Welcome, friends! We have BIG news!
We are beyond excited to announce that we are pursuing adoption. As you can imagine, we're a mixed bag of excited, fearful, overwhelmed, nervous, eager, and optimistic.
We are now "active status" with our selected agency and have started to receive presentation opportunities. This means that we fit the requested criteria for mothers who are choosing adoption for their children through our agency. When we say "yes" to being presented to a birth mom, we are agreeing that we're ready to be entrusted with a child. We're also agreeing that we're equipped financially to pay the associated adoption, legal, and medical fees. The total sum of those ranges anywhere from $35,000 or more. While we've been saving toward family planning/adoption since the beginning of our marriage (6 years!), we don't yet have enough saved up enough to say a firm "yes!" to the financial requirements when presented with adoption opportunities.
We are asking if you'd consider two things … First, would you please pray? This side of Heaven, there is simultaneous joy and grief when it comes to adoption. It's an incredibly selfless decision on the part of the birth family, and our only way of support for them is prayer at this time. We ask that you please join us in prayer for protection of them as well as comfort as they make an unfathomably difficult decision. Prayer could also be used to help provide wisdom, patience, and peace for us. Second, would you consider supporting us financially? To put it bluntly, it feels weird to request that. We've long weighed if we should do a fundraising type of thing, and it's not been a quick decision for us. Landon has worked in length to apply for many financial grants, however there's no guarantee we'd been chosen to receive those. To those who've already supported us by way of recommendation letters, please know how sincerely thankful we are! If you'd like to support us by way of a donation, you can do so here using the link on our profile. We're hoping to be able to remove/lower the financial hurdle with the help of those around us and have the ability to say "yes!"
We know you may have many questions, and we will be as open as we feel is wise or is in the best interest of all involved when it comes to details of a potential adoption. We also want to be as open as possible regarding the finances. We've chosen Adopt Together as they are a non-profit organization. Financial donations toward our fundraising campaign will be 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. Thank you for your consideration!
-Landon & Brianna
Family & Friends,
It's been many months since our last update, and we are saddened to share that we will not be continuing to actively pursue adoption. We're writing to those who have financially supported us to clearly communicate that we want to return the funds you donated toward our adoption so that they can be used to serve others or meet needs within your own families. We so greatly value the sacrifices you have made to support us. Please know we're grieved over this heavy decision but do believe it is the most God-honoring step to take. We don't believe it is considerate for us to "sit on" what's been given to us, because we currently have no estimated timeline for when we will return to actively pursuing adoption. We want to thank you for praying for us, giving to us financially, and offering support. Please pray for our personal growth and for our marriage. Please pray that God would grow us closer to Him and closer to each other during this difficult time.
We're asking you to please reply to this post via email ([email protected]) privately to let us know in what form you would like the money you've donated to us to be returned (venmo/cash/check/etc.). If we don’t hear from you by April 27th, 2024, we will send a check to you for your donated amount. If you have donated to us anonymously, we're asking that you please reach out to us now via email or phone call/text to Brianna and communicate the amount you donated so we may follow the same steps and return your money.
Sincerely,
Landon & Brianna
Hello friends/family,
Thank you for your continued support of us as we pursue adoption. We’ve now been pursuing adoption for an entire year. We haven’t had too many updates because activity has been pretty limited in the adoption process. We plan to take the next couple months to evaluate if adoption is the best plan at this time. We’re celebrating 7 years of marriage this fall, and 2023 has shed new light on weaknesses in our marriage that we are praying God would help us grow in as we work on them. During this time, we will be saying “no” to any presentation opportunities. Right now, though, we are proceeding with doing the yearly update on our home study as it is a fraction of the cost of redoing it, and we still hope for adoption to be in our future. After evaluating we will decide about fully jumping back into the adoption process or setting it aside. Then we will communicate accordingly with those who have supported us financially regarding the appropriate next steps. We sincerely hope that this period of accountability and focused effort solely on our marriage will equip us to make a confident decision because we understand the gravity of adoption and our own walk with God. What we desire most is that God would be glorified. Thank you in advance for your support of prayer.
Hi Friends/Family!
We hope you all have been doing well and we continue to appreciate your support, prayers, encouragement, and gifts! Sorry we have not had an update in quite a while, so we wanted to give you one now. The most recent news we got from the agency was that all of the mothers they are working with are currently matched with adoptive families. (Which really is a good thing!) But it does mean we continue to wait. Although that can be tough sometimes, it has given us time to continue planning, saving, and growing all according to God’s plan. And looking back, it is usually a better thing than what we think in the present as we've been working to grow in our relationship with God individually and together. We'd love to have you pray for us in this way. One fun thing to share is that the agency is celebrating its anniversary and Brianna was able to donate 5 dozen cupcakes of various flavors for them to enjoy! Again, we’re thankful for your support and we’ll keep you updated as anything new and/or exciting happens in the future.
Hello Friends/Family, sorry for the delayed update. The birth mother was able to make a decision but selected to work with another adoptive family. We're glad she was able to make this tough decision and hope the pregnancy, birth, and transition goes well for everybody. We are excited for what the future will still hold but please pray as we continue to wait and plan.
Hello, friends and family. Thank you for continuing with us on this adoption journey. This morning we said "Yes!" to being presented to a birth mom who is due in the early months of 2023. We will be presented as a potential adoptive family within the next week. The hope is that Birth Mom would confidently decide on an adoptive family shortly thereafter. Please pray with us that God would continue equipping whichever family is to raise and care for this child, that God would provide comfort and clarity for Birth Mom as she decides, and that both Birth Mom & baby would continue in good health as He sees fit. ❤️
