Here is our Adoption Journey so far…
We started this process of adopting 2 little girls from Liberia in April of 2022.
After visiting Liberia for 5 months in 2024, we decided to additionally adopt a little boy. This little guy, already bonded to our Liberian daughters, also became very close to our entire family during our time in Liberia, and now, life without him with us is unimaginable.
We chose Liberia because we are impressed by Liberia’s resilience and progress as a war torn country that is healing from so much. Liberia works hard to allow adoptions when necessary and to reunite families whenever possible. We are grateful Liberia is allowing us to adopt our daughters, and hopeful as we watch Liberia grow as a country.
We started this journey in April of 2022.
In May of 2023, with the help of our friends and family, church, community, and organizations like Noonday Collection, Phill the Box, Funds2Orgs, and Adopt Together, we reached our fundraising goals to make our adoption possible. At that time, we anticipated our Liberian daughters would be joining our family in 3-6 months time.
We did not get any solid updates for months, until November of 2023, when adoptions for multiple agencies, including our agency, were suspended in Liberia, which prompted our visit to bond with our kids and explore all avenues in person in February of 2024. We returned home in July of 2024 after exhausting all resources to unite our family permanently.
There are multiple political conflicts that brought adoptions to a halt in November of 2023. Although these political conflicts put Liberian children at risk, the layers of the conflicts are multifaceted and complicated beyond the adoption process itself.
As we continue to wait, we are committed to intentional international parenting. We will continue to visit as much as we can and continue to pursue every avenue to unite our family on one continent. We appreciate any encouragement as we continue to walk this road.
Update on calendar and progress!
We have 18 days left available!
As of today, in this moment, we also only need 16,731.98.
To quantify my excitement better, on 4/29/23, I posted that we need $17,249.18.
4/29/23 was 8 days ago. $517.20 is what we have received in 8 days.
That’s not counting Noonday purchases in the last 4 days or the mountain of clothing and textiles in my garage we will turn in this week!
Many of you might not know the total cost… it’s in the summary… and it’s over $80k.
I try to only do these email updates when something big is happening or has happened, and $517.20 in 8 days is $64.65/day.
Keep… Going!
Thanks for those for joining us today. Thanks for those who threw in all you had in the beginning and helped us find the rest.
People are good.
Happy Birthday to River, who as of today is our 7 year old Liberian Daughter! (We have 2 7 year olds total). :)
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We are inviting everyone to “purchase” a day in the Calendar of May to help with these efforts. Your donation can be anonymous or with your name mentioned in the comments on which day you are purchasing. You can purchase the day for a minimum of what the date is. You are welcome to donate more than the date that you choose. The minimum value of May is $496, once all days are purchased. You can always give more and still claim a day. As we cross off until we can travel to Liberia. You can help by donating between $1-$31 until all days are gone. You can give to us personally as well!:)
Thanks for getting us to the “home stretch”. We are excited to hear when we get to pack to go! Stay tuned….
19 days left!
Here are the dates still available in May to “purchase” as a donation to our kids adopt together fund.
Thanks so much!!!
Keep…. ….going!
Tomorrow is River’s birthday! She will be 7, on May 7th. We have 20 days left for you to “buy a day” to honor something important to you in the month of May! We are so grateful to our community of support that it has been 6 days so far for this fundraiser, and 11 days are already gone!
Happy Birthday to our Liberian daughter. Hopefully some day soon she will get to meet those that continue to fight with us for her homecoming!!
Keep…. ….going.
UPDATE ON CALENDAR FUNDRAISER!
***only 22 days left to “purchase” for the month of May and it’s only May 3rd! Thanks to our amazing support!***
Keep…. …..Going!
We are inviting everyone to “purchase” a day in the Calendar of May to help with these efforts. Your donation can be anonymous or with your name mentioned in the comments on which day you are purchasing. You can purchase the day for a minimum of what the date is. You are welcome to donate more than the date that you choose. The minimum value of May is $496, once all days are purchased. You can always give more and still claim a day. As we cross off until we can travel to Liberia. You can help by donating between $1-$31 until all days are gone. You can give to us personally as well!:)
Thanks for getting us to the “home stretch”. We are excited to hear when we get to pack to go! Stay tuned….
I have gotten this question a lot this week. Here is the easy answer.
We only need
$17,249.18
to complete this adoption.
There are so many moving parts with adoption and timing is difficult to product. “Time is money” is true here as well. But, this is the exact number based on current market analysis and predictions with everything we know today.
Yesterday was my grandmother’s birthday. “Gran” and I were very close.
