Dear Friends & Family,

Thanks so much for stopping by! It means so much to us that you would take time out of your day to stop and read about what God is doing in our lives. He has always been so good to us, and our hope is that as you read our posts and stay up to date about what is going on in our world you would be encouraged to pursue Him with passionate, reckless abandon.
In July we had the opportunity to travel to Guatemala with the first ever overseas mission team from Finchville Baptist. We were honored to go and felt very strongly that God was going to use this trip to expand not only our church's vision for what He could accomplish through us, but also what He wanted to do through Hannah and I as a family. In prayer we submitted our lives and our plans to His will and asked Him to make them His own. We believe that He has done just that!
One of the things we were able to do while in Guatemala was to visit the nutrition/rescue center at Esperanza de Vida (Hope of Life; the organization our church partnered with). Malnutrition in this area is a huge problem; many children aren't even named until the parents are certain they will have enough food for their child to survive. What Hope of Life has done is to create a center where malnourished, deformed, disabled, adandoned and other at-risk children can be provided with food, shelter, and medical care. After our tour of the facility several members of our team stayed behind to simply play with some of the children. It was during this time that Hannah and I met little "Colocha."
Out of every group of children, there's always at least one who goes unnoticed. As Hannah was walking through the main room where most of the children were, she just happened to notice this little girl lying in her crib. She picked her up, and spent the next few hours sitting and talking with other team members with this little girl in her lap. We knew nothing about her background, her condition or even her name; we simply knew that she and Hannah got along great!
Every time we returned to the nutrition center, I noticed Hannah spending more and more time with her. Being the perceptive husband that I am (if you know me then you would know why that's humorous), on our second-to-last night I asked Hannah what the deal was with the curly-headed little girl. She responded that she wasn't sure, but she felt God was trying to speak to her. Figuring that it was probably about this little girl, we started asking some of the staff about her background. It was only then that we learned her heart breaking story.
This gorgeous little baby, who is somewhere around a year old, has been at Hope of Life almost her entire life. She was abandoned there at probably only a few days old with nothing- no name, no records, nothing. In the entire time she's been at Hope of Life, not one family member has ever been to see her. She is the child that seemingly always get overlooked.
On our last night in Guatemala Hannah and I went back to the nutrition center (with a few other team members) to visit her one last time. We spent time holding her and playing with her- her favorite game was to lean in close to my face and then slap me as hard as she could! Before we left we laid her back in her crib and decided to pray for her as a family. We asked that God would bless her and protect her, and that He would show us how we could serve her. We now know that that pray changed the course of our lives.
We felt, in that moment, that God was revealing his will to us. We both knew that God was calling us to step out on faith and begin the process of adopting this little girl. Later that night, as we were sharing what God was revealing to us, one of the Liberty University students who was doing a summer internship with Hope of Life let us in on a little secret. She said that she had never seen "Colocha" bond with anyone like she did with Hannah, so she asked God if He would lead us to adopt her. Liz, He answered that prayer :)
We know that the road ahead for us and for her will be a long, hard and expensive one. This process could take years, thousands of dollars and countless sleepless nights, but we have to believe that through the power of God His promise to us will come to fruition. She may have been forgotten by the world, but not by our heavenly Father.
So please, friends, pray for us during this time. Pray that God will give us the faith to trust Him, faith to rely on Him, faith to believe that He is not restrained by bank accounts or international politics. As we here anything we will let you know.God Bless

-CMB