Our Adoption Testimony

 The whole service at our church yesterday was on Adoption. Bill was asked to give our adoption testimony.  Here is what he wrote:


Good morning. For those of you who don't know me my name is Bill Byrne.  Last week Pastor David asked me if I would share my testimony about adoption of course  I said yes. Then I stopped and thought about talking in front of four hundred people and wondered if I could really do this. Forgive me in advance if I get a little emotional. I can guarantee it will probably happen.

So, adoption... believe it or not our family has a tiny bit of knowledge in this area.
God placed adoption in our lives probably starts about 17 to 18 years ago. Debbie and I were married back in August of '91 and I would say shortly there after we decided we wanted to have children. I should emphasize that we decided this. It was not something that we prayed about. It was just something that we wanted. Well apparently this was not Gods time for us. After a couple of years we gave up thinking about it and went out and bought a mustang and a swimming pool. Funny thing is, God has a sense of humor and one month later we found out Debbie was pregnant. Guess what doesn't fit in the backseat of a mustang but fits perfectly in a  mini-van, Yup, a car seat. So along came Tiffani. Life was good and we enjoyed watching her grow. Two years had past and we decided to try for another child but again this was not Gods timing. For 8 years we tried but it just wasn't happening. This was a very frustrating time in our lives. It just didn't make sense but God is good and His timing is perfect.

So, the next logical step was to talk about whether we were meant to have any more children or if adoption was something for us.  We discussed it and Debbie really felt led to adopt from China but I was totally against it. I thought there are way too many children in our own country to talk about adopting from somewhere else. We made the choice to look into domestic adoption but everywhere we turned the doors were closed. It was discouraging. We had all this love that we wanted to share but we couldn't get any help. So again, we decided to just forget about it. We prayed that if God wanted us to have more children it would happen and we would trust him. God is good and His timing is perfect.

What was funny to me next is where God will talk to you. We happened to be at Epcot of all places. We had decided to go into the China pavilion to watch their movie and when we left I looked over at Debbie and asked her "Do you know what I am thinking?" Of course she said she had no idea. I told her that we had a daughter waiting for us in China. I think she was just a little surprised by that. The greatest part of this story, aside from getting our beautiful daughter Abigail was the fact that we found out she was born that very week we had been at Epcot watching that movie.  A little over a year from that weekend we met Abby for the very first time. So Yes, God can even talk to you when you are at Disney. God is good and His timing is perfect.

During this time we were able to meet another family, the Clarks, that lived less than an hour away from us. They were on the same timeline that we were on. We were able to meet with them prior to going to China and when we had gotten our referral for Abigail they got their referral for Kya. The girls were from the same orphanage. To most people this would have been a strange coincidence but we knew otherwise. This connection that had been planned by God led us to the eventual adoption for Jadyn. See, shortly after being home with Abby and seeing how easy the process was I was ready to adopt again. So was Kya's mom, Dawn. Dawn had started looking through adoption lists and found Jadyn and forwarded a photo of her to Debbie. Debbie instantly started crying and said to me that she knows Dawn is looking at her file but she felt in her heart that this was our daughter. I did not have those same feelings at that point but for the next few nights I could not sleep and just felt sick. I was feeling that Debbie was right and this was our daughter but how could that be. Someone was already looking at her file. Why would God put this on our hearts. Well, the Clarks had prayed long and hard and were just not sure that God was leading them to Jadyn. The same week they were considered this I had a trip that I had to take to DC which is only 20 minutes from our adoption agency. By the time I had gotten to DC Dawn had told Debbie that she just didn't think God meant for Jadyn to be a part of their family and we could review the file. So I hopped in the rental car and drove over to the agency to review the file and within a few minutes I knew this was our daughter. I ask myself all the time what if God had not put this family in our lives would we have seen this file. Would we have found our daughter. Would Jadyn have ever been given a family. Well, One year later we were bringing Jadyn home. The funny part about all this again was that the Clark Family did find another child that was meant for their family and we were able to travel with them again to China to bring our girls home. Anyone who has gone through an international adoption knows that the chances of this happening once are crazy and twice is just amazing.  The girls are all good friends and they are all within four months of each other in age. God is good and His timing is perfect.

During this whole process I was able to make a connection with Bring Me Hope. For those who do not know, Bring Me Hope is an organization that puts on summer camps for orphans in China. I had been working with them for a few years now but was never able to go to a camp because of the adoptions. I finally had a chance to go in 2008 and it literally changed my life. I came home from this camp with a strong desire to adopt an older girl but Debbie and the rest of the family were not on the same page. Debbie wanted a son. I know it sounds strange but I was scared of that. All I knew was girls and I'm not big on change. Could I bond with a Boy. More importantly do I have the energy for a Boy. Well I guess so because a year and a half later We had Ethan. There were a lot of awesome God things that happen through Ethan's adoption too, like meeting the Sublett family. This is a family that traveled with us for Ethan. We were actually supposed to travel a couple weeks earlier but God had a different plan. The Sublett's were bringing home an older girl. The cool thing about our connection with their family is that we were able to help them with a second adoption for another older girl. I can't get into all of the details because of time but I can just say that another child was able to be united with her forever family because Gods travel plans were different from our travel plans and we were able to meet this family. God is good and His timing is perfect.

So where has God brought us now. Well, 3 years after going to that camp and then going to another camp this last summer I still felt led by God to adopt an older girl and Debbie was finally warming up to the idea. See the funny thing here too is that we just moved into a new house about a year ago and decided when building it that we would add an extra bedroom, just in case. I guess this was almost like tempting God. We thought we had it all planned and would build one extra bedroom just in case we adopted again but what did God have in store for us. Well, Debbie and I we just sitting around talking a couple months ago and jokingly she asked how much harder would it be to adopt two? I thought she was crazy but at the same time I thought to myself how much harder could it be. We decided to get on the web and a that same time our Adoption Agency was posting files of two older girls. They are 11 and 12 years old and have grown up together. We said something to our girls to see how they would feel about something like this and we were blown away. All of the girls said yes and they would move rooms and even get bunk beds to make room for them. We still were not 100% positive. One of the girls has a cleft lip and palette and we were not sure that the palette had been repaired. Well about a month earlier I was having dinner with the Clark family and Dawn had made the comment that we would just know when we found our Hope. Would you believe it. This girls English name is Hope. We just knew at this point that we were supposed to trust God and just do it. See, we could have made so many excuses. We don't have the room. We don't have the money. We don't time. Our car is too small. They don't speak English. And the list goes on. These were all just excuses not to follow God's calling. If God did not want this for our family why would he have given us all these signs. We had to stop fighting it and just trust in Him. Hopefully by the end of this summer we will be bringing home Hope and Maggie, two Chinese girls that will soon be finding out that their lives will be changing forever all because of Gods vision revealed to a young man in Southern California that thought it would be neat to do summer camps for orphans China. God is good and His timing is perfect.