Supported by Centerpoint Church Annapolis 2016
We are the Wise family! God brought Scott and I together in a mission's training school over 15 years ago. Between the two of us we have traveled to nearly 19 countries. We began in India, living there for one year as part of a church plant that is still going strong.
We had to return from India because our 2nd son Jeremiah was born with Down Syndrome and no esophogas. We took him to a world famous surgeon in MN and he slipped into heaven 21 days after being admitted to the children's hospital. During the 3 years following that God blessed us with another son, Isaiah and we purchased a single wide trailer in DE but soon realized God was calling us to Northern China.
We sold that single wide (we didn't know it at the time, but selling the trailer would be the starting money we would put into an Ethiopian adoption.) For 5 years we plugged away in China and learned a lot along the way! We had a house church that would regularly have over 60 people attend. We were beyond blessed to introduce Chinese friends to Jesus, take them through the Bible in one year, baptize them, teach English AND successfully adopt our daughter Jubilee, from Ethiopia.
Our family then grew again and we added another son, Aaron and a daughter Felicity, giving us 5. In 2012 we had some medical complications from a miscarriage and needed to return to DE, where we purchased a home. We were there for a year and decided to move to Thailand. In Thailand, we were able to work with other missionaries as well as the local Chinese community, start MOPS and teach English/Bible study classes.
In April 2015, after fasting for 21 days we knew God was heading us into a stateside move for a longer season than simply "visiting". We felt sure Jacksonville was the place because of the large refugee population. We moved here, my husband took an English job in a local middle school with a HUGE number of refugees and we have been creating roots here.
Over Christmas we decided to host an orphan through CCAI (which is similar to the largest orphan hosting program Project 143). A phone call from CCAI turned one orphan into 2 (a family had dropped out) and we prepared for their coming. Both had special needs and both were 10 years old.
Children who qualify for "hosting" are known as "unadoptable" children and because of hosting the stats for these children getting adopted have gone from less than 5% to over 70%. We blessed the boys as best as we could here, took them to the zoo, parks, museums, church, prayed over them, played with them. We prayed a family would step up for each one and because of social media a friend of a friend decided to adopt one of them.
This left Jia Wang, the harder of the two. He was abanadoned in a train station when he was
7 years old. After they returned to China we fasted and prayed for 21 days. We felt certain if we did not adopt this boy, no one would so out of an act of faith and obedience we have started this adoption journey. Friends have rallied behind us and our first agency fee of $4,400 was covered in 5 days. We can see how God is pulling together the pieces of our past and current situation. When we went back and looked over the dates we realized we were actually IN northern China when Jia Wang's family (or whoever) left this boy in a train station with one outfit and less than $1.00. Our 5 years in China allowed us to be fluent enough in Chinese to communicate with him. Losing our special needs son touched our hearts for those with special needs. Living in Jacksonville gives us open doors to wonderful resources like the Jax special needs school and a huge church that has a class just for special needs kids. Nothing is wasted!
We just received our US approval to bring an orphan into the country (big deal) and all of our paperwork (dossier) should be IN China within the next 4 weeks!! Once that is in China, we "should" be able to travel in anywhere from
6-12 weeks! So everything still puts us IN China before the new year! He knows his name will be Levi (meaning joined in harmony) and has started practicing it!
Are we nervous? Yes!! But we are willing and we know the one who calls is faithful!!
We were blessed to raise $10,000 to support the Wise's adoption. It fully paid for their final travel expenses and the balance of their adoption!
Levi will join their family any day now!
We'll provide updates, pictures & video on our Facebook page.