God's plans are always perfect

Well so much has happened since our last post almost 1 year ago. It took 11 months but the house finally went through. In June of this year we closed on our house and moved into our own home. It was a long process but completely worth it.
On the adoption front things have changed there as well. In the year we have waited the waiting times for China have gotten even longer. God has been preparing our hearts for a change and I (Amanda) started researching other countries that need adoption families. I came across Thailand and decided to research that country. I discovered we are already old enough (no waiting till we are 30!) and they have a great need for adoptive families. As I was researching Thailand I decided to check up on China just to see what was going on with that country. Well the 2 adoption agencies we were looking at using have closed standard adoptions to China. I decided to research more on why there are so many orphans in Thailand. I forgot about the major tsunami there in 2004. That left not only orphans at the time but also so many families can't afford to raise children now with the devastation left by the disaster. They also have a huge child trafficking problem in that country as a result of the poverty and desperation of some families. As I was researching this, I felt very strongly that God was moving us toward that country. So I requested an application from Holt International. When we received the application we found many more things that were perfect for our family. The average wait time is 12-36 months and the average age at adoption is 18 months - 3 years. That puts this next child around 2-3 years younger than Makayla. Which is exactly what we were hoping for in the beginning. We wanted to be able to raise all of our children together. It is important to us that they can play together and grow up together. When were looking at China it was looking more like Makayla would anywhere from 6-8 years older than our next one. That was a little more of an age difference than we were hoping for.
Everything is looking like it is falling into place for us to change countries. At first, it took some prayer on my part because I had wanted to adopt from China for so long. Slowly God showed me that with a 5 year waiting period just for placement that obviously He has enough parents for the babies in China and He wants us to move on and help other children. So after a slight redirection from God we have received our application and are hoping to have all of our paperwork done so we can send the completed application to Holt by the end of the week. We are asking for prayer as we continue our journey. Prayer for our family, the adoption agency, our future child, and also for the finances to complete the adoption. We are extremely excited to begin this new direction in our journey.