#SayWhat

This post is for my online Bible study I am doing over at Proverbs 31. I wanted to tell about several say what moments in my life some more recent then others! My first say what moment was when God asked me and my family to move across the ocean to Romania. The very first time I heard these words I kind of ignored them. They came from my then fiancee and I thought, well maybe we'll go someday but first I'm going to live the American Dream then I'll think about saying yes. Two years later we had been married for a year and my husband had been praying and asking God to help me say yes to the call. In 1997 he took me on a short trip to see Romania and within a few days of being there I had to say yes to the call of God on our lives. I knew living the American Dream could never compare to saying yes to all the exciting things God had for us in Romania. We have been here 12 years now. We came with 2 toddler boys and now we have 6 kids! It has been a learning experience more than anything and has opened my eyes to what it means to say yes to God.

My next say what moment was when God called us to adopt twins. We already had 4 boys when God led us to adopt. We have permanent residency in Romania so we are an exception to the rule that foreigners can't adopt here. After you live in Romania 5 years you can acquire permanent residency and then be cleared to adopt a Romanian child. We went through the adoption course then God very quickly led us to twins, a boy and girl. They were abandoned at birth by their very poor gypsy mother, who already had 5 children and she just didn't know what to do with two babies! There are so few people to adopt over here that the social workers don't waste there time trying to get parents to sign off their children for adoption, but when the twins were 3 their birth mother died and their birth father was not listed on their birth certificate, so the social worker begin the paper work for their adoption. God very clearly led us to them even though we lived about 5 hours away. We met them just one month before their 4th birthday and immediately decided to adopt them. It was at this point, after they visited in our home that I realized how crazy this was, our youngest son was not quite 2 and here we are getting ready to wedge 2 more children into this family! It would make 6 kids ages 2 to 9! I started to panic and I spoke with a friend who told me, you already knew it was going to be crazy, it's just becoming a reality now, you know God wants you to do this so do it! We moved forward and on their 5th birthday we were granted custody of them. The year long wait is another crazy story for another time but God worked and we were able to finally bring them home. We have had some pretty chaotic moments through it all but we thank God that we can live out the Bible by caring for the orphans. They are no longer orphans but are part of the Howerton family!

I'm so thankful that my sister introduced me to this online Bible study. I will definitely be doing more of them in the future.