We have BIG news! We are adopting! We are beyond excited to share this journey with you. We have talked about adoption since we were dating and feel like now is the right time to bring another child into our family. Adoption is such a beautiful picture of God's love for us in that He chooses us to be His children, part of His family. His love for us is unconditional. We want to extend the love He has shown us to this child.
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 $50,000 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 want to build around our child as he or she grows up. We treasure your prayers and support for our family as we walk through this.
As many of you know we have been in the adoption process for the past year. We are excited to share we have been matched! On Rachel’s birthday we had a phone call with an expectant mom who had seen our profile book and was interested in learning more. We had a great conversation and found out the next morning that she had chosen us! We look forward to welcoming a baby BOY into our home in August.
Our days have been filled with paperwork, planning, and communicating with mom. We are looking forward to meeting her in the next 2 weeks! Please pray for her health, our upcoming visit and our relationship with her.
We have been blown away by the generosity of friends and family as we have raised funds for this adoption. We are so grateful for every single financial gift we have received, no matter how big or small! The total amount due to the adoption agency is $64,000. We have not been shy about the cost of adoption. It is one of the biggest barriers for adoptive families. To date we have raised $43,468.97! (Note: We have received donations through various avenues such as Venmo, Cash donations, Checks, etc. This site only reflects a portion of the total funds raised.)
Please continue to pray for our family and for baby boy’s mom. We cannot do this without your faithful prayers and support. We are so grateful for the encouragement we have received by so many along the way! This is something we never could have done on our own. Thank you for partnering with us!
It’s been awhile since we have shared an adoption update, but at the time it didn't feel like there was much to share. The past months have been filled with much waiting and lots of paperwork but we are officially home study approved. Our profile book is complete and we have several copies made and ready to be mailed out when we apply to a situation. This is a huge milestone!
We are also very excited to share that we have raised $15,888.97 of our $30,000 goal. We are so encouraged to be at this stage of our adoption journey and are so thankful for you all! Because of the various ways people have donated to us we cannot manually alter our Adopt Together total raised. It says $2,830 of our $30,000 goal but just know we are half way there! Currently we are waiting to hear if we have been approved for a grant from Lifesong for Orphans. Please pray we would hear back about our application soon!
It is very surreal to start receiving situations and we are excited to see where the Lord leads our family in the matching process. Please continue to pray for birth mom, for baby and for us as we wait. We will keep you posted!
Thank you so much to all who have donated, bought t-shirts, helped with our garage sale, and prayed for us on our adoption journey. We are so humbled by your generosity!
Over the past month we have been working on putting together our profile book. Basically a photo book that shares about who we are, where we live, why we’re choosing adoption, etc. This is what birth mom will read as part of the first steps to get to know us. Ultimately she will decide whether she wants to choose our family or not. This is obviously a huge decision for her and we would love prayers for all of us as we enter the next phase in the adoption process.
We sent our photos and text to a designer who specializes in creating profile books for families. On Friday we received the rough draft copy and have been making final edits this weekend. A big milestone! We are very close to finishing the Home Study process as well. The second half of what needs to be ready before we can start receiving and applying to situations with a birth mom. We have a few hours of some online training and at the end of June we will meet with our agency to go over all the final details and make sure everything looks good before submitting.
