Let me tell you about how God found my kids and brought us all to China.

An Adoption Story – The Hostetler’s Journey of Adoption – Full length documentary from Sharing Dots on Vimeo.

But before all that God found me.

Growing up in Middle America,  I was a professional Christian.  I would have been voted “most likely to succeed” in the world of the American, conservative Church and I learned the hard way that “good performance” is not equivalent to a sanctified heart.

I blew up my life in my twenties, doing everything that Christians aren’t supposed to do…and then I was shocked to find Jesus, the God of grace…pursuing me…the most unworthy.  It was then that I experienced grace for the very first time.

After witnessing a most unexpected miraculous healing of my husband’s back in 2005, we had to forfeit our previously limited view on God’s desire to intervene and interact with us. 

We began to pray things like “whatever you want, Lord” and  “since you gave us our lives back, they’re yours.”

Those are dangerous and glorious prayers my friends as they catapult you right into cross-hairs of the fears that keep you sleepless and stunted.

In childbirth I’d learned a valuable lesson: that the best way to deliver a baby is to fully surrender to the process.   That through surrender, the fear dissipated, and progress was had.  This lesson has served me well as I have faced fear after fear in this larger-than-life journey the Lord has led me on.

When I surrender to His plan, fear is flushed out of its hiding places in my mind and I can forcibly throw it off.

When fear is left powerless through surrender, I am released to be whom He created me to be, and I am astonished by the abundance I receive.

Through surrender we’ve adopted, and adopted, and adopted again…we’ve moved overseas…and we’ve learned to wait on Him for everything we need.

I love to tell His stories through our lives.  As a family of thirteen living in Mainland China we have many opportunities to experience His boundless faithfulness.  I long for people to TRUST Him, to EXPLORE life through FAITH,  and to savor the magnitude of abundance that is provided along the journey.