Heart broken

Hello everyone,

I know that I told you we would not be updating through the blog, but I have too much to explain through fb and none of it should be jeopardizing to our adoption.

Today we had an appt where we were read Ivan's file. I will not share any of Ivan's information on here, but get straight to the news that has left us confused and grieving.

When our facilitator contacted the orphanage where Levi is, he was told that Levi has an older sister in the same orphanage as him. We knew of the sister but we did not know she was in the same orphanage, we figure this was why he was moved, to be with his sister. We were then told that it is possible for Levi to be seperated from his sister but in order for this seperation to take place we would have to meet her. This is where the news turned VERY bad. Because his sister is much older than what we are approved for we will not be allowed to visit her. Meaning.... we are unable to adopt our Levi ;'(

As you can imagine we are absolutely devastated. We are grieving the loss of a child we will never be able to hold and love on.

This is why they tell you not to get attached to a picture.

This is why they tell you that you should never have preconceived notions of how your adoption will go because you can just never know.

Even knowing all of these things I do not regret loving Levi. His picture will remain on this blog and hanging on our wall at home until he is under the roof of the family that God has for him.

We will not stop advocating for this child until someone who qualifies to adopt him and his sister are giving him the unconditional love that we wish with all of our hearts that we could of given him.

Ryan and I just prayed and poured out our sorrow to the Lord who hears. We asked him why the only door that he would close during our whole adoption had to be this door :'(

We don't understand, we will probably never understand, but we know that this did not catch God off guard.

We know that He still has a plan and even though this is hard to type right now, we know His plan is perfect.

We were given 8 files of other children in Ivan's orphanage who we could adopt, there was even a couple girls in there.

Although our hearts are grieving, Ryan and I both agree that we are here, we are approved and prepared for two so why not bring home another child.

This is all very overwhelming and we do not know how we are going to choose so PLEASE keep us in your prayers. We will leave for Ivan's region tomorrow evening and once there we will be able to meet all of the children we were shown today. PLEASE pray that God makes His will clear to us.

Lastly, and I CANNOT stress this enough, please join me in advocating for my precious Levi. He needs a home so desperately. It was so clear to us that he is not receiving good care and is very much labeled as worthless. God has filled our hearts with such a hope and love for him though, I truly believe His life can be redeemed. Someone just needs to take a risk on him. We were completely ready to pursue him, it didn't matter what they told us today, but God obviously has other plans for this precious child. Please pray for him and his sister. If they could be adopted together all of our pain would be worth it.

Also, I must say that we do not blame Reeces Rainbow or any of our facilitators here for what has happened to us. It was clear that our facilitators were unaware of his sister and we were well informed of the risks we were taking when you adopt from a country that cannot legally give you any information or put a legal hold on a child until you get there.

This is no ones fault.

God knew.

Those facts cannot change our broken hearts and the grief we are going through right now though.

Thank you for your prayers.