We have BIG NEWS! We are ADOPTING!
We've been praying about adoption and have officially started the process of welcoming a beautiful new little girl into our home. As part of our adoption process, we have started a fundraiser campaign to raise funds to bring our girl home. Adoption costs roughly 40,000 dollars, and without your help and God's mighty hand, we can't afford to carry out God's commandment.
God says in James 1:27 “Religion that God our Father accepts as pure and faultless is this: to look after orphans and widows in their distress and to keep oneself from being polluted by the world”
Adam and I knew very little about adoption before our friend Sara Jo gave a presentation on adoption at our church sharing their family’s journey to bring home their daughter from India. During the presentation, she shared her heart for adopting children to love and teach them the gospel which really tore at our hearts. Ever since hearing the presentation, Adam and I haven’t been able to shake the statistics and heartbreaking stories her and her husband have shared with us. We have since felt led by God to advocate and carry out the calling to adopt an orphan from India.
India alone has 31 million orphans looking for homes, 18 million being female. In India, females are often not cherished by their families because they are seeking sons to carry on their last name, and because males carry religious significance in the afterlife of their religion. Many little girls are killed by their families or put in orphanages to sit in cribs until a family adopts them. Most orphanages don’t have enough staff to give the children individual time, play with them, take them out of their cribs, or even know their names. At the age of 7, children are aged out of the orphanage in India due to lack of funds and most children turn to sex trafficking or shelters. Don’t let the word shelter fool you. The shelters in India are just a building with a roof, where the children are living among men and women of all ages with no one directly caring for them.
In Psalms 82:3-4 God states, “Defend the weak and the fatherless; uphold the cause of the poor and the oppressed. Rescue the weak and the needy; deliver them from the hand of the wicked.”
Also, just a reminder. God made the whole world, not just America. In our story, we specifically feel the call from God to India due to the dire situation regarding the abundance of orphans, specifically little girls.
This is where you can help. Please pray and think over the next few months if you're able to assist us in bringing our new daughter home. Anything from a donation, a card, prayers or showing your support for our adoption would be appreciated. We know every step until we bring home our daughter will be rough and tedious, but we can't wait to teach her about Jesus and become her mommy and daddy.
Adoption Update!!
When completing your home study for adoption, you have to complete a psych evaluation, complete interviews, pass the safe home inspection, complete fingerprints, police clearances, financial worksheets, autobiography questions and received clearance from the states you’ve lived in(along with so much other things). When you apply for the clearances for the states you’ve lived in, you do to apply for all the states you’ve lived in in the last 15 years. These clearances ensure you’re clear of child abuse, criminal records etc. Adam applied for his clearance from living in Texas on 11/05/2022. After 4 months of waiting, we got the all clear for his records in Texas and our home study can officially be submitted!!! 🙌🏼🙌🏼
Once our home study packet gets approved, we can apply to USCIS(United States Citizenship and Immigration Services) for them to approve us to adopt saying that we meet the eligibility requirements. From what I’ve heard, the average time for the USCIS to approve people has been 4 months.
Once we get approved to adopt, we can apply with CARA(clearing house for abandoned/relinquished orphans in India), and get matched with our daughter! 🥰🥰
We have a long long road ahead of us, but we are fighting for you, baby girl!
Please continue to pray for us, our daughter, and for the funds needed for the next few steps. God is moving!
When my friend and I went to Kansas City to shop, I found a globe on the shelf that immediately caught my attention. I’ve always thought about buying a globe before adoption, but once I saw the “hand crafted in India” tag, I knew this globe was meant to be in our daughters room. This globe will remind us that although we have months and months left before we meet our girl, Gods got the whole world in his hand. We can rest easy knowing he knows who our daughter is already, he knows our timeline, he knows how we’ll get the adoption funds. HE KNOWS.
We are now waiting for Texas to approve Adam as having a clear child abuse record, then our homestudy can be submitted!! We are so close to the next process of our adoption-However it will probably be the summer before we are matched with our daughter.
In orphanages, children are given “found” names when they are brought to the orphanage, and they often never know their birth name. We may not know who our daughter is, what special needs she may have, or what her smile looks like, but we’ve picked out her name. We will name our daughter-Judah-which means praise. We will continue to praise God for Judah, and will always thank him for giving us this burning in our hearts to adopt.
Please pray for Judah, friends. We are fighting for you, baby.
This week we traveled to Manhattan to complete our psych evaluations and finished two of our home study interviews. After having our home study coordinator tour our house, we are officially done with our home study! Now we just need to wait for little pieces to get finished before our homestudy is completed and submitted to be approved. Once it’s approved, we can get matched with our child! It’s getting more exciting knowing we’ll put a face to prayers soon! ❤️
Baby girl, we haven’t met you or seen your picture yet, but we can’t wait to have you with us next year for Thanksgiving. ❤️
I’ve spent the last week doing non stop paperwork, getting things notarized, and typing up things for our adoption. I spent the last two days resting, and it’s been so needed. It’s cool thinking next thanksgiving we could have another daughter at our table.
I never knew id be so excited for a printer/scanner until We started this adoption journey. Adam has practically taken on the part time job of printing out and scanning everything I’ve needed him to do, so I’m glad i can start doing that myself at home. And i can print things from my phone! I Didn’t even know that was possible. 😝
Continue to pray with us that God provides the funds for our adoption, and we pass our home study in the next few months.
