This post was written by Mark and Kendra Rohl. Mark is an elder and worship leader at Life Connection Church in Phoenix AZ and Kendra sings on the Our Rising Sound band. Previously as part of the “God in Our Worst Times” blog series they shared their struggle of having their own baby and their hope of adoption. That post ended with hope and faith, but a yet unrealized miracle. By the grace of God they are now able to share the conclusion to their story, and the amazing miracle that God gave them.

God in Our Best Times

January was an exciting month for Mark and I. We had selected an amazing Christian Adoption Agency here in Phoenix called CFCA and started our 8 weeks of infant adoption/parenting classes! It felt great to be in the process and taking steps forward. We went into the matchbook at the end of June and we were told it would probably be a 6mo – 1yr wait time. We were hopeful, excited and full of faith that God had the perfect birth mom and baby for us. We spent many nights calling out to God on her behalf and praying that we would be able to form a good relationship with her, that the baby would be safe and healthy in her womb, that we would be able to share Christ with her and that ultimately she would become part of His family and ours. We could never have dreamed of how completely, perfectly and faithfully God would answer those prayers.

We receive “The Call”

On Monday Aug. 3rd we got a call from CFCA that a birth mom had selected us and wanted to have a match meeting with us to get to know us better. She was due at the end of Sept. which seemed so fast but we were so excited! We prayed and thanked God and asked that if this was meant to be that He would make it perfectly clear. Although we were both very excited we just didn’t have a peace about things and didn’t feel like this match was going to come to fruition.

The next day we were telling everyone the exciting news about our potential match and the word was out and our amazing community of friends and family were in prayer for us that God would continue to open the right doors and shut the others. Tuesday night as we were getting ready to go to church Mark got a call on his cell. All I heard him say was hospital, Tucson and as I looked at him to see his shocked face he put the woman on speakerphone

“Hi, this is Susan from CFCA Tucson and we have a birth mom here that is in labor and she has selected you from the matchbook, can you be here right away?“

What!  We were both in complete shock, we wandered around our our bedroom listening to the details she knew “healthy mom, healthy baby from the ultrasound it looks to be a girl, no prenatal, ethnicity 1/2 Italian 1/4 Irish 1/4 Hispanic.” She asked us to take a minute to pray and call her back if we were interested. We hung up the phone and just sobbed on the floor of our bedroom. We instantly knew that this was it! We threw some random things into a suitcase, got in the car and we were off to Tucson to see what the future had in store for us.

It’s a boy!

On the way there we called the adoption worker back and she said “Well the baby was just born and it’s a boy!  he is perfect,  healthy and beautiful and the birth mom would like to talk to you, is that okay?” Wow, sure I said not knowing what to say to this brave woman or how to even pull myself together to sound like a halfway sane woman myself.  She got on the phone and told me how excited she was that we were coming, how she knew from the moment she saw our match letter that we were the ones God had sent her to raise this baby boy, and the words that changed our world in an instant “I can’t wait for you to meet your son, he is beautiful.”

Our son? Could it be? Could this be the long awaited arrival of our child? The one we have been fighting for, praying for, crying out and believing for? It was too beautiful to comprehend, so full of God’s grace and peace that all we could do was burst into worship to Jesus. Worshiping Him for His goodness and faithfulness not even knowing how much more He had in store for us. The ride to Tucson was filled with lots of tears, lots of laughter, prayer, worship and conversations I will never forget with family and friends with Jesus at the center of it all. We didn’t have a boy name yet so being the tech savvy people that we are Mark downloaded a baby name app onto his iPhone to start looking at names. Mark has always loved the name Toby and I have always loved the proper version of that, Tobias. He looked it up and it means God’s Goodness. Done! That was the perfect name for this little boy.

Read the rest of this entry »

This post was written by Mark and Kendra Rohl. Mark is an elder and worship leader at Life Connection Church in Phoenix AZ and Kendra sings on the Our Rising Sound band. They tell the story below of their struggles to start their own family by having children of their own.

Beginning a family

It was the best of times it was the worst of times.  Those words ring true for us as we have headed down the path towards parenthood.  The last three and a half years have been filled with anticipation, hope, heartbreak, loss, joy and redemption and the story is still being written. The decision to start a family is a scary and exciting decision for any young couple and we were no exception. After 4 years of marriage we felt God was leading us to be fruitful and multiply and we wanted to be obedient to the Lord of course so try we did! The first few months were exciting and with every twinge of nausea we thought we were pregnant. Then a few more months went by but without much concern, everyone told us to just be patient, try eating peanut butter or oysters or any number of strange magic fertility enhancing foods (it’s really quite fascinating how all of a sudden everyone becomes an expert on the subject and has lots of advice to give on how to make a baby).  But we were not worried and continued the old fashioned way with full confidence that at any moment we would be peeing on sticks and seeing pink plus signs.

Approaching the 1 yr mark our hope was turning into frustration so we thought maybe we just weren’t timing things right or taking the right vitamins so we got the gadgets and gizmos that help you to know your cycles and so forth. I won’t go into all the gory details but for anyone who has tried to make a baby you know the crazy lengths you will go to and try every bizarre thing anyone recommends when you get to the point of desperation. After a few more months of that we decided it was time to head to the docs for a check up and see if anything was causing this seemingly epic delay in procreation.

Doctors start testing

Mark was the first to get tested (wow, the process of that was another interesting moment in our marriage we never thought we would experience) and much to our surprise his tests came back as infertile, what, infertile? How can that be we thought. The doctors said there was no explanation for how this could have happened, no hope for any sort of cure and we spent a while reeling from that blow. We went through the cycle of sadness, then anger, then bitterness and finally landed in fight mode. We weren’t going to give up this easy and we knew God could do a miracle so that is what we prayed for. We had prophetic words about God restoring the seed of life in Mark and we clung to that and had our amazing friends and family praying and interceding for that to take place.

In the meantime, the doctors wanted to test me just to make sure we didn’t have the double whammy of infertility happening, and low and behold we did. After a painful procedure and testing that was more like torture than anything else we discovered that a ruptured appendix when I was in high school caused massive scar tissue to form around my fallopian tubes causing them to be completely blocked. Awesome, we now were faced with both of us being diagnosed as infertile in our 20′s with no hope (according to the docs) of ever conceiving naturally. It’s a strange feeling to have someone tell you that you can’t have children, it feels like some right has been taken from you and it all seems so unjust. There was a period of time when we could barely go out in public because of the seemingly innumerable amounts of pregnant teens walking around looking pissed and disgusted at the gift of life inside of them.

Read the rest of this entry »