JOHN for the Hemmes family — AL
We married at the age of 18 and believe it or not never discussed how big of a family we wanted. Now here we are 23 years later with four biological blessings ages 20, 17, 13, 10 and one adopted blessing age 2 with another blessing coming from China!
Adoption was on my heart for 8 years and I mentioned it many times to my husband but it was not in his heart at the time. In the spring of 2011 when our youngest was eight we were on a walk and he surprised me by telling me he would like to adopt! My prayers were answered!
We found our son waiting on a list for special focus, harder to place children. He had a scary diagnosis but we prayed about it and knew he was to be our son. Now, six months home we can’t imagine life without this gift!
We felt the pull to adopt another boy with special needs not long after we were home. I have always had a special place in my heart for dwarfism so I spoke to an adoption advocate about some waiting children with dwarfism. We looked at a file of a little boy who was six years old. Since we were in the process of an out of state move with the military we felt the timing wasn’t right and we still had to figure out funding for another adoption. However, we never stopped thinking about him or praying for him and once we got to our new home we knew he was our son and we had to go and get him!
5/1/13—TRAVELING JUNE 6
Follow the family’s adoption journey on their blog at http://www.hemmesfamilyhappenings.blogspot.com/
