Introducing . . .

Toni gave me permission to say publicly WHERE we will be traveling!! DRUM ROLL, PLEASE!!!

Introducing Abigail Stefka McClain, the daughter of our hearts, who is still living on the other side of the world in the historic country of Bulgaria. For those of you who are newer to our journey, everything about that sentence has significance.

Abigail means "the Father is my source of joy." Early in 2010 Kevin and I had been very seriously contemplating another adoption from Ukraine, when he suddenly lost his job. Two months later he was reinstated but, as you can imagine, our finances and our confidence in the job's stability were quite shaken. God spoke to Kevin's heart through the Men's Bible Study he was leading on David and Abigail, particularly the phrase "the FATHER is my source" -- not people, not UPS Freight, but the FATHER. Indeed God has shown Himself to be the source for this adoption.

Stefka: When we visited Abby in February, we discovered that she truly loves her given name and her nick-name "Steffie." Though we plan to call her Abby, we felt it was important to give her the gift of her own name, though in Roman letters rather than Cyrillic (smile)


McClain: Abby is no longer an orphan; she has a family--and a family name--of her very own.

Bulgaria: represented by the red, green and white ribbon along the right side of this blog. Red, green and white are the colors of the Bulgarian flag while yellow and blue are the colors of Ukraine's flag. As we were privately seeking God's will concerning adoption, our pastor was speaking at church about the Apostle Paul who in Acts 16:6-10 was seeking God's specific direction for his missionary travels. He'd thought to preach in the province of Asia but the Holy Spirit kept him from it. At the border of Mysia, they tried to enter Bithynia but the Spirit of Jesus would not allow them to. So Paul and his companions just kept traveling until they got to the end of the road at Troas. Then Paul had a vision of a man from Macedonia. I could really relate to Paul as we looked into Ukraine, looked into adopting two girls, one girl--and just kept hitting roadblocks. For me, it was very exciting as I began to look into adoption from Bulgaria to discover that at one time (though not at the time of Paul) it had been part of the province of Macedonia! Just a confirmation that we were finally on the right track. :)