Have a Happy, fun and Safe Memorial Day Weekend! We will be grilling and enjoying the great weather! Hope you get to do something fun too!!

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I have a friend, Devon Toomey, who is currently going through an adoption of a special angel right now. She has had quite a journey, and when this posts will be days away from picking up her new son. I asked her to do a guest post about her journey for this week's Saturday Service post. Please read on about her experience and read my short note at the end!

From Devon:

It was October 1, 2009 and I was having a discussion with two friends about adoption. I often had these discussions with people throughout the years because I had been quite vocal about my desire to adopt since I was 19 years old. When I was 19, I studied abroad in Mexico for 5 months and I was blown away by what I saw. I had never seen such poverty. I had never seen so many street children without a safe place to call home. It was during this time in my life that I decided that eventually, one day, I would adopt.

So on this nice October afternoon, I was having this discussion again. My friends had brought it up. They wanted to know when we might adopt. They wanted to know from where. They wanted to know the age of the child or if I would consider siblings. They wanted to know it all. I told them what I had told many people throughout the years who had asked us these exact questions. My response was “We want to leave our options open because we truly believe that our child will find us so we want to be open to anything.” This was something I truly believed. I knew that one day, our child would find us.

So later that afternoon I went home and got on the computer while my two sons were napping. I went straight to Reece’s Rainbow, which I had done many times in the past. For the past few years, I would periodically head over to the Reece’s Rainbow site and look at all the waiting children in need of a forever family. Well on that October afternoon it seemed a bit different. Once I was on the site I wasn’t really thinking about where I was going on the site… I didn’t really have an agenda. I truly feel like I was being led… straight to our son. I found his picture on the Other Angels page and I could not take my eyes off of him. Something was different. This had never happened before. I literally could not take my eyes off of him. Then, I did something completely out of the ordinary. I emailed the contact at Reece’s Rainbow about him. Within a short time, she had emailed me back and our lives have never been the same since.

Our son had found us and we would never be the same. My husband came home that night and boy was he in for a surprise. It took him a little longer to commit, about a week, but he too knew that the child in this picture, the child that we knew so little about, was supposed to be here with us.

It is now almost 9 months later and we have been on quite the adoption roller coaster. It has had some wonderful ups and some difficult downs but it has all been worth it. The things we felt would be the most difficult, such as coming up with the money, actually fell into place more easily than we would have ever imagined. This is all thanks to God, all the prayers we received, wonderful friends and family and a plethora of people who blessed us with a donation. With that being said, the things that we thought would not be difficult, such as family support (and I am not talking about financial support), wound up being the most difficult. This has been one of the very difficult downs of the roller coaster and has changed us in a lot of ways. But, just as I stated above, we would not trade this adoption experience for anything. We know that the roller coaster ride is getting us to that final destination of being able to finally bring our son home.

It is now May 23, 2010 and we are leaving in a little over a week to bring our son home. We are so unbelievably excited and we feel so blessed that he has been brought into our lives. We have been changed through this experience and we will never be the same and I say this in a positive way. Our eyes have been opened and we now understand what is important in life and we look forward to changing the world for the better while we are here. Our son’s middle name will be James. We have chosen this name from James 1:27 in the Bible. It states, “Religion that God our Father accepts as pure and faultless in this: to look after orphans and widows in their distress and to keep oneself from being polluted by the world.” This has become my passion. This is what I feel I have been called for and I look forward to venturing down this path.

I urge all those reading this post to look at http://www.reecesrainbow.com/ when you have the time. Reece’s Rainbow is a Christian ministry that promotes international adoption of children with Down Syndrome and children that have other special needs, the Other Angels. They have disbursed almost $600, 000 in adoption grants since 2006 and helped over 250 children with special needs find their forever home. It was all started by one woman, Andrea Roberts. One woman. Who says one person cannot make a difference. If you do not feel you are able to adopt or cannot adopt at this time, Reece’s Rainbow has a number of other ways to help the alarmingly high number of orphans around the world. You can sign up to be a prayer warrior (at no cost) for a specific child, or children. You can make donations to the ministry or to specific children or families and all donations made to Reece’s Rainbow are tax deductible. I can say, from personal experience, that Reece’s Rainbow has changed our lives for the better and hopefully it will do the same for you.

Thank you for taking the time to learn about our journey. If you would like to continue with us on this journey, please visit my blog at http://onestitchatatimetoomey.blogspot.com/.

Sincerely,
Devon Toomey

I would like to add that although a lot of donations have been made to help the Toomeys out, they are still short $2500 from being fully funded for the adoption. If anyone wants to make a donation, Devon has a button on her blog, http://onestitchatatimetoomey.blogspot.com/, on the right hand side that says "Help Bring Sean Home". If you click on this button, it will take you to their family sponsorship page on Reece's Rainbow, where all donations are tax deductible.