November is Adoption Month. To honor those who have followed God’s leading to adopt, our post features part of our friends’ story. Darin Jones is a medical device sales representative with Neomend, Inc. He enjoys running, music, and working around the small farm they live on in central Illinois. Elizabeth (Beth) Jones is currently a teacher at Crossroads High School in Tiskilwa, IL. She enjoys teaching, running, music, and playing board games. Together they compete in road races and triathlons. They have 3 teenage daughters and 2 adopted sons.
Another Kind of Marathon
IT'S A BOY...or to be more accurate...IT'S TWO BOYS!!!!
In early December of 2007 my husband, Darin, and I were each in our own vehicles driving to separate commitments. It was a Saturday morning. As is my habit when I'm driving I turned on the Christian radio station and the weekend top 20 countdown was on. After a few minutes they featured an interview with Steven Curtis Chapman. He was talking about a song titled "Crazy" on his new album. When the interviewer asked what inspired that song, Chapman replied that his house was a little crazy right now because he had 3 older boys and they had recently adopted 3 younger girls. I thought, "He must be crazy!" Then I felt a tug on my heart for orphaned children. I passed this off as early symptoms of "Empty Nest Syndrome" and thought nothing else about it for the rest of the day.
Later that evening my husband says to me, "I heard an interesting interview on the radio this morning..." I instantly knew what he was referring to even though he VERY RARELY turns on Christian radio preferring to listen to his own cd's or talk radio. We talked about adoption in general for a few minutes, mentioned that our stage in life with 3 teen age daughters was kind of nice because we had so much more time for ourselves, and didn't speak about it again for a couple of months.
During those couple of months which were very busy with Christmas, New Year's, etc the subject of adoption kept coming up from random places. We'd drive by a billboard on the highway, hear an ad on the radio, see an article in a magazine, read a passage in the Bible, even notice the "adopt-a-highway" signs along the road.
Then in February 2008 we received an email from Darin's aunt who lives in South Dakota. It told the story of how she had received a wrong number call on her cell phone a few days before. Being Norwegian, she struck up a conversation with this perfect stranger in Arizona. She asked the woman who she was trying to reach and why. The woman said that she was trying to contact a friend of hers to ask for prayer for a 10-year-old boy named Michael. This little boy had been adopted at the age of 3 and had formed no significant bonds with his adopted family and was up for adoption again. Darin's aunt promised to pray for Michael and spread the word to others that she knew would pray for him as well. As Darin and I read this our hearts were stirred. We weren't sure what we should do. We prayed about it and felt that we should get some more information. Maybe God planned to bring this boy into our family. So with shaky hands and a quivering voice I called the adoption agency just to inquire, no commitments. I spoke with a woman named Leslie who told me that there was already a family committed to adopting Michael, but they had other waiting children if we were interested. Were we interested? I wasn't sure. I told her that we might be, but that at this point we were only gathering information. She asked what country we would like to adopt from. I said that we had been on several missions trips to Central America and were captivated by the big brown eyes of those beautiful children. She told me that they had a program in Colombia and asked for other particulars. I told her that IF we adopted we would want brothers over the age of five. She took down all of our information and promised to call me back.
The next day I was on the train to downtown Chicago to spend the weekend with Darin at a trade convention he was working. She gave me the names and brief information of two brothers, ages 5 and 11 from Colombia. Tears came to my eyes as I started thinking about the possibility of adding these two little boys to our family. Tears are streaming down my face even now as I remember that conversation and how it started our adoption journey.
Beth
Darin, Beth, and their three daughters, Alexandra, Miranda, and Sydney, traveled to Colombia in May 2009
to bring home Mauricio and Miguel. To read the rest of their story, visit their blog at http://anotherkindofmarathon.blogspot.com/.
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