Gran took 5 grandkids ages 9 and under camping or “glamping” back in the 1980s. She also took us to Gaylord Opryland Hotel every year to stay a night and enjoy the Christmas decorations.
She showed up for everything we did. She was always nice, and always consistent and always available. She was obsessed with our birthdays, as if they were a holiday all their own.
Gran would have loved the #Phillthebox recycling idea because she could not stand wasting things or unnecessary items laying around that no one needs or wants. Learn more about Phill the Box and how it can help your adoption efforts by emailing Jennifer Tilton @ [email protected]. We have collected 40,000 pounds of clothes and received $8000.00 for our adoption expenses. We are still collecting! Next deadline is May 12th, 2023.
Gran would have been so excited about our adoption and done everything she could to get our 2 new kids home quickly.
Gran was a “kid person” and the moment we announced adding to our family, she would have pursued with us. She would have mailed them birthday presents and care packages and maybe even made some phone calls to legislators and government officials on what we need to do for just these 2 little girls. She would have rolled her eyes about how long it takes and been frustrated with me at the logistics privately, but publicly, she would have appealed on my behalf to everyone she knew to help get them home faster. Just like many of you are, Gran would have been “all in”.
Yesterday, on Gran’s birthday, our adoption made great strides in so many areas.
Yesterday, we received a total of $1462.00 for our adoption expenses from several different avenues. Yesterday, I barely left my house and we did some Facebook sharing and texting on behalf of our Liberian daughters, but for the most part, I rested. So many others did so much on our behalf through giving, sharing, donating textiles, and even doing their own textile drives in other states! It is so nice to have so many people in our corner for this endeavor.
Days like yesterday involved closer to 100 people. All in different ways in their own lives doing one thing or another they can do as a nod of approval and a boost to our efforts. Whether it be Facebook posting, clothes donating, playing golf for adoption at #AdoptTogether, or buying Noonday purchases, or anonymously giving to our crowdfunding, or just texting me for “proof of life and sanity”, all of it helps. All of it makes parenting across an intercontinental avenue possible for just one more day, to keep waiting and keep…. …. going.
International adoption is about as predictable as hurricane season. You know it is going to happen, you know it is going to end, you have a range for time and severity and cost, and you can avoid it altogether by NOT living in Florida, and other coastal states, but at the end of the day, the wind and the water control the rest. We could choose NOT to adopt. But we love to adopt and we love living in the tropics. So Hurricanes and adoptions it is!
I could pick any day in the last 396 days and name at least 10 people each day that helped us specifically with the adoption of our 2 youngest daughters in Liberia. Each day the names of those 10 people change a little bit, but it always feels like and looks like a minimum team of 10, with lots of subs and a huge cheering section.
Jeremy and I and our young family might have been able to pull of an $80k adoption by working like crazy for 3-4 years or sinking into debt with home equity loans or other credit based offers that would take us years to recover from, or both.
We wanted to try another way. We wanted to make the nearly impossible attainable for us, and for others.
Instead of silent debt and 3-4 years, we are holding a record for fastest fundraising in a year’s time for an international adoption that we have ever heard of.
We are also teaching other families behind us in this process to move even faster than that. That is because people are still good, and God is still God.
Our official remaining fundraising balance based on current predictions of timing from our agency at Small World Adoption’s analysis of what we can predict is $17,249.18. That could change, but probably not by too much.
$17,249.18 is nothing compared to where we started just 1 year ago.
I hope we get more than we need and can divide up the extra between 2 families headed to Liberia close on our heels.
The Adkison family @ http://adopttogether.org/families/the-adkisons the Godfrey family @ https://adopttogether.herokuapp.com/families/the-godfreys have children waiting in Liberia, and they about 1/8 of the way there.
It’s been an honor to accept the blessings of our friends, neighbors and strangers.
It’s been miraculous to see this happen faster than I imagined.
Thank you so much for joining us here. Feel free to invite anyone and everyone to finish this last bit of fundraising.
The last stretch is always the hardest and the most exciting, and we are officially in the last stretch. We should travel in the next 90-120
Much like hurricane season, it’s just hard to tell when we will actually make landfall.
We only need
$17,249.18
to complete this adoption.
We are inviting everyone to “purchase” a day in the Calendar of May to help with these efforts. Your donation can be anonymous or with your name mentioned in the comments on which day you are purchasing. You can purchase the day for a minimum of what the date is. You are welcome to donate more than the date that you choose. The minimum value of May is $496, once all days are purchased. You can always give more and still claim a day. As we cross off until we can travel to Liberia. You can help by donating between $1-$31 until all days are gone.
Thanks for getting us to the “home stretch”. We are excited to hear when we get to pack to go! Stay tuned….
