Heavy Hearts

This is an interesting and hard post for me to write.  I don't quite know where to begin.

The day that I saw Porter's face plastered all over people's blogs, I looked at him and knew he was our son.  The features of his face resembled that of our own son.  My heart was captured and yet I didn't know where to begin or how to go about making him our son become a reality.

My husband and I came together and prayed and asked for direction.  Every step we took, we knew was an act of obedience and things fell together and fast.  We have always known that God had us on a special journey and it about more than just rescuing a little boy from living in an institution.

We were given photos of Porter from a family that had traveled to the orphanage where he had been living before he was transferred.  Before the photos of Porter were released by this family, other people and volunteers had studied and compared them to the photo that Reece's Rainbow had of Porter as a young toddler.

Left-Reece's Rainbow Photo            Right - Family Photo taken at the orphanage

After a lot of studying, it was believed that the boy seen at the orphanage, was the Porter listed on RR's site.  Not only where there similarities in the facial features, the region of the country that he was listed in matched, as well as the age.  We all believed we were looking at Porter.

I was blessed with even more photo's of Porter and the more and more I studied them, I noticed even more characteristics that were that matched that of our own family.  The expressions on his face and they way his thumb was tucked in between his pointer and middle finger (my children and mother do this as well).  More reason's we knew he was our son!

If you know me, you know that I am an internet research junkie!  When I want to find out more about something, I can spend hours researching until I find it.  I have looked up the region where Porter is now living and found photos of the little town.  I love being able to visualize where he is and where we would be traveling.  I had been given the link to the national registry for orphans for his country.  I found his photo listing and it looked just like the photo listed on RR.  It was a few years old, so I still believed that the more recent photo's that we had received from the other adopting family better reflected how he currently looked.

But then, last night I went to the orphan website again.  This time to check and see if they happened to update his file or actually, to make sure he was still listed.  While looking, I recognized two boys that I had seen in photos of Porter.  As I looked again, there was Porter listed right next to these boys files!  I was excited to see that his photo had been updated!  There was the sweet boy that I had seen in all of the photos.  I clicked on his file and was shocked to see that there were multiple photos listed for him.  I clicked on each one and knew that was him.  I forwarded the link to the family that had sent me the other photos of him to confirm I was looking at the same boy.  Sure enough, she confirmed it was him.  She recognized the bench he was sitting on in front of the orphanage.  I studied his file on the website again and noticed the date of birth listed was different from what RR had.  Immediately my heart started to flip flop.

I started emailing those who could verify this information.  I attached the links to everything I had found.  I have always had that nagging feeling in the back of my mind that we would show up at the institution and the little boy that would be brought to us would not be the same boy we had seen.  That thought was becoming a reality.

I woke up this morning to that dreaded email....it was confirmed.  The boy that we had fallen in love with - the boy who's picture is plastered all over my blog - the boy that I have shown his picture to many people, sharing his story - is not the boy that we had committed to.

Porter's story is still the same.  A young boy that was transferred from his baby house to an awful mental institution.  A boy that needs to be rescued from this place.  A place that desperately needs our prayers so that change can happen.  People who need Jesus and to experience His love and the love of us!

Curtis and I know we were called to walk this journey and we will continue to do just that.  But now there are two boys that we love - two boys that need rescuing.  We can only rescue one.  Please pray for us.  Our hearts are broken for the one that will be left behind.

I do not want to remove the photos of "Porter" that I have.  He is my son.  But he is not the "Porter" that everyone is shouting out for.  This is a hard time for us as we try to make sense of this in our hearts and minds.

Thank you for your support and prayers!