Monday, June 9, 2008

Journey to Jordyn and Jailynn



Lilypie Waiting to adopt PicLilypie Waiting to adopt Ticker

The Kerr Family
Tim, Melanie, JonMarc, Jordyn, Amanda, and Anna

This is the story of how our family, once a mediocre and boring family, began a journey to find a long, lost daughter and became an exciting, adventurous, fun loving family, thus embarking upon their second adventure. The events must be told from the beginning so that is where I will start. I hope you are prepared to hear an amazing and miraculous tale full of unexpected twists and turns because that is how this story goes. So lets get started, shall we?



The beginning of our story began some 14 years ago when I married Timothy. He was a handsome and generous man and before I knew it I fell in love. (Ahhh...) So one day we watched TV together and saw a very informative documentary on the lost daughters of China. What we saw brought tears to our eyes and a commitment to one another that some day we would adopt a little girl from China and travel to bring her home. SO that is the how we started on our Journey to Jordyn and Jailynn. Little did we know that it would be 13 years later and we would bring home two beautiful daughters from our journey to middle earth (China if you must be so formal).

Now I need to tell the more interesting details of how we found Jordyn and Jailynn. We are still waiting to bring Jailynn home and we will soon travel to bring her home. We just cannot wait!!! We had made the commitment to adopt from China many, many moons ago and I had almost given up on that dream. We have been through many changes and trials together and the timing never seemed right. I also had to wait until I was 30 years old to adopt. I was 21 when Tim said that we would adopt from China someday. Someday seemed to never come. I had three beautiful children during the time we were waiting to find our daughter from China.Joey is my oldest son. He is 19 years old and has 2 beautiful babies. (Can you believe that I am a grandma? Well they call me MiMi because I am too young to be called Grandma!) Anna is 13 yrs old, Amanda is 9 yrs old, and JonMarc just turned 6 yrs old. So we lived our life and enjoyed the beautiful children that God blessed us with, watching them grow and mature. A day did not ever pass by that I was not thinking and wondering about our daughter in China. I wondered how old she would be when we found her, what did she look like? Was she safe and happy? Questions would fill my head so naturally I would busy myself and try not to think about her. When JonMarc was born in 2002, I was actually in the hospital thinking and wondering about our Daughter from China. I said a prayer asking that God would watch over her, keep her safe and healthy, and lead us to her in the right timing. So being a new Mom I enjoyed my bouncing baby boy and loved him very much. So time went by as it always does and we found ourselves living in South Dakota of all places! Actually, we loved our time in SD and we were very active in a church plant ministry. We served food to the needy, had church services in a boxing club, and reached out to the lower economic community. We had such good times. It was alot of hard work but I was truly happy during our outreaches and bible studies. We saw many miracles and people led to know the Lord. Anyway, our time in ministry came to an end for the time being and we moved back home to Texas!! Yeah...Texas! Go Cowboys!!! Sorry, had to throw that in there for fun. We love Texas and the Dallas Cowboys :).
After, we moved back home the adoption bug hit me and I was again thinking of our daughter form China. I thought that perhaps it was just an impossible dream that would never happen. How could we afford another child let alone the adoption costs seemed impossible. Then I read a letter from a precious 12 year old girl asking for a family and my heart melted. I showed the letter to Tim and Anna and Time suggested that we call about her and see if she was available. I called the Agency she was listed with and was told that another family was looking at her file. The adoption social worker asked if we would look at another child and we said yes. That was the bait that hooked us! One look at Jordyn's picture and we were in love! We knew she was the daughter we had been longing and waiting for. So we started our Journey to Jordyn in blind faith. We said yes we want her, sent in our application and application fees, and began the muddle through the red tape to bring her home. We had no idea how we could afford to pay all the adoption expenses, but we believed that God would provide for us. Boy....did He ever provide!!!! We saw so many miracles that helped the adoption come together that I must tell you about them to encourage you on your Journey. I thought that in order to adopt a child I had to have everything put together perfectly, be the perfect family, have all the money saved up in the bank ahead of time, and sign on the dotted line. If that was true, then Jordyn would not be here with us today and we would not be working towards bringing her sister home. God works in ways we cannot even imagine. If you think you are supposed to adopt then I say you are supposed to adopt and GO with God!!








2 comments:

Sheri_n_Ben said...

Yeah Mel!!!! You finally have a blog! hehe...so happy for you and your family! Good luck on your journey to Jailynn!! I will keep you both in my prayers. You are truly blessed.
Love ya,
Sheri (Leilah Di's Mommy)
journeytoleilahgrace.blogspot.com

Sheri_n_Ben said...

We are back from China! Love your new blog design! Final Sense was my original blog background. It was pretty too, but then I lost it all right before we traveled. Thankfully Cupcake blog designs saved me, and redid our blog!

Love ya,
Sheri (Leilah Di's Mommy)

Jailynn's 1st Thanksgiving

My GuestBook

Hi! I am glad you are visiting my blog! Please sign my guestbook or leave me a comment. It will mean so much to me, Jordyn and Jailynn!

The rest of our family

In case anyone was curious: Here are som pictures of my oldest son, Joey and his family. Joey and Kym have three children: my beloved grandbabies: Hayden 4yrs old, Noah 22 months old, and Phoenix 9 months old. We have been helping Joey and Kym get on their feet and they have been living with us since December. They are now able to get their own place and will move out in April. I will miss them and miss the babies. I will just have to babysit!

God Is Awesome!

myspace

myspace

I am Praising God tonight because He has Heard my cries and answered my prayers. We have recieved a generation donation from a wonderful family toward our fund raising efforts. We have also recieved generous donations from wonderful people through this website and through Jailynn's Prayer. So far, the total fundraising has reached a total of $4000!!!!!!!! Thank you! Thank You! Thank you to everyone for helping us to bring Jailynn home! We are hoping to travel sometime this month and still need to raise money. I know that God is providing for our family through the unselfish and generous giving from special and wonderful people like you!

We have our LOA!!

Lilypie Waiting to adopt Ticker

Happy Holidays!

Happy Halloween (a little late)

Our Fun At the Texas State Fair

Amanda's Party!

Jordyn and Amanda's Birthday Party