I was sitting at a skate park in Southern California when I noticed a kid getting picked on by a few other kids. All of a sudden another boy came running over and said, “Stop picking on him! He lost his dad and his mom is locked up.” Then the boy getting picked on said, “I’m not afraid of you… I deal with kids like you every single day at the group home who are twice your size.” I went home that day broken. My bubble that there were no orphans in America was broken. I told Nicole that I really wanted to do older child adoption. We didn’t have kids at the time and decided it was best to have our own kids first before introducing older kids into our home.
A year later I left the doctor’s office with what felt like a death sentence. He told me that I had a 0% chance of having biological kids. It was out of that death that led to my wife Nicole and I to pursue domestic infant adoption. We didn’t do it to be hero’s. We did it because it was our only option to start a family and experience what it was like raising an infant. A year later we met an amazing, courageous woman who decided to place her newborn son in our care. We didn’t just adopt our son Manny, we ended up adopting his whole family. He knows his birth mom, his birth sister, and grandma and grandpa. I’m so grateful for the gift that we were given, and for the courage of our son’s birth mom to place her child in the care of another family out of sacrificial love for him. Adoption has been beautiful healing experience for everyone involved.
2 months ago we introduced a 7 year old boy into our family who has been in and out of the foster care system for 2 years. He’s a smart courageous traumatized little boy. We hope and pray that one day we can adopt him into our family forever and see healing come through the gift of family.
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Bill & his wife Nicole raised just over their goal of $14,000 on AdoptTogether. Check out some of their fundraising tips here.
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