Introducing Our Son Aaron Lí

"I will meditate on all Your work and muse on Your deeds.

Your way, O God, is holy;  what god is great like our God?

You are the God who works wonders;

You have made known Your strength among the peoples."

Ps. 77:12-14

I don't even quite know how to begin telling this story.  And I am hesitant to even try.  It is so big that I can hardly get my mind around it and putting it into words seems impossible.  But this is the story of God's love for an orphan and how He has moved heaven and earth to "set him in the safety for which he longs" (Ps. 12:5).  This is the story of how God has brought us our son, Aaron Lí.

As many of you know, God matched us with our daughter Meilí just three weeks ago, on December 28th, 2012.  And it has been our great hope that God would give us a second baby before our three-week window of opportunity to be matched came to a close.

As time ticked away, I began to wonder whether God really was going to give us a second baby.  And, although I could not wait to adopt our precious daughter Meilí, there were still two babies in my heart.  

We prayed fervantly.  We asked others to join us in petitioning God for our second baby.  We did everything we knew to do, and yet God still had not moved.

He was waiting.

Then, four nights ago, after a day of fasting, I finally sensed Him moving.  It was during a precious hour at church while I was all alone, that He began to speak to me through His Word.

He prompted me to open His Word to Psalms.  I started in Psalms 55 and began to flip backwards, reading all the verses I had underlined at one time or another.  I got to Psalm 12:5, this is what I read: 

"'Because of the devastation of the afflicted, 

because of the groaning of the needy,

Now I will arise,' says the Lord; 

'I will set him in the safety for which he longs.'"

I cried out again to the Lord for my baby.  I pleaded with Him to arise, reveal our baby and set this baby in the safety of our family, even writing my prayer in the margin of my Bible.  

As I continued back through the Psalms, the very next underlined verses I came to were Psalm 10:17-18:

"O Lord, You have heard the desire of the humble;  

You will strengthen their heart,

You will incline Your ear to vindicate the orphan and the oppressed,

So that man who is of earth will no longer cause terror."  

It was at that moment God gave me hope again, and by those verses I wrote,  "I believe You will answer our humble prayer for Baby #2."

And He did, the very next day.

On Thursday morning, God brought to my mind a little boy that Tollie and I had seen on our adoption agency's website a couple of weeks earlier. At the time, we did not request to look at his file because we were unfamiliar with his medical needs. But this morning, I felt urgency to look at his file.  After talking with Tollie again, I called my agency to request his file. 

At 3:00 that afternoon, I received his file and began wading through all his medical and developmental history.  After spending some time reviewing his information, I began to look at the pictures that I had received of him. 

My heart melted with each picture I opened, but there was one picture that made my heart completely stop.  I could not believe what I was seeing.  In that picture, I saw a precious face I knew I had seen before.  With trembling hands, I quickly pulled up the Hope Blanket Pictures that I had received seven months earlier in May, 2012.  

And there he was, wrapped up in a pink and white Hope Blanket.  

IT WAS THE SAME. LITTLE. BOY.   

The next seven hours were a complete whirlwind of activity with Tollie and I trying to get our mind wrapped around what was happening.  The first thing I did was to call our family coordinator to confirm that this was in fact that little boy because she was the one who helped us get our blankets to China and  was also the one who sent me the Hope Blankets pictures that were taken in China.  Her words were, "Yes, Ashley.  I had not made the connection until just now, but yes, that is the same baby.  Wow, this is crazy." Um, yes, this was totally unbelievable!

God provided two amazing doctors that night, the exact doctors we needed to help us figure out his medical needs, and by 1 AM Friday morning, we knew he was ours.  By 9:00 AM on Friday morning, we had submitted our request to adopt him as our son.

There are so many more miracles to this story than I can even share at this moment, so many things God was doing behind the scenes to make this all happen, and I am completely humbled by the great love of our Father.

He is a Father who knows us by name, who saw this little boy that needed a family and saw a family that needed him, and who moved heaven and earth to bring us together.

We are in awe of this amazing God we serve, and we are unworthy but so very grateful that He has chosen to bless us with six precious, hand-picked children.

This amazing story is a testimony of God's mighty power and sovereignty, and we want to shout it from the rooftops for one reason, and one reason alone:

"That they may know that YOU alone, 

whose name is the Lord, 

are the Most High over all the earth." 

Ps 83:18

He is worthy of all glory and all honor, and we adore Him for all He has done to bring us our precious daughter Meilí and our son Aaron Lí.  

Praise His wonderful name!