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 new life 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 $35,000 or more. This is why we have set a goal of $30,000 to help ease the financial burden that often overwhelms adoptive parents. 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.
We began the adoption process in 2022 as we pursued an international adoption. Unfortunately, we decided to step away from the international program due to political issues. We prayed and asked the Lord to guide our next steps. We felt the Lord's leading to apply to our home study agency's domestic adoption program. We have been accepted into that program and we are so excited! As you can understand, we lost funds that were already allocated to our previous program. This leaves us with a goal of $14,000 to be ready to accept the placement of a child. Please consider giving and praying for the Lord to provide!
Historically, Mother's Day has been a time where I celebrate my own mother, grandmothers, and sisters who are now mothers themselves. This year feels a little different. There is an anticipation that I get to celebrate as well. I do not yet have the 24/7 duty of being a mother, but today my child is in Africa. I do not know them and they do not know me. My journey looks much different than many other moms, but my journey to meeting our child is unfolding just like any other mom. This is very exciting! It is also very exciting that we are not waiting this out alone. We are gathering our tribe of people that are praying and supporting us. Our people gathered yesterday for our first Adkison Adoption golf tournament and helped us raise a very exciting amount that we will share later on. We are in awe that people volunteered their time and gave their hard earned money for the goal of helping us become one step closer to celebrating Mother's Day WITH our child, instead of this way.
In the last few days, I have had several conversations with different friends and family about the next steps in our process. Many of the conversations involved a common question, "are you excited to be a mom?" This is a question that I am sure every expectant mother is asked. I, of course, answered "yes!" I have always desired to be a mother one day. I have had the honor of getting to love other people's kids and my nieces and nephews. Sometimes I have wondered if I could ever love anyone more than those special kids in our life, but I know that it is a different type of love. :) The love that Jake and I will share with our own child will be so special and one that I cannot even comprehend now. So as we celebrate the heroes that walk among us tomorrow, I hope that you will also celebrate the mothers in waiting. The ones that have spent years loving on your children. The ones that silently long for THEIR time to love a child of their own.
Thank you for praying, staying updated, and giving. Givers like you are helping speed up our process!
Please visit Adkison Adoption on Facebook to see some photos from our golf tournament, we are so grateful.
The last few days have felt like we are at a stand still in fundraising. We have been so focused on collecting shoes and clothes, that we have not seen momentum for monetary fundraising. A friend of ours told us that fundraising is a marathon, not a sprint---we are learning that. While trying to think of creative ways to get our family and story out to new people, we were encouraged by two updates this week! The first being about our home study. After some last minute clearances we had to get, Jake and I were able to review our home study and it is being reviewed now by our placing agency. At the finalization, we will be able to move on to the next phase. The next document that we will turn in is our I-600A. This is formally declaring to the US government that we are internationally adopting. The completion of this step brings us closer to knowing who our child is and being 'matched' with our child. The other encouraging update that we had this week is that we are $500 away from raising 25% of our total goal! This was very exciting to see considering how we were feeling discouraged. Fundraising has two purposes--raising funds and meeting people. The more people that come across our pages on facebook, the more people we have praying for our child and that will be excited for their homecoming. The community aspect excites me the most. I love hearing that people we don't directly know are praying for our child and us. We have had money donated from generous strangers. We know that we will look back on these days of fundraising with intense gratitude knowing that we are finally a family.
Thank you for continuing to pray for us! Here are some things we have coming up to pray for:
-March 10th --driving to Columbia to drop off our first donation of clothes/textiles
-March 11th-- the last day of our MilkGlass Market shopping fundraiser (www.milkglasscandle.com/adkisons) (code: AdkisonsAdopt)
-April 6th--this is the last day of our Funds2Org shoe drive. We are hoping for 2,500 pairs of shoes! (We will still be collecting shoes after this date for PhilltheBox clothing drive)
-May 12th--we are hosting a golf tournament fundraiser
We had our in home visit with our case worker at the end of January and all went well! Now, we are waiting for our home study draft to be completed and sent to several different people to be evaluated before it is finalized. Once our home study is finalized, we will be able to complete and send in our I-600A form. We are praying that our home study finalization happens quickly so that we can move on to the next phases of paperwork that need to be completed before it is sent to Liberia. In the mean time, we are focused on raising the funds we need to turn in with our I-600A paperwork, as well as some agency fees that will be due as a part of the next step. We have begun a shoe and clothing drive that has great momentum already, we hope more people in the community get involved! This is a lot of work, but we hope it will allow us to progress greatly in our fundraising efforts. My friend, Rachel threw a Noonday Collection trunk show for me last month and we raised over $600 towards our adoption! I had never heard of Noonday before, but I fell in love with their mission and products--so much so that I signed up to sell Noonday myself as a way to fundraise! We also have been working with a ministry out of our hometown that helps adoptive families raise the funds needed for adoption. We were able to secure a matching grant of $500 in the span of two days! That was such an encouragement to Jake and I to see that met. Some days the weight of $40,000 can seem too impossible, but God always seems to place an encouraging donation in our path that reminds us that our God is bigger than the financial giant we face. We are immensely grateful for each shoe donated, bag of clothing, and hard earned dollar that has been given to our family so that we can bring our child home. We anticipate the day that we get to meet our precious child and tell them of all the loving people that have been praying for them.
Hello everyone! We are so appreciative of each of you that have selflessly given towards our adoption. Every dollar counts and speeds up the process! We had a meeting with our caseworker on Thursday and everything went well! We have our last meeting on January 24th. This meeting will be our home visit. After that, the agency will put together our homestudy report, this process takes several days. We are eager to wrap up the entire homestudy process and move on to the next phase.
In the mean time, we are in full fundraiser mode. We have a NoonDay Collection show on Facebook that will be live all of January. On January 26th, we will have a facebook live to shop the show as well! We also posted a fundraiser on our facebook page (Adkison Adoption) that allows people to choose a 'heart' with a number inside that people can choose how much they'd like to donate. The heart fundraiser will allow us to quickly raise the money we need for the next phase of our adoption process. We are super excited for the fundraisers that we have lined up for February as well!
It has surprised me how real the process has begun to feel now that we are finishing our homestudy and receiving the funds we need to continue--all because of generous people like you! Jake and I talk everyday about how different our life will be when we are able to bring our child home and how we deeply long for that day.
We appreciate your prayers during this time and hope you'll share this link or some of our other fundraisers!
