Louisville—Doug and Cathy Williams, members at New City Church of Louisville, have chosen to add a sixth member to their family as “a continual reminder of the gospel” in their own lives.

“It’s already impacted our family. We already love her so much. We are excited for her to be in our home,” Doug Williams, the missions strategist with the Kentucky Baptist Convention, said.

The adoption of a 19-month-old girl from Ethiopia will be finalized next year. The process began over three years ago.

“I’ve done a lot of mission work in Africa and we just felt drawn there. We wanted to adopt from there to show that ultimately the gospel breaks all barriers of ethnicity,” Doug said.

More than six years ago his family became interested in the idea of adoption, he said. However, they kept trusting that “in time, we will.”

“I think that what God has taught me most is that His timing and the placement of our child is perfect,” Cathy Williams said.

“A little over three years ago a young lady from our church who had gone overseas to be a missionary, Brittany Huff, was back at our church sharing, and during that service the Lord just impressed on my heart and my wife’s heart that now is the time, and we can’t just keep putting this off,” Doug said.

“We needed to be faithful to what the Lord was leading us to do,” he continued.

“The process is rather lengthy. It involves a lot of paperwork, homes studies and trainings that we go through,” Doug noted.

There also were some struggles with the particular country that really slowed down the process, he shared.

“We were at the point of asking the Lord if we needed to change countries or need to revisit the location,” he recalled, “and we just felt impressed that we need to stay with this particular location.

“So we did, and by God’s grace, we started to see movement again. Over the last year we felt that the Lord was calling us to remain where we’re at, just be patient, and wait on Him,” he added.

The Williams already have three children, a 16-year-old daughter and two sons, 13 and 8 years old.

“Our children are just ecstatic about it. It will be a beautiful reminder of the gospel, about how we were once not the people of God. We once did not have a family. Because of Christ we have been brought into His family. We’re adopted into God’s family through Christ,” Doug said.

Cathy added, “We are excited about having another little girl in our home. I love seeing the excitement that our children are having because we know who she is. We are excited to meet her for the first time.”

“It’ll also change our family in the sense that we will be a multiethnic family. It’s going to be a huge learning curve for us. We’re excited to learn,” Doug concluded. (WR)