Religion that is pure and undefiled before God, the Father, is this:

I have written before of our heart desire to adopt children one day. God has not *yet* made that a part of our family's story, but what a joy it is to see other families that God is blessing in this way. One of those families is that of my friend, Renee.

I just wanted to publicly rejoice with her and share with all of you the JOY of a godly family receiving God's blessings through adoption. Their family of 11 (currently 9 children, some biological, some through adoption) is about to grow to be a family of 13, as the adoption of their two sons in Ghana, Joel and Ebenezer, has just been finalized!

She has just written a beautiful post thinking through some of the small things that will be huge adjustments for these two new sons (not to mention the BIG things, like language, culture, etc.). Would you please take just a moment to pray for Joel & Ebenezer, that God will begin preparing their hearts for all the changes to come, and that their time of transition will be eased by His grace?

James 1 tells us that caring for widows and orphans is a way to practice TRUE religion... I am so thankful to rejoice with and offer prayer support to a family living out the love of God!

8 comments:

Kim said...

Oh, congratulations to your friend! Are those her boys in the picture? If so, they are precious. I cannot wait to adopt one day.

Jess Connell said...

Yes those precious boys are hers! So much light in their eyes.

:)
Jess

Mrs. Anna T said...

How wonderful, Jess. We are also very pro-adoption, and would love to adopt if God doesn't bless us with biological children or if our future family is relatively small.

Elspeth said...

What beautiful kids! God bless your friends for their willingness to open their hearts and homes to these precious children

Anonymous said...

I literally have this giddy butterfly in my stomach sort of feeling...I'm so excited for them!!! What a blessing! We just "adopted" (sponsored) a 4 year old from Uganda through Compassion International, but prayerfully we will be able to really adopt one day. I will definitely pray for them :)

Jennifer @ Conversion Diary said...

The other day I was trying to explain to someone what I meant by the term "Christ-like", and I just pointed them to Renee's blog. I've been following it for a few months and just think that she and her family are so amazing. The joy and peace of Christ is almost tangible when you read her site.

Renee said...

Oh thank you Jess for posting this, and thank you ALL for the prayers.

We are so humbled and awed that God has given us these children.

Love,
Renee

Anonymous said...

Amen and Amen and congratulations to you for praying these children home.

Sometimes life for those of us adopting is so crazy the best prayers for us come from our friends. We are home with our new sons and have/are experienced/ing this first hand!