After much prayer, we are excited to announce that we are adopting a child!
We are doing everything we can to be prepared to welcome the child God selects for us into our home.
As part of the process we have decided to take a step of faith and start a crowdfunding campaign.
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 or she grows up.
We ask that you keep us in your prayers as we navigate the journey ahead.
Hello all!
We first want to thank everyone who has supported our journey financially, emotionally, and spiritually. To say we are humbled and overwhelmed by all of your generosity is an understatement. Our hearts will be forever grateful to all of you.
It has been a minute since our first post and although our family status hasn’t changed, we have been doing a lot behind the scenes. When we started our adoption journey we had some pretty strong opinions about the direction we wanted to go in but as He always does, the Lord has reminded us that He is the author of our story in which we are just the main characters. After much prayer, education, and discussion, we have decided to drop out of the domestic infant adoption program and focus solely on foster care adoption.
Our desire to be parents coupled with what we have learned about the needs of children in foster care in Minnesota have lead us to pursue something called Concurrent Permanency Planning. Basically what this means is that we will become a safe and loving home for a child while we navigate possible reunification with their birth parents but with the added security that if reunification isn’t possible, we will become their permanent home and parents. While our ultimate goal is to adopt a child, we feel called to be an example of Gods love for all His people by being able to help a family through a difficult time and potentially reunify.
We are continuing to work with the amazing team at Children Home Society Lutheran Social Services. We are currently two weeks in to a four week educational program that covers all of the important aspects of the foster care system and adoption process. After this course we will be matched with a social worker who will be working with us for the entirety of our journey, the next steps being a background check and home study. This process will take approximately six months to complete. We then will receive our foster license and begin the matching process. It is surreal to think that we could have a placement by Christmas.
Our decision to move away from domestic infant adoption will considerably decrease our costs associated with adoption. There are several factors that can affect the adoption cost and we have estimated those to be about half of what we originally planned. Ultimately this was not a deciding factor in our choice, but it will allow us to open our home to a child sooner than we originally anticipated.
We continue to be so grateful for all of the support, encouragement, and love that we have received from our community, friends and family. We are so excited to continue our journey and to see what God has in store for us.
In His service,
David and Kelly
