For The Least Of These You Did For Me

Welcome to our family's blog. We are the Duryea family and we have seven children. You might be wondering why we chose this name for our blog. Well, to begin with we have three beautiful biological children and three beautiful children from China. I'll share our journeys to China to bring home our beautiful children later. For now, I'd like to share why we chose this name for our blog. The Lord showed me this verse when we were first seeking adoption. The Lord chose to grow our family through adoption. However, the Lord has also opened our eyes to the needs of orphans , especially in China. We consider "...looking after the orphans and widows in their distress..." James 1:17, as a way of life for us, a calling.

As I read through the many stories in our adoption agency's storybooks, there are countless stories that begin with "...after many years of experiencing infertility, we started the adoption process and are now a forever family"

If you are one of the countless couples that have experienced infertility, let me share with you the wonderful way of starting a family and at the same time providing a home for a needy orphan. God loves you and cares about you. "For I know the plans I have for you," declares the Lord, "plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future." Jeremiah 29:11. If you are feeling hopeless, let me promise you that the Lord hears your cries. If you haven't ever trusted in Jesus and put your hope in him, do it now. Your life will be better than you could ever imagine. I never planned or dreamed I would go to China (3 times) and have this wonderful family. My plans surely would have never been as wonderful as they are today.

I had endometriosis for many years, yet I was able to conceive and have three beautiful children. After Sarah was born in 1998, I experienced severe problems and had surgery. However, I was unable to conceive, probably due to the scars left by endometriosis. Like many of you I had emotional scars as well. Even though I already had three children , I still felt called to have a larger family. Many months, tears, and prayers later we considered adoption. I heard about the plight of baby girls in China and the one child policy that left them abandoned. As we were praying about this, David's family in St.Louis was having a first time ever family reunion. I knew this wasn't coincidence, because David's cousin, a single mom, adopted two girls from China. One was 5 years old and the other was 9 months. This gave us the opportunity to meet them and talk to his cousin about adoption. When we came home we saw an advertisement for an adoption seminar in our area. We attended and were ready to start the paperwork to begin our adoption for a baby girl from China. Our lives would never be the same again.

Sunday, September 28, 2014

Change of Plans

The last few weeks have been crazy in our household.

Nathan had cleft palate/lip surgery on Aug. 19 and had to spend the night in the hospital.

His surgeon grafted bone from his hip to fill in the hole in his palate. He also had more repair on the cleft in his palate.

Nathan's plastic surgeon said he had one of the largest holes and clefts he has ever seen.

10 days after surgery Nathan developed an infection and some of his bone graft had to be removed. We're not sure yet how much was lost, but he will need more surgery to replace the bone that became infected.

While all this was happening, Sarah started her first year at Cornerstone Christian Academy as a junior. This is the first time she has ever entered a school.

During all of this, the supervisor from our school system called us with a chang of plans. They were now considering sending Luke to Millridge Center The School For The Hearing Impaired. It's only about 30 minutes from our home and is one of the best schools in the country for hearing impaired students.

We're grateful for everything our school district has done for Luke. Being at Millridge has been wonderful for him and is where God has planned for him to be all along. Just think of how far he travelled from China to come to one of the best schools in the country for the hearing impaired. We only live 30 minutes from the school!

Luke really enjoys school and looks forward to going everyday. He has a very small class of 8 students and that includes first grade. Everyone can tell he is very smart and will someday learn to speak. The former speech therapist developed a program called Phonics in Motion which helps kids learn their phonetic sounds by putting a motion with each sound.

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