Happy National Adoption Day!

We celebrated National Adoption Day in Blackshear, GA, at the Love the Least Adoption Conference. We had a great time with lots of laughs! Last night, we road tripped it up to Waycross, GA, and ate dinner at the Rodeo Mexican Restaurant which is housed in an old Shoney's building. The food was good, and we enjoyed hearing the people around us speaking with southern-accents...that's something we don't hear much in the FL melting-pot. We stayed at the Best Western owned by the Patels which would explain the curry we smelled the next morning as we walked out to our car to drive over to the conference. Besides the curry, we were impressed with the BW in this little town. Speaking of little town, there was NO Cracker Barrel to be found for breakfast (a must on every Isaac and Kyle road trip!) so we dined at Chick-fi-la instead (usually our lunch road trip eatery) and were upsold at the register with an extra strawberry-yogurt parfait added to our two chicken biscuit combos. We made it to the conference a couple minutes late, no surprise there, and were greeted in the parking lot which made us feel right at home. The conference started with worship lead by a very talented couple. Next, Susanne Mayernick and Gwen Oatsvall of 147millionorphans gave their families' adoption testimonies and encouraged the attendees to be willing to give up our plans and comforts for God's calling on our lives to adopt and experience joy through obedience to His plan. We also heard from the Oatsvalls on fundraising ideas and tips. Isaac listened to Scott and Mike talk about their adoption journeys from a dad's perspective while I went to the workshop about Special Needs adoption by Gwen and Susanne. We also got to meet several members of the First Baptist of Blackshear church including another family adopting from Ethiopia. We took away with us so many ideas for promoting orphan awareness and God's call to Christians to care for orphans. We are praying that next National Adoption Day we will be involved in bringing an adoption conference to our area.