Welcome to our Adoption Blog! We are on a very special journey and we want to share it with you, our friends and family. If you are interested in why we made the choice to adopt, take a moment to read our story below. You can also read our latest Blog entries and leave an encouraging note in our Guestbook. Please keep us in your prayers as we wait on God to bring Jenny Stefania home!
Our Adoption Story
This website is all about the adoption of our youngest daughter, Jenny. Many have asked us to give the details that led up to this special time so this is an attempt to do that. The story, however, begins over 33 years ago when we decided to start having children. It was always our desire to adopt. Kay worked in the residential treatment center at Bethany Christian Services in
Grand Rapids
so we were keenly aware of the need for homes for children. We decided that we would have two biological children and then adopt two. However, God had a different plan in mind. We were unable to conceive so we decided to go ahead and pursue adoption since that was part of our original plan anyway. Because Rick wasn’t old enough to begin an American adoption, we started the process of foreign adoption through Holt which primarily worked with Korean children. During the home study, however, we became aware of an American born Chinese baby that would be born soon. Long story short, God brought Jodi into our family.
After a few years we decided to begin another adoption process – possibly adopting a child from
China
. That all changed when we learned that Kay was pregnant and 9 months later, Sara was born. A few years later along came Rebecca. We didn’t give much thought to adopting again for many years. Occasionally we would read of a child in the
Bethany
magazines, but our family situation made it difficult to consider. Then one day we read in
Bethany
’s magazine of a little girl from
Eastern Europe
who needed a home. We called the social worker that worked with Sara and Jason and the adoption of our granddaughters, Sandy and Maribel. Mary said that the child had already been adopted, but that she would like to keep our names to contact as older children become available. We said no, that we weren’t really pursuing it, just that the child’s picture touched our hearts. At the time, Rick prayed one of those prayers where we tell God our heart’s desire. He prayed that if this was what they should do, that it would be really great if God would bring them a child from Sandy and Maribel’s country of
Colombia
. We enjoyed visiting there with the girls and it would all be so perfect. A few months later, Mary sent Sara an e-mail entitled, “Jenny needs a home” with a picture of a 12 year old girl from, of all places,
Colombia
. We were there when she opened the e-mail. It said, “Hi Sarah and Jason - just wondered if you knew anyone who might be interested in a teen from
Colombia
.” Sara turned to us and said, “I think this e-mail is for you.” And that is where this all began.
We believe our adoption of Jenny is the fulfillment of the plan that God had for our family – the completion of our second adoption. That was confirmed when one day we were meeting with Pastor Brian Spencer. We needed a pastoral reference for a grant and since Rick is “our pastor” we went to Pastor Spencer to give us a letter of reference. We told him this story and he drew a graphic of it on a napkin. He wrote Jodi on the left, then Sara and Rebecca in the middle, then Jenny on the right. You know what was so neat about that? On Kay’s dresser is a frame that Sara made for her for Mother’s Day. It has three pictures of Kay, one with her and Jodi, one with her and Sara, and one with her and Rebecca. But you see the frame set has four frames, so the last one is empty. At one time, Rick was going to put in it a picture of Kay and the three girls grown, but for some reason he never followed through. The reason is that that frame, like Pastor Spencer’s drawing, was a visual representation of our family – incomplete until God brought Jenny into our lives.
Why would we want to adopt at this time of our lives? The only answer is that it is God’s plan for our family. We have been blessed in so many ways. The most exciting thing we can do with that blessing is to share it with this little girl who needs our family. Jenny, welcome to the Weesner family!
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