This is the First Day of the Rest of your Life, it’s gonna be alright.

Today is the day we finally take the next step in our journey. I guess we could say this is the penultimate moment of our adoption. There’s not much else to say, but wow. It’s here. It’s a beautiful warm day in October and in about six hours we will start our long day of travel to Ukraine. We are packed and ready to go as we will ever be. Lindsey and I thank God for this day, and letting every detail work out that got us here. The love and support we have had from our family, church family, and friends have been incredible. We have to also remember to take a step back and remember why we are doing this. Yes, we want a child and are excited to be parents but God led us to this adoption for a very specific reason. He tells us in Ephesians 1:5 that “he predestined us to be adopted as his sons through Jesus Christ, in accordance with his pleasure and will”. Just as Jesus adopted us as his sons and daughters when we accepted Christ into our lives, we will adopt our child into this family and love on him or her and do our very best to lead our parenting by Christ’s example. As well, God has specifically put orphan ministry on our heart when we truly learned the significance of this verse:

Religion that God our Father accepts as pure and faultless is this: to look after orphans and widows in their distress and to keep oneself from being polluted by the world – James 1:27

This verse is what we have been holding on to since we started this journey nearly 15 months ago. We will continue to try to be obedient to Him during our trip, no matter what happens or the outcome. Although, we do pray for the best and that we will soon be united with the newest addition to the Howell family!

This will be our last blog post “online” until we return after our five to six week journey. However, family and friends, you should know how to keep in touch with us during our stay. If you have any questions on how just shoot me an email. With that I need to get up and help Lindsey get the last minute preparations together. We love you all and will be in contact soon!