God's Surprises are So Good!!!!!

God works in mysterious ways!

We have had one of the craziest, blessed summers ever.
It was our 11th anniversary on July 2nd. (Wow, makes us sound old,LOL.) We went on our annual big date night, dinner and a movie. It was a wonderful evening. Then we woke up to a Saturday with nothing on the calendar (completely unheardof), so we spent a great day as a family.
We went to Danny’s office to do some paperwork. I signed up to be a Thirty-One consultant. . I loved and wanted everything in the catalog so thought this would be a great part-time fit. I figured it would be something that Brynn and I could do together and all the commissions we made could go to the adoption of our sweet babies in Rwanda. The four of us plus the dog then headed down for a walk along our newly flooded river. We spent about three hours just walking and playing and taking some casual photos for our dossier. Then headed home to make a mexican feast. Funny thing is…we probably called ten people to invite them for dinner and NO ONE was available. We were trying to think that it was because of the Holiday weekend but it was God’s plan
After dinner, we were all lounging in our pjs getting ready for bed when I hear Danny’s phone ringing upstairs; we let it ring and after a couple minutes he went and found it and listened to the message that was left.
Here comes the good part:
You should have seen his face. I have never seen his eyes so big or his jaw drop so fast. He couldn’t even tell me what it was he just put the phone on speaker, held it out, and said,”listen”.
“Hi Dan and Kelly. This is _____. I got your name from someone at your church and wanted to talk to you as soon as possible. I am with a woman up at the hospital who just gave birth to a baby girl and needs to give her up for adoption and is looking for a good, Christian home. So if you are interested give me a call back.”
I was crying and I have to tell you I dialed the phone number back pretty quick. I can’t share too many details, but long story short. We got to meet with and talk to the birth mom (amazing woman, please pray for her). We felt the Lord’s presence so strong in that room and He ordained everything! Nothing was even the least bit uncomfortable, God is so amazing. We never thought that a domestic, closed adoption would ever be part of the plan, God knew better
We brought home a completely healthy, beautiful, brown baby girl on Monday, July 5th. Her name is Tehlia Eden Hope Barnes. The name Tehlia means “richly blessed”!









Well, there it is surprise! God now has us on a whole new road that we didn’t even know about. Unfortunately, we had to withdraw our Rwandan adoption from our agency. We can reapply when she is six months but cannot submit our Dossier until she is one year. We are still praying about all this. This has been such a shock and so different than what was planned for that we aren’t sure what we are going to do. We need to make sure that our three kids now are completely settled before moving forward with anything else.