Story #1

The family that we will be serving with in Buffalo are the Castronova's, Darrick, Jodi and their 3 children Sam, Savannah, and Isaac. We didn't know them at all. Milo sent out a couple of e-mails to different people about church planting. Just getting some ideas about what was going on in church planting in various areas around the country. Darrick replied to Milo and they quickly began to build a relationship. After a couple of months Milo finally asked Darrick if he was looking to hire anyone to which Darrick's response was, "No." No for a couple of reasons but mostly because their was no money involved. For some reason that didn't scare us away and they kept talking. Milo and I were very interested in the church they were going to be planting and for some reason just felt like we needed to keep pursuing this. We would find out shortly why.

We knew very little about their family before we met them but we did know that they had adopted their youngest son Isaac from Haiti, which connected with Milo and I. Why you ask. Well I'll have to back this story up… Milo and I have always talked about adoption and the possibility for that in our family. While Josiah was in the hospital we talked about it a lot more. We also became acquainted (not personally, just through blog world) with a couple of families that had adopted children from Haiti. Milo and I discussed this a few times and it was just one of those things that we tucked in the back of our minds for later. Fast forward to the day Josiah died. Milo and I were making that awful drive back to Charleston to say good-bye to our son when Milo listened a voicemail on his phone. It was from an adoption agency asking us if we would financially support children in Haiti while adoption was closed due to the devastating earthquake. We could not believe this phone call and it's timing after the conversations we had about adopting from Haiti. Why this call? Why this moment? Again, all we could do at that point was tuck it away in the back of our minds for later. So you can see why we felt a connection to Darrick and Jodi when we found out they had adopted a child from Haiti. We then listened to an interview they had done on a Christian radio station about their adoption story. Part of their story is this...

Prior to adopting Isaac they were all set to adopt another little boy. They had gone to Haiti and met him. They were all set to bring him home when out of now where Jodi got a phone call telling her that their baby had died. They were devastated by this news. In this interview Jodi shares this little boys birthday… May 20th, the same day as Josiah's birthday. Milo and I couldn't believe this connection.

On the fourth of July, we were in Buffalo visiting my family and so we decided that we wanted to go to Darrick's gathering and meet them. After their gathering with their core group we met them for lunch. After some pleasantries Milo and I began telling them who we were and naturally started with whats been going on in the last year with our son Josiah. As I'm telling our story Jodi begins crying (more than I'm used to people crying) and I'm not sure why. She finally interrupts me and says, "Erin, the name God gave me for our baby that we were in the process of adopting was Josiah." I couldn't believe this. His birthday was the same as Josiah's and they were going to name him Josiah when the adoption finalized. We continued to talk and eventually the conversation turned away from "our Josiah's" to the church. We then found one more connection. The first time Jodi and Darrick met with a small group of people with the intention of building a core team that would eventually launch theWELL was January 24, 2010 the very day that Josiah died.

We left that day just in awe of these connections. We couldn't simply say these things were just coincidences. We just knew they were from God, but what did all this mean? How would this all play out in the future? I had been praying earlier that day that God would make it clear to me if we needed to keep pursuing the possibility of serving with theWELL even though at this point it was not even a job. God answered that prayer. It was clear that we needed to keep pursuing, not knowing how it would turn out.

There is much more to share about how we came to this decision but I don't have the time right now to get it all down. So I will just say this. We did not know what to make of all these connections with Darrick and Jodi's story and Josiah, but as things began to fall into place and the doors began to open for Milo to work at theWELL it became clear what God had given us, especially me. He had given us this connection with Darrick and Jodi to provide me comfort. God knew my fears of leaving behind Josiah's story if we ever moved from here. I believe God speaks to us in ways we need to hear and I needed to know that Josiah's life would not be forgotten and that it would still be used to impact others. I truly believe God orchestrated all of this to provide me comfort and conformation in this huge decision. To think that the day our world came crashing down was the same day God was birthing something new for our family. That is the kind of love He shows his children. We could not have created this. Only an all knowing, all powerful, loving God could have put this all together and I can't deny it.