Before we made this trip, Scott and I considered several names for our potential children. Mostly, we discussed boy names. A boy or two seemed more likely than a girl. But a couple weeks before we left home, I spent an evening thinking over girl names. I was having such a hard time that I started thinking about women that I admire and literary characters that I love, and so on. I thought about Jane from Pride and Prejudice and how I love her gentle and humble spirit. I thought of Elisabeth Elliot and others. I scrolled through names online but only made it to the M’s I think. But as I was laying in bed that night, the name Sophie popped into my head. Sophia Jane I thought. I turned over to Scott who was almost asleep and said what about Sophia, we could call her Sophie? He liked it, a lot in fact.

From that night on, we didn’t consider any other names.

Skip to Day 16 in Ukraine where we were nervously looking through files at our second SDA appt. We came to the file of a little girl whose picture we fell in love with immediately. Scott turned to me and said, “Sophie.” There he goes again, I thought...being positive and hopeful. At this point, I was feeling battle weary and hesitant but I smiled and said, “yea, maybe.”

We left the appointment with her file and looked forward to meeting her. Twenty- four hours later, after officially receiving her referral, our facilitator picked us up to drive us to dinner. We realized that we had only heard her last name. So I casually asked, “what’s her name, her first name?”  He picked up the paperwork and scanned the document.

“It’s Sophia,” he said.

“WHAT?!” Scott and I exclaimed in unison. Scott reached for my hand from the front seat with tears in his eyes. My mouth was hanging wide open. Could it really be true? We’d experienced so much uncertainty and confusion up to this point, it was hard to believe that God was being so specific.

Day 18, we arrived at the orphanage in the rain. Sophia was brought into the room as the orphanage workers told us about her. She had a sweet smile and quickly warmed to me. After a minute or two she was in my lap. We listened to all the scary things that they were saying about her background and her delays and her potential but her brown eyes and sweet temper charmed us. Scott and I passed looks across the room. We knew what the other was thinking. Before we knew it, we were walking down the stairs and out the door. The rain had stopped and we looked up to fast white clouds and blue sky. By the time we’d reached the car, we’d decided to accept the referral and start the process of adoption. We told our facilitator as we drove down the road. Seconds later, we looked up and a huge rainbow was framing our view towards town.

“This is a good omen in our country,” our facilitator said.

“A reminder of God’s promise and a sweet affirmation,” I said.

Scott and I just held hands and stared at each other in disbelief.

I whispered, “this feels right, doesn’t it?”

“Yes,” he said.

We felt peace. The peace we had been searching for.

Every day since has been a mixture of astonishment, fear, excitement, insecurity, and homesickness. But here we are on Day 32 and we have a daughter....Sophia Jane Schnorrenberg. The same initials as her daddy.

The hearing went well. What a surreal experience! We didn’t understand 90% of what was said. The judge was serious at first but soon began to smile and joke. He asked us some basic questions and asked the orphanage worker (yes, there was one there) to testify about our visits. I’d never seen her before, by the way. After leaving the room for about 10 minutes, he and the other witnesses returned and asked a few more questions. We were congratulated and formally declared her parents.

As the judge was leaving he asked if we went to church. We said yes and he said, and I’m paraphrasing, “so you know, adoption is from God.” I put my hand over my heart and nodded yes and said thank you.

And so the story continues and it is a journey, not a fairy tale. We’ve experienced doubt and fear and sometimes sheer panic. The pictures only tell a sliver of reality, but we are grateful and privileged to walk the road that the Lord has laid out for us. We thank all of you for walking with us and holding us up with your prayers.

I’m so glad that we can finally show you pictures of our beautiful little Sophie. Go to the album page for more...