Love at first sight

Now, we’d only ever visited Austin once, we weren’t familiar with the area, and we didn’t know anyone who lived there. We didn’t have any wiggle room financially since we’d already poured out a few thousand dollars to start our home study for our El Salvador adoption process. I didn't exactly budget for a random weekend trip to Austin.

But I did remember receiving an e-mail about a week or so earlier from a dear friend who recently moved to Round Rock, inviting any friends to come visit when they travel through the area. She raved about the prime location of their home right outside of Austin! I call that divine timing.

 “Thank you, God!” I quickly replied to her message, explained the situation, and asked if we could visit them one of the weekends with activities scheduled for the Colombian kids to meet visiting families. My friend was so excited for us that she said we could come two weeks later for the kids’ second weekend event.

God awed me with His guidance and provision. We’d get to meet the kids and also spend quality time with our friends who moved away. He opened wide the door and said, “Go. Those children are waiting for you.”

For two weeks, I longed to meet those two kids. We prayed for them every day. However, we continued with our El Salvador adoption process until God made it clear we needed to stop. We met with our social worker a week later, survived our first interview and scheduled our second visit about three weeks later. We did mention our upcoming opportunity to meet two Colombian kids the following week, so we let her know in our first visit that our plans might change.

I nearly went crazy that last week as I waited to meet those two precious children who captured our hearts. However, we kept pretty quiet about it. We wanted to see for ourselves where God might take this without involving anyone else’s thoughts or opinions. Our friends in Round Rock used to attend a small group meeting with us, so we couldn’t help but spill our news when we told the other group members who we planned to stay with for the weekend.

We had no idea what outcome the visit might bring, but we knew we at least needed to go see. We simply had to meet this brother and sister from Colombia. We’d already seen too many connections to even try to ignore them. Our friends from our small group agreed and literally bathed us in prayer over the next week. We didn’t know what to expect, but at least it might confirm whether or not we needed to stay in the El Salvador program.

We left home on Saturday morning, June 19th, to head to Round Rock. On the way down, Mike and I used the time to talk about what might come next if we still felt the same after meeting these kids.

“So, what if things go well this weekend and we want to spend more time with the kids?” I looked toward Mike to read his facial expression when he heard my question.

“Then I guess we’ll just come back next weekend, too.” Mike’s reply actually surprised me, while at the same time confirming God’s tug on both of our hearts.

What a weekend we had ahead of us. There’s nothing better than celebrating a great reunion with friends. After enjoying an amazing dinner together, we stayed up late playing games, talking and laughing for hours. We’d traveled to Mexico with them two times in the last five years, so a lot of memories came back!

The following afternoon, July 20^th, we all headed to the lake together for an activity with the Colombian kids. The hosting program arranged a special day for the kids to celebrate Colombia’s Independence Day by letting them swim, play, and enjoy a big picnic.

I’ll never forget the moment I finally laid eyes on that little girl. I spotted her immediately in the shallow area of the water. My heart skipped a beat, and I instantly fell in love. She had no idea of the connection between us before I even said hello.