Hi everyone! We have some big news to share…WE'RE ADOPTING!
Many of you know we have been struggling to start a family of our own since we got married almost 5 years ago, and this year we felt the Lord calling us to pursue adoption as a way to grow our family. We are just starting to share this BIG announcement, and we've been overwhelmed by the encouragement we've received thus far, including gracious offers to help offset the financial obligations associated with the process. In hopes of making the process a bit easier, we've created this crowdfunding page as a way for friends and family to donate toward our journey. (Bonus: We decided on this platform because it is an IRS-recognized 501c3, so all donations are fully tax-deductible!) We will also be able to post updates on this page so you can follow along on our journey.
To give a little context to the costs, we've already saved and allocated $7,500 to date and that is just home study, document preparation costs, and our partnership with a faith-based adoption consulting agency that will walk through this journey with us and guide the many confusing and unknown stages ahead. Because we decided early on that we want to remain open to a variety of scenarios, including ages newborn to 5 years old, and instances of siblings, much of this journey is still unknown, but we do know that it will be costly. Our consulting agency has quoted us an estimated $50,000 to complete our adoption, which may surprise you as it did us! Since this was not part of our original plan to grow our family, this is an overwhelming aspect to consider but we are confident that God has always been planning for this for us and we are looking forward to seeing how this will all work out in His perfect timing! We're hoping that fundraising will help get us there faster so that we can begin presenting our family to potential cases and hopefully bring our child(ren) home within the next year.
We know that God has already chosen the child(ren) meant for our family. We continue praying for guidance and clarity at every turn, as well as for all members of the biological family as they navigate this process as well. 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/she grows up as you have been a part of ours!
With love and gratitude, Dan and Jessica
Quick update but we are cleared to finally return home from Texas and it will be a long and much slower journey than on our way here! We are so grateful for all the support we’ve had from everyone and can’t wait to get home soon!
Continued prayers for a safe journey home are appreciated!
Quick update but we are cleared to finally return home from Texas and it will be a long and much slower journey than on our way here! We are so grateful for all the support we’ve had from everyone and can’t wait to get home soon!
Continued prayers for a safe journey home are appreciated!
In a turn of events only God could orchestrate, we have a big update for our family! We had been given a case earlier in the day last Wednesday about a quick turn for a baby that had been born and would be a pick up last week in TX and while we didn’t get picked for that case, we felt that we should prepare our employers for that type of possibility. We were still active on 2 potential cases with much further out due dates so I had settled in last Weds evening to read a book called “Waiting” to see if I could prepare my heart for waiting better. We ended up getting a call late that Weds night from good friends of ours that adopted two times from an agency in TX, and that the director had asked them if they knew anyone that would possibly be active for a match as they had a baby boy born a few days earlier who was waiting for a discharge and they didn’t have anywhere to send him. We saw a picture of him and we fell in love instantly. After a few hours of texts, calls, and emailing our information to the agency, we were matched and packing up our car for the long drive to TX to meet our son!
There is so much more to the story that we can’t wait to share with you, but God is good and He wrote this story just for us and we are beyond blessed and humbled that He chose us to be this sweet boy’s parents! ❤️
Thank you to all who have supported us and prayed for us near and far and we cannot wait for you to meet him!
Meet Nathan Brycon
Nathan means “gift from God”
Brycon is the middle name from his birth mom (pronounced Bri-son)
He is first a gift from God and second a gift from his birth mama
He is a smiley guy and we are loving every minute!
Currently, we will have to remain in Texas until given clearance to head home to MN which could be 10-14 days while they process all our paperwork. After a few nights in a hotel near the hospital Nathan was born, we traveled to a guest home that was made available to us through friends from Go Corps. Once settled, Dan and I had a flood of tears in gratitude. God has shown up big and allowed us to find a place of peace in this transition in which the beautiful house and surrounding scenery makes us feel a little more at home.
At this time, we still need financial support to help us with our stay in Texas along with unpaid leave time off of work. There are many expenses still to handle in this wonderful journey. Thank you for your prayers, love, and support.
We have an exciting update...as of this week we are officially active and waiting to be matched with a potential birth family! We have been working tirelessly on paperwork and dotting every last "i" and every single "t" and we are glad to finally share this update with you. There are still quite a few unknowns in the journey ahead, but I felt this picture from our wedding was fitting as we set off on this new adventure together!
We are still working on fundraising efforts, grants, and all the ways we can to help keep our adoption debt and loan-free if possible.
Join us in praying for peace and patience in the process as waiting is hard on both of us with so much unknown. And for the birth family that will partner with us to become parents as this is likely a difficult time for them as well.
Thank you for all your love, support, encouragement and partnership in the journey so far!
Dan and Jessica
Well, it's been more than 5-10 days and we're still waiting for our email to indicate we are active. Also, they changed the requirements in one of the states we're working with which means we'll need to go get hard copies of our fingerprints. And this was as of 3 pm Friday afternoon, when we should have been getting that active email. This sure is an exercise in patience and trusting in God's timing every day!
Also, we did a fundraising dinner and raffle auction this weekend, which was a great success. In the picture here, you can see me setting up a few of the last minute baskets we raffled off and everyone rally had fun with that, with the handmade quilts being a big draw. A huge thank you to all of you who were able to join us in person, and it was the best taco bar ever! We are about one-third of the way to our fundraising goal, and 10% of that came from our event this weekend and we are beyond grateful!
More updates to come soon...and we can use all the prayers for peace and patience in the waiting!
