love,

The Johnsons 

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Johnson Family/Adoption Update

Image
  Hey guys! It’s been a while since Matt and I have updated you on our family and adoption process. We’re so sorry for the delay! Life has been full of surprises, joy, trials, and a whole lot of busyness. We’re happy to report that our family of 4 is thriving and enjoying this sweet season of life with littles! In April of last year, we welcomed our (surprise!) sweet baby boy, Samuel Reece. He was healthy, strong, and a champion nurser right from the start. At about 2-3 weeks old we started to notice some signs of food allergies/sensitivities. Then at the 9-12 week mark we started to have greater concerns regarding his feeding. He had begun to require a lot of coaxing to eat, and we tried everything to keep him growing and healthy. We met with lactation consultants, speech therapists, and pediatricians. No one could determine what was causing his resistance to eat. At the beginning of August things got scary. Sam completely stopped eating, dropped to beneath the 1 st  percentile, and w
Read more

Our Story

Image
  After much prayer and consideration we have decided to grow our family through adoption!  Adoption has always been dear to our hearts. We had considered it before our daughter, Olivia, was born, but decided we'd like to have biological kiddos first. After Livy, we had two miscarriages. Our beautiful babies, named Hope and Noah, were delivered directly into the arms of Jesus. Through our heartbreak and loss, we have discovered great hope that God has a plan for gifting us with another little one to love. We desperately want to parent a kiddo in need while also giving Livy a new brother or sister.  We've discerned that the next step of our family's journey is adopting internationally through an organization called Lifeline.  We were accepted into their Hungary program, and expect the adoption to be finalized over the next few years.  We were drawn to Hungary after learning about its largest orphan population, the Roma children.  The Roma people (often negatively referred to
Read more

Puzzle Fundraiser

Image
International adoption is expensive. Like crazy expensive. Unfortunately, this reality keeps so many amazing couples from taking the steps to adopt. There is an expenses page in our adoption packet that makes me shiver every time I glance at it! When we first made the decision to adopt, one of the fears that we needed to confront was fundraising.  There aren’t many things more humbling than asking other people for money. It’s uncomfortable. It’s vulnerable. The more we have talked about it though, the more we understand that it isn’t about asking people for money, but asking them to be a part of our story- our child’s story, and how they got to come home. So we are so excited about this PUZZLE FUNDRAISER!  It works like this:   1. We designed a 520 piece puzzle (pictured above). The border is a piece of Hungarian folk art as a celebration of our child’s country and culture of origin. In the center it says, “For This Child We Have Prayed.” This is a scripture reference from 1 Samuel 1:
Read more