I would like to share the joy Kris and I feel about beginning the journey of adopting from the Dominican Republic. There have been many roadblocks, but we are here! God gave us both the desire to adopt at an early age. When we got married we had planned on having our own children and adopting. Our own biological children never came. Before Kris's deployment to Iraq we tried to have our own child. Our trying lasted for years, after many disappointments, painful procedures and testing, it was confirmed that we would be unable to have our own biological child. About five months later Kris was diagnosed with chronic myeloid leukemia. Despite the excellent prognosis, we struggled finding an adoption agency and a country that would work with us once they found out he had cancer. It is a scary word and we understand that it makes a lot of people nervous when it comes to raising children. There were times that we weren't sure if we should continue, but knew God had more for us. We continued to strive to find an agency that would be our perfect match. We hoped to have found an adoption agency in China, but three weeks later another door closed. We kept our trust in God and He has been faithful in our perseverance. We were drawn towards the Latin/South America region, due to the political corruption and the poverty many of these countries face. We found an adoption agency that was willing to work with us and help us find the answers we needed. In one week of working with the agency, we were given the ok to proceed with submitting our application to adopt a sibling set from the Dominican Republic. We submitted our application and we were approved a day later. Our hope is to bring two orphans out of the DR and call them our own. We want to give them a life of opportunity with parents who love them already. Looking at our fee's and the cost of our adoption, it can be overwhelming. We will have fee's due at many different points in the process and most range from close to $3,000 to our largest fee of $17,000. For two children we will need around $30,000 in addition to all of the travel costs once our adoption is being finalized. Once we are able to travel, meet, and bond with our children, we will be in the Dominican Republic for around 10 weeks. To date we have paid all of our current fee's and our homestudy fee's, along with other adoption requirements for a total of $30,000. We have about $15 -20,000 needed for referral fee and travel, depending on how long we will be in country. Thank you all so much! Your support is incredible!!
