We have BIG news!
We are adopting a child!
We are beyond excited and are doing everything we can to be prepared to welcome a beautiful young girl 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 $40,000 or more. This is why we have set a goal of $40,000 to help ease the financial burden that often overwhelms adoptive parents. We know this number looks big but we also know that God is bigger.
Joe and I have 4 biological children and are going to adopt a girl from Ukraine. My journey for adoption began as a teenager. I watched kids age out of foster care with no family, friends of mine, and knew adoption was something I wanted to do. I met my husband and found out quickly that he wasn't as excited about the idea for us. So instead I helped where I could for others who where adopting. Praying for friends and fundraising here and there. We talked about adoption now and then but not really as something for us. This was a 'secret' desire I had. Something I dared not even pray for because I didn't want to be let down. In the spring of 2017 I was helping some friends with some major fundraising to bring home their 7 children from Ukraine (a sibling set). While talking with her I let slip how much I'd love to adopt but my husband was just not on board. She and another adopting mama said they would pray for our family. They prayed that God would open the door if it was His will. The NEXT day my husband went to men's breakfast at our church. The topic was God's call to take care of the widows and orphans. I hadn't told him about the conversation with my friend but he can home in tears. His heart was broken for these children with no family to care for them. He said we needed to do something. And so our adoption story launched forward.
First we considered hosting. A short term commitment to bring a child into our home. To show them the Gospel and a family. We could still stay connected after they returned home. We quickly realized that this would be hard on our hearts and the hearts of our children. To love and attach to a child and then have to send them back to an orphanage. We prayed. We decided that the end result would be adoption so we might as well take the direct path. Hosting is about $3,000 and we chose to save that toward the adoption costs. We chose Ukraine because we have a few friends who have gone that route so we have some 'experienced' support. We read some statistics and saw that 10-15% of children who age out in Ukraine commit suicide. 40-60% go into sex trafficking or prison.
God has blessed our family so abundantly and has given us grace and love to share. By His continued grace we hope to bring our daughter home before Christmas 2018.
We don't actually know who she is yet. Ukraine has a 'blind adoption' policy which means we won't get our referral until we travel to Ukraine. With much prayer, we decided that that was okay with us. We are confident that God will work out the details about the child who will be a part of our family.
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 she grows up. We hope that you will prayerfully consider helping to bring our daughter home so that she can know what it is to be a part of a family!
Bless you and thank you for your donation.
