We are excited to share that we are adopting a child!
The standard questions we are asked often are, “Do you have children? How old are they? Do you want more children?” We are usually pretty honest with our answers and let people know that it wasn’t in the plan for us to only have one child at this point in our marriage. Through our honesty and confession about the stirring to adopt, God brought specific people into our lives to give us a word of encouragement and others who pointed us in the direction of New Life Adoptions. Through these friends and Rachel's medical diagnosis, God has made the path toward adoption very clear to us. We are eager to follow His lead.
Adoption is very expensive. In order to make adoption a reality for our family, we are inviting others to financially and prayerfully partner with us. The exact amount required by the agency is $24,000. We also have up to $1,750 in additional fees that will be given to the attorney once adoption is finalized.
Any money donated beyond this amount will go towards formula, diapers, clothing, and other expenses related to the needs of our adopted child.
We appreciate your financial partnership greatly.
Thank you so much again to each of you who donated to our Adopt Together campaign. Hudson had a very successful bake sale/lemonade stand. He is amazingly still receiving donations from those who were unable to attend. Adding up what we've raised here along with the funds from his stand, we've raised nearly $10,000!! We are still about $16,000 short, but we are incredibly thankful for the amount we've raised so far! It's a gift I am thankful for. I don't quite have the words to convey my gratitude.
We applied to 6 different adoption grants and received our first rejection letter the Friday before the stand. Through the stand, God reminded us that He's still working and providing despite the rejection. I had no expectations for the stand and truly agreed to him doing it because he wanted a way to help. I am still blown away by the generosity and can't believe how much we actually raised.
We continue to pray that we will get *something* from the other 5 grants and are diligently trusting God as we anticipate covering a bit of the cost ourselves. We ask for your prayers for this, as well!
Hi everyone!
We’ve shared on social media, but we wanted to tell y’all specifically about Hudson’s bake sale/lemonade stand coming up this Saturday, October 19 from 9-12 at our house! He has such a sweet heart and wants to help adopt his sibling. He’s so excited to be a big brother and wants to help every way he can.
For each of you who have donated, you are welcome to come and enjoy some free treats as a very small way of saying thank you for how generous and kind you’ve been!! If you don’t have our address, please text us for it.
We could not be doing this without your support. Please feel free to share this with anyone who would be interested in supporting his bake sale, too. He really wants to serve so we are praying people come!!
Hello friends,
This update is a little bit longer. We are excited to share that we were finally able to attend the required adoption seminar this weekend. This was the seminar that we planned to attend in February but were unable to do so due to Rachel contracting Covid.
As many of you know, we chose to take the past few months leading up to seminar to prepare our hearts, work through grief, and really align our plans to God’s. We now see clearly why He allowed us to wait. It was a beautiful weekend full of encouragement. We made connections with some very special families that we’d have never made had we attended in February. To be surrounded by others who fully understand what we are walking through was nothing short of healing.
At this point, our next steps are to continue to fundraise, apply for grants, and prepare the baby’s nursery. We had the opportunity to hear from a few birth mothers. One mother shared how she was moved to choose a family when she saw a beautiful pink nursery in their family book. Her story was so impactful for us that we plan to complete our nursery and share our story of why we chose the theme in our family book. This means it may take a little longer, but we really want our birth mother to know just how special and loved her child will be.
We will keep updates on what the nursery progress is like, but all we will share for now is that our theme is “Fingerprints of God” based on the song by Steven Curtis Chapman (who also so happens to be a HUGE adoption advocate and supporter because of his own experience with adoption).
It's been a while since we've posted an update and would like to give you one. Our home study was completed on April 20 and approved. Thank you for your support as all the funding we've received thus far paid for that. The agency is eager to show us to expectant mothers. We've received wisdom from adult adoptees as well as adoptive parents which helped us realize that we needed to take some time to reflect on this process rather than rushing into the adoption. While we've chosen to temporarily "pause" the physical/tangible preparations, we are very actively preparing our hearts which is ultimately more important than painting a room or buying baby clothes. We are doing the hard but holy work of seeking counsel, surrendering to the Lord, and making some painful but necessary changes in our lives. We are thankful for what God is doing in our hearts in this season, and we fully believe our foundation for becoming adoptive parents is growing firmer with every passing day. We have a big adoption training in mid-September, and we also plan to complete our physical preparations by the end of that month. This gives us ample time to continue to prepare our hearts and our home for the baby. Thank you again for coming alongside us during this journey. We appreciate your support and ask that you will pray that God will provide for all of our needs as we continue our preparations.
Our paperwork is now complete! We completed the child abuse training, CPR training, and finished all the books. Our papers are all signed, and our references are in! Our home study is scheduled for April 20. Once our home study is completed and approved, our family book will be shown to expectant mothers!! :)
