We are the Armstrong Family. Mark and I were married in November 2000. Even before we were married we talked about adopting one day to add children to our family. How neat it has been to see God grow our family. He blessed us with the birth of our daughter Addison in 2005 and then our son Barr
ett in 2008. We continued to talk about adoption but it wasn’t until December of 2009 that we felt God telling us to move forward. We didn’t know if we were to adopt domestically or internationally. We did know that God placed a desire in our hearts to adopt a child that had special needs. One night at church I was talking to a friend who was in the process of a domestic adoption. I told her our heart. The very next morning she sent us an email that her agency had sent out about a little boy in the Philippines who needed a forever family. His name was Moriah and he was 18 months old and was blind. That is where our journey to Moriah began. After several weeks of praying and talking we felt like God was opening the doors for us to bring Moriah into our family.
As we began the process of adopting him, we soon found out that it was going to take a significant amount of money to do this! We really felt like the Lord was telling us to trust Him for what seemed a large feat to conquer. We are in the ministry and live on a modest income so we started praying for the Lord to show us ways that we could raise the funds necessary to bring Moriah home. We immediately hosted a yard sale and that was where some of the first funds came in. We were able to secure some others resources as well. Someone suggested that we start looking at grants that were offered to help families in the process. We came across Caroline’s Promise and started reading about their ministry. Mark started filling out the application. We were impressed with the quick response from them. Unfortunately at the time we applied there were no funds available, so Lisa told us they would retain our application and consider it the next quarter. We were disappointed but understood. Once again we had to wait and trust the Lord. It was December 2010 when Lisa contacted us and asked for an update with our adoption process. We sent her an update. She told us that they were reviewing applications for this quarter. The week after Christmas she called us to tell us that out of the many families that applied we were chosen to receive a grant that was being offered for that quarter. We were so excited and humbled!! Once again God was showing us His faithfulness in providing more resources for us to bring our sweet boy home.
We traveled the end of March to get Moriah and bring him home! What a blessing it is for our family to now have him with us! It has been a busy few months getting adjusted to being a family of 5 but God continues to bless us with his grace. We are so thankful for ministries like Caroline’s Promise that seek to minister to orphans worldwide and also assist families in bringing them home. We are thankful for the many donors that are so generous with financial gifts to help make this possible. We will always be able to tell Moriah of this sweet ministry and the people that support it and the very important role they played in him being able to come join our family!
Thank you, Caroline’s Promise, for your commitment to orphan care, and for the role you played in the adoption of our son.
Mark, Carrie, Addison, Barrett and Moriah Armstrong