James Matthew Frazier (Yelesa)

I hope this letter finds you all in good health and you are looking forward to what God has in store for the new year.

Although this year has been full of blessings, we did have a loss about two months ago. Our family had been prepared to take home our baby girl Mya Faith from Liberia since August. We were told by the Agency that she was no longer adoptable. It was a true loss to our family. We do not understand why God chose this, but we as a family are trying to focus on the FACT that he has our best interests at hand. Mya Faith will always be in our hearts and the Lord had our family and many of you praying for her. I know the prayers worked for her somehow. God does not always answer them like we want him to, but he does answer. I do know that she had gotten very sick with malaria which caused her brain damage. Our family will continue to pray for Mya Faith and I hope you will too.

This adoption journey has been more of a journey than we could have anticipated, but are truly thankful for the lessons we have learned along the way. We have grown as a husband and wife, family and with the Lord through it all. When we were told the sad news, once again we did not know where to go. I truly thought of giving up. Aaron told me we were not, and even if it took 12 years to get our child or children, until the Lord says "stop" we will not.

Around the same time I had heard of some breaking news and things were looking up for the adoptions in Africa, so I went to the web site to see if I could read about it. As I was going through the website acresofhope.com, I noticed a 7 year old boy listed as needing a home. It took me back...he is 7, healthy, and high energy. Hmmmmm...I figured his age is what landed him a spot on the Special page in the news. I thought to myself, "Imagine someone missing out on my Christian? High energy? Our whole family right down to the dogs are high energy! But I wonder what they mean by that?" So I contacted the agency and asked what a high energy Liberian was like. They too were trying to find out what it meant, but was pretty sure it was nothing.

Last night around dinner time, I received a phone call from the founder of Acres of Hope. She asked me why we inquired about Yelesa (the 7 year old boy) when we had young female stated in our home study. I told her that God has continually been working on my and Aarons heart. He has taken so many blinders off of us because he is not done fine tuning us. We told God 5 years ago that we would adopt, but in the same breath, we also told him what the child would look like, that the child would be female and Asian. The Lord must have gotten a huge chuckle out of that!

Now, we have been chosen to accept Yelesa's referral. We are all sooooo excited, but have a bit of a guard up at the same time. yelesa is 7 years old and is in perfect health. His high energy is rare to Liberians because he is not laid back. He likes to go, go ,go!!! Yeah for us...hop on board! He sounds perfect for our family. he has a sibling and we are not sure if we will get to adopt her as well, but the agency is working to find that out. If his biological sibling does not come to us, there may be someone else in store...We have to wait and see about that.

Please pray for us as we go through this next phase...God is good and he is in control! I attached a picture of our new son...His smile will make your day!!!