"Isaiah is Here"....(A call to adopt)

...Those words haunted me for over 2 years.  For those of us who have adopted, we know exactly where we were and what we were doing when "the call" came.  It's the call that comes that turns your life upside down in the most amazing way!  But this time the call came...in a dream?

In my dream a woman was on the other end of the phone saying the words, "Isaiah is here"!  She was so excited!  It was definitely a referral call.  I should know...after all, I have received 3 other referral calls, so I know how they go :)   But this was a bit different.  When I responded, "So we can travel to get him now"?   She would keep responding no, he's here!  Then I actually SAW this child.  A 3 or 4 year old little African boy.  Thin, a little timid looking, not much hair and big, sweet eyes......Isaiah.  Then I woke up! 

Great....so now what?  My first response was, "We haven't been talking about adoption.  We don't know anyone named Isaiah.  We don't have ANY money for adoption.  I've never been to Africa...nor do I plan to go."  I told the ladies in my small group about my dream, wrote the details down in my journal and tried to let it go.....Of course, God wasn't about to let that happen :)

Over the next weeks, then months I found myself thinking more and more about who this little boy was and where in the world he was and when he would be shown to us.  I couldn't shake the nagging feeling that someone was definitely missing from our family.  I mean, Why would God give me a specific name & the beautiful face of a child and then not lead me to him?  So, I finally went to a website called Rainbowkids.org, a photo listing website for waiting children.  I entered some very basic data about our family makeup and the information that I thought I knew about "Isaiah"...boy, African, under 6 years old, etc.  I was disappointed to find out that:

#1 At that time, not very many countries in Africa were even open for international adoption

#2 Our family didn't meet the qualifications for many countries in Africa
       (we have too many children)

#3 None of the little boys' pictures that I saw matched the face in my dream & they certainly didn't have the name Isaiah (ok, so maybe I wasn't SO surprised by that one!)

So I set up a profile at Rainbowkids to send any matching descriptions to me via email and went on with life.  From time to time I would look back at my journal or search the faces on Rainbowkids looking aimlessly for Isaiah...where was he?  After a while I really started to think it was all just a dream or maybe God was trying to use it to tell me something else...but not to adopt. 

Fast forward 2 years........

November 2011

I had been teaching a student earlier in the day a lesson about ancient trade routes between China and Ghana.  Now, keep in mind the small detail that we have 3 children adopted from China...

...Later that evening I flopped down exhausted from a busy day of teaching.  Jeff says to me, "What did you think about that email"?  I half-heartedly grunted, "What email"?  He says a little more seriously, "Uh, Brooke, the email from Rainbowkids....Isaiah"?  Ok, so NOW he had my full attention!  I excitedly sat up and said, "What are you talking about"?  To which Jeff replied, "Haven't you been getting pictures and information about available children from Rainbowkids for the last several months"?  I said, "Yes, but we suddenly got so many....I know we don't have the money to adopt and we'd be CRAZY to adopt another child, right"?!!  To which Jeff replies, "Don't you want to see the picture"?  Oh sure.........why not?  What could it hurt?  So he brings the laptop over, pulls up the email (which I had already deleted) and right there in the subject line is the name...Isaiah!  Unbelievable!

Well...we clicked....we looked...we fell in love............we had finally found Isaiah!

Remember the China-Ghana part I told you to keep in mind before?  What are the chances that on the very day that God first revealed our future son to us  (who is living in Ghana) that I would have been teaching a lesson about the relationship between China and Ghana?  It was like a foreshadowing of the relationships that the children that we already have in our home would have with their new brother.  Only God can orchestra that!

And the part of my dream that he was 3 or 4 years old....that part was true too.  He turned 7 years old in February, making him 4 years old at the time of my dream! 

Now you would think that we would immediately start the adoption process after all this positive confirmation, but some of us need God to smack us up side the head with a 2 by 4 a few times first!  So we asked a couple of trusted prayer partners to PRAY, PRAY, PRAY about our decision.  The more we prayed about it, the more we knew that this dream was most certainly from God and that this child was meant to be a part of our family!  So we finally started the official adoption process in late January 2012.

We are so excited to have Isaiah (Nashiru) join our family sometime in the near future!  Please keep our family in prayer.  Pray specifically for:

Isaiah's (Nashiru) health
Paperwork to be processed as quickly as possible
Finances for adoption
Adjustment/acceptance by our children/transition as he comes home

Thank you so much for supporting us on our adoption journey!

Brooke & Jeff Breeze
brookeb@fuse.net