How'd You Get Here From There-Part VII

Sometimes we're very clear about hearing what God is saying to us, other times it takes nothing short of a miracle for His quiet whisperings to be fully amplified.

I promised that I would share our referral story before the week was through, so with precious few hours left, here it is:

Our paperwork arrived at our agency(stateside) on June 5th 2006. We were officially "on the list" waiting for an infant or young siblings under five years of age, when an email announcement was made by our agency director. There were four *new* sets of siblings, who might be difficult to place based on the large age gap between each of the siblings in the sets. Each set included an infant or toddler but was paired with an older sibling. While reading the email, my eyes kept focusing on the one month old baby boy and his older sister-age 8. I called over to my husband to ask what his thoughts were as this wasn't quite in the age range we had planned and would give us an instant "artificial" twin for our daughter, B. After some brief discussion, we called in B to discuss the possibility of a sister closer to her age than we originally thought. It was decided that we should call the agency to inquire about the children and see where it led us. The following day, after speaking with the agency, we discovered that the older daughter's birth name was the same as both Ark grandmothers' middle names.
Coincidence? Chance? Certainly not! Looking back, it was the first in a series of quiet whispers God sent our way. We decided to ask for additional information, but as the children were new to the orphanage, little was available and days passed before we discovered that the baby had tested positive for Hepatitis C. Multiple calls to doctors, the county health department and friends in the health care biz. No one was willing to sound the "all clear" on Hepatitis C in a family already containing four children, two of whom were under 3 at the time. We prayed about it and ultimately made the difficult decision to decline this first referral.
Time passed and the excitement summer vacation slowly replaced the anxious wait at home for a phone call. Soon enough, August arrived and the leisurely, distracting days of summer began to fade as the return to routine quickly approached. During one of these last, lazy summer mornings, two friends visited to catch up on the latest Ark happenings and drink coffee (or diet Coke!) while our collective brood of 12 laughed and carried on around us. Shortly into our visit, the phone rang. Checking the caller ID, I discovered that our agency was on the other end. One of my friends, who had also adopted from our agency, shooed me into the other room with the phone grinning and admonishing, "Go! Take the call! We'll take care of the kids." Quickly, before the answering machine took over, I hit the "talk" button on the phone and tentatively said, "Hello." The voice on the other end identified herself as our agency's director and said, "I've got a couple of kiddos here I'd like to talk to you about..."

To be continued...