Here is the short version of the story of how Evie joined our family.  

To start we were in the middle of pursing an international adoption. Almost finished with home study portion which has to be done before you can be matched with a child. 

The very same day our home study was being completed the boys friends from down the street were at our house playing in the backyard. Sean went down the zip line in our back yard and went at the wrong angle and got a gash on his back from a tree branch. The mother of the boys friends worked in the medical field, so she said she would come look at it and make sure it didn’t need stitches and bring some butterfly bandages and stuff down that I didn’t have on hand. Given she and I had spent time talking in the neighborhood she had never really been into my house, so this wasn’t a regular occurrence. While she was there looking at Sean she asked about how our adoption process was going. I explained our home study would be done today and that we were pursuing a child in the Philippines. SO WHILE she was on my couch talking my phone started ringing and it was our adoption agency. I excuse myself go into the other room and answer and our caseworker says that I might want to sit down, but she has a question for me and wants us to pray over it. She says she knows we were pursuing international adoption, but they just had a 5 year old little girl abandoned by her mother and wanted to know if we would consider taking her! She went on to say they had no other families home study certified (I believe in the whole state) that would consider a child over the age of 3, so they wanted to at least reach out to us. They told me the child’s  name, but really nothing else at that point. I tell her I will call my husband at work to talk to him and then call her back to discuss it further. I call Mason and tell him everything, but I’m not confident what to do as this is such a big decision and so unexpected. Mason always being the steady reasonable one says, “God called us to provide a home and family to a child who needs it...this little girl needs a home right now, so we just say yes and God works out the rest.” So simple to him, but I was going to overthink it to make sure we made the ‘right’ decision. 😜

Meanwhile my neighbor is still in the other room so I go back in there trying to act like nothing happened because at this point it was a private matter and not an appropriate time to just spill everything. She continues talking and says, “Yeah, we were going to do an international adoption and then God just interrupted it when we got a call about a 5 year old girl needing a home locally.” This is referring to their now 17 year old daughter who I knew was adopted but didn’t know the story behind it. Needless to say the hair on my arms started to stand up.😱😱😭There was no doubting for me anymore what God was telling us to do. I called back our agency and told them “yes!”. Afterwards since a name was all I had at this point I thought Evangeline was beautiful and unusual name, so I looked up the meaning of the name and this is what popped up- “bearer of good news” ❤️

I can’t go into the rest of the story of Evie’s life before joining our family it is heartbreaking, but it is part of her story and not mine to tell.  Nor do I have time to explain all the laws on how things like this work, but yes this is legal and the mother has the right to choose private adoption if they still have custody of the child instead of the alternative of them being taken into the foster care system. They also have at least 6 weeks to change their mind and choose to get help and not to place their child for adoption. Evie’s biological mom never changed her mind(and was in a mess with some really bad circumstances with upcoming/pending prison time) and no other biological family member would come forward, so a year later Evie’s adoption was finalized. 

I still remember driving to meet her and bring her home. That day in and of itself was crazy starting with scrambling to get all the paperwork done for us to take guardianship of Evie so quickly, Mason being called out to work, then followed with me having to take another kid to the ER for stitches and having to delay picking Evie up an hour past the scheduled time. The enemy really tried to make that day super stressful but all during it and the drive to and from picking her up I had a peace that could only come from God.. Also, with the adoption happening much quicker than an international adoption timeline we had to have the $20,000 much quicker than anticipated and once again God provided through the generosity of others so that we always had what we needed when we needed it. It has not been all smooth sailing by any means, but I am so grateful we could see Gods hand guiding us all through the process.