WE ARE ADOPTING A CHILD!
We are excited and doing everything we can to bring our son home.
As part of our adoption, we are starting a crowdfunding campaign. It may be surprising to hear that adoption-related cost can easily total up to $35,000 or more. And if you are like us and doing an international adoption, the cost can quickly exceed $40,000. This is why we have set a goal of $10,000 to help offset some of these costs.
We are inviting you into this process. Below you will see our story as to why and how we started this process along with some of the obstacles we have encountered along the way. However, our goal has never wavered.
Our adoption journey began in 2015, when I was stationed in South Korea. While there I became aware of the societal taboo that surrounds adoption in that country. I spoke with my wife, Kelly about what I had learned and then we prayed. Together, we decided to start the international adoption process.
When I returned home in July of 2016, we found we were blessed because Kelly was pregnant with our first child, who was due in September of 2016. Knowing this, we decided to wait until our daughter was a year old before beginning the process again in earnest. In September of 2017, we started by submission of our application and so our journey began.
The initial process was slow to start with because of my obligations while serving on active duty in the U.S. Army, but we continued to work on the initial paperwork. Things seemed to move at a snail’s pace, but being a U.S. Army officer, I had learned patience and I also remembered what I had learned as a child, good things come to those who wait. However, in the summer of 2018, I had another setback. I had injured my knee while at a field training exercise and now found that I was diagnosed with crimpling debilitating osteoarthritis in that knee. This would preclude me from continuing with my dream of lifetime of military service. In June of 2019, I was honorably discharged from military service. I was fortunate enough to have gained skills that were needed in civilian life. I was offered a job in Houston, Texas with a good company who agreed to move my family from Fort Lewis, Washington. This again slowed the adoption process as we had to start over.
After having established a household and getting settled in the Houston Texas area, we continued the process and we resubmitted the paperwork to start the adoption process. We rented a house in Houston, Texas and this led into our first home study in 2019. Then, in March of 2020, the COVID-19 pandemic hit and in May of 2021, the housing market became a “buyers’ market”, that coupled with low interest rates allowed us to purchase a home in Katy, Texas. Additional paperwork was completed and an update to our initial home study was done shortly afterwards.
During the short time between May and October 2021, a lot happened that affected us. Our original case worker changed organizations and a new case worker was assigned. We applied for our first application for advance processing of an orphan petition (I-600A). We received another update to our home study as our original from October 2020 was set to expire and we were matched with a child. We would be having a son.
While living in Katy, Texas an opportunity arose for me to return to work as a Department of Army Civilian (DAC). This job would allow me to use all the skills I had learned while serving in the U.S. Army plus the Army would send me back to school to obtain additional specialized training. I again would get to serve our country, not as a solider but as a civilian that works in providing the solider with the tools needed to protect our country. I had a skill that was needed and that would allow me to serve this nation that I love. I would not make the money I was making working in the private sector for a private company in Houston, but I would get to fulfill my desire to serve so I took the job, and changed careers. During this time period we continued to wait for our I-600A approval. Unfortunately, due a paperwork error, our original I-600A was denied and we had to reapply. This started a whirlwind of activity that resulted in us getting a new home study in April of 2022, reapplying for a new I-600A all the while working on additional paperwork to bring our son home. Today we continue to wait while a little boy, who is the real causality also waits for his mother, sister, father, aunts, uncles and grandparents to show him the love and affection that they have and are holding patiently waiting for him to come home. Our family is excited and overwhelmed with anticipation in the expatiation of this child joining our family. Meanwhile he is stuck in foster care languishing in a system that is overwhelmed and overloaded. Several Korean children will remain in orphanages and foster homes until they reach the age of 18, when they become legal adults and must live on their own. Ancestry and blood line continue to be a defining part of Korean society. Families treasure records delineating one’s ancestry back hundreds of years. With no blood line to trace, orphans are at the lowest caste of Korean society and treated as a “nonperson” according to many reports that I have read. We want to give this child love and give him a family, a family that will love him and cherish him.
Years ago, my dad told me a story that has stuck with me. It is a simple story of the difference one person can make in the life of another. He called it “The Story of the Starfish.” He told it like this: A young boy was walking along a beach upon which thousands of starfish had been washed up during a terrible hurricane out at sea the night before. When he came to each starfish, he would pick it up, and throw it back into the ocean. People watched him with amusement and laughed at the foolishness of the young boy trying to save all those thousands of starfish.
The boy had been doing this for some time, hours in fact had passed when a man approached the boy and said, “Little boy, why are you doing this? Look at this beach! You cannot save all these starfish. There are thousands of starfish washed ashore and more are coming in on the tide. Your efforts while valiant are futile, you are only one small boy. You do not seem to understand you cannot begin to make a difference!”
The boy seemed crushed, his spirit was suddenly deflated and then he thought about what the old man had said. After a few moments, the boy bent down, picked up another starfish, and hurled it as far as he could into the ocean. Then he looked up at the old man and replied, “Well, I made a difference for that one.”
The old man looked with surprise at the boy. Then he thought about what the boy had said and the old man began tossing starfish back into the sea with the boy saving as many starfish as they could. This is the story we want for our son; he is the starfish. We are middle-class hard-working people; we are not rich but we pay our debts. We have middle class values and attend church regularly. We work average jobs, and we have the same expatiations as millions of other families in our wage earning, age-appropriate suburban peer group. One could say, and be correct we are a typical American family. We cannot make a difference in all the children in foster care or in orphanages in South Korea but we can make a difference for one, the one that has been assigned to us. He will be our son and loved as an equal part of the family. Right now, at this moment his family is waiting on him with open arms and loving hearts to welcome him home.
We are now in the final steps of our process and are working diligently to bring him home. Our placement agency has been pushing us and working with us to complete the last few pieces of our paperwork and get final approval so we can travel to South Korea to bring our son home. 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 grows.
Thank you and may God Bless.
