We have BIG news!
We are adopting a child!
Shelby adventured over to Tanzania in 2012. As she served alongside of Light in Africa, her heart was truly broken for what breaks His. After that trip, she willingly traveled to both Puerto Penasco, Mexico and Tulcea, Romania with The Archibald Project and realized God was calling her to something more. She traveled back to Tanzania in January of 2017 one last time. After that trip, she knew this was the last time she would do a short-term mission trip before serving longer-term one day.
Josh traveled to Ethiopia in 2015 and spent several weeks loving on children in a school, orphanages, and very poor villages. During his time there, his eyes and heart were exposed to the vastness of God’s love.
After we got married in 2016, we started exploring the missionary process through two different organizations, at two separate times, where we both received very audible messages from God to "wait".
After much wrestling, prayer, and following His "wait", we both received a message from God to start the adoption process in Uganda in October of 2017. We, for the first time, have felt His guiding peace about this decision to move forward and have continued in this process since. We were pre-approved to apply in January and then submitted our final application in July 2018. After 3 long months of waiting, we were accepted to move on to the home study process at the end of October 2018. After the home study is completed, we will wait for a child referral and then move to Jinja, Uganda to foster our child over the course of 12 months, complete court and paperwork and return to the U.S. after 18 months.
We are beyond excited and are doing everything we can to be prepared to welcome a beautiful child into our home. As part of our adoption process, we have started a crowdfunding campaign. It may surprise you to hear that adoption related costs can easily total up to $70,000 or more. This is why we have set a goal of $40,000 to help ease the financial burden that often overwhelms adoptive parents. Online donations here are tax-deductible.
We hope that by inviting you into this process, you will see yourself as part of the community we hope to build around our child as he/she grows up.
Visit our adoption website to learn more and where each dollar goes. http://www.jdlianaworks.com/our-adoption-story
