The Fechner Family

In December of 2004, Dan and I got a babysitter and went to the Steven Curtis Chapman Concert in Greensboro, NC. Little did we know that there would be such an emphasis on adoption. At that time, our son, Hans, was only a few months old and Amanda had just turned two. We knew we were not ready to adopt at that time, but God planted a seed in our hearts that day.

We didn’t think much of it again until May of 2006. Dan and I again got a sitter and went for a 2-hour prayer walk in a nearby park. We prayed exclusively for the Lord’s direction regarding adding to our family. Did He want us to have another biological child, adopt a child or neither? The next day we visited our neighbor’s church and the entire service was about adoption. We laughed to each other during the service as we both realized that God was beginning to answer our prayers already!

The Lord continued to make it clear that He wanted us to adopt. With much prayer, we looked into many different adoption agencies for help. Every single agency I looked into revealed reasons why they would not work for our family, except for one. In July of 2006, we signed up with Christian World Adoption (CWA).

The day we signed up was the same day that Dan came home with troubling news at his job. The workload dropped suddenly and unexpectedly. Dan started coming home 1-3 times a week on average with no pay except for 2 hours for showing up. How were we to make our regular house payments and on top of that still be able to adopt a child? We had no idea how the Lord would provide, but we were sure that He wanted us to continue in the adoption.

Dan still worked at his job when they had work for him to do and he started doing some projects for neighbors to make extra money. I started working at 2 different child care jobs, taught gymnastics, babysat, did some dog sitting, and sold cosmetics to help out. We had garage sales, spent our entire life savings, and did everything that we could do to earn enough money to be able to follow through on the adoption on our own, but it just wasn’t enough. We sent out a letter to family and friends for help and we applied for a grant with Caroline’s Promise.

Our letter to friend’s and family was met with much disappointment. We found out quickly the lack of support and understanding regarding adopting a child. It broke our hearts to see and hear the fears that so many had about adopting a child. We heard everything from “If you don’t have the money yourself, then don’t do it!” to “I can’t support this because all the money goes to support all kinds of corruption!” I cried many times and we prayed with our pastor, who regularly came to support and pray with us, regarding the adoption and our disappointments that we were facing. It would have been so easy to give up. Still, we prayed that God would show us in a tangible way that He still wanted us to go forward despite the lack of support we were experiencing financially and emotionally. About 2 hours later I went to the mailbox and there was over $3,000 sitting in there for the adoption from a friend of mine that I would never have expected it from. Praise the Lord for His confirmations to prayer! We were so grateful for the few people we knew who understood and supported us in some way, financially or otherwise. Ultimately, we chose to believe that God was going to provide all our needs in spite of our circumstances.

Now we needed to focus on which country and what type of child we would adopt. We chose Russia and we wanted a baby younger than Hans of either gender. A few weeks into the program, we got an email from our agency saying a whole new country was opening up. There were pictures and videos of kids to look at and pray for that were not available from other countries. Dan and I looked separately at this list of 25 children and 2 kids “popped” of the page…the same 2 kids. The little girl was chosen by another family before we could respond to her. The little boy was named, Lonya. He was 6 years old at this time and older than both of our children. Frequent physical restraint, possible stroke, autism, ADHD, constant biting, hitting and bothering my younger kids was our doctor’s analysis after viewing the limited info we had at the time. Dan wanted to bring him home anyway, but I said no to Lonya. There was no way I was bringing an older child like that into my home!

We continued to pray for Lonya because he moved our hearts so much. We prayed that God would find him the right family. A few weeks later, after I shared the doctor info with CWA, I got another email stating that Anya was in Kyrgyzstan taking new pictures and another video of him and others and that they think that Lonya has been not diagnosed correctly and asked if we wanted the new information. Of course we did! As soon as we read the email, the Lord spoke to our hearts that Lonya was our son and we were to trust God and bring him home in spite of our fears.

We worked fervently to get all of our paperwork in order now that we had a waiting child. When that was done, we waited and prayed so much for so many things! And we had what seemed like eternity to wait to go get Lonya, even though it was only a few short months.

It was finally time to go get Lonya in January of 2007, but we were $3,000 short as a result of having to stay in Kyrgyzstan longer than expected. At the very last minute, Caroline’s Promise called us to tell us we had just been awarded a $3,000 grant. WOW! God’s timing is so perfect! God knew exactly when we needed to go get Lonya, whom we now call Michael. After 7 years, Michael longed more than we will ever know to meet his mommy and daddy and to have somewhere to call home. Caroline’s Promise helped us to bring Michael without any more waiting.

This is such a small glimpse of all the “little miracles” that happened along our adoption journey, especially while we were overseas in Kyrgyzstan. Michael has been home since February 11th, 2007 and he is a real blessing to our family! He is a very smart, handsome, gentle young man who loves his new home and his new family. He has no autism, no ADHD, no signs of stroke, or any of those other things that we were afraid of. Even though the road of adoption can be so difficult at times, the Lord has brought blessing upon blessing to our family in the midst of that! Praise the Lord for His faithfulness!

Daniel & Ann Fechner