Nick and I have some very exciting news – we have officially taken the leap of faith to start an adoption! It’s a very scary process, but we both are ready for us to start this long process that will help ups grow in our faith ... we know it will all be worth it!
It’s funny how we now realize that God has been planting adoption in our hearts for a long time. I have always dreamed of adopting a girl, I remember watching Matilda when I was younger and daydreaming about adopting a girl and having that same relationship that the teacher had with Matilda. I had made a promise back then that if I wasn’t married when I turned 30, I would adopt a daughter. Well ironically, I turned 30 this year but I was married and had two boys. I started considering adoption in January of this year. I’m not sure what the initial seed was at that point, but I think it came out of longing for a daughter and having that bond. At that same time, I came across a couple stories of international adoption that really impacted me. Our Pastor Ron Williams gave me some great advice when we were preparing for our wedding and I told him my mother had passed away when I was younger, he said that for him after losing his parents, there are up’s and down’s. You will think you have it all together and then bam the memories hit you and you go back through the mourning process for a few months. Although we have now been without my mom for almost 12 years now, I had that mourning process come back up for me and I missed my mom more than usual. That experience taught me what a good mom looks like and how loved a child can feel – and I believe that also impacted me in that there is a little girl out there with no parents – I can give her what I have experienced with a loving mom. I can help alleviate the mourning that child is going through without parents. I have continued to pray to God for the many concerns I have – is international adoption right for us? How will we financially do this without having the guilt of the financial impact this will have on my current family for the next few years? I love my family just the way we are – should I change anything? This past Friday, Nick and I prayed again asking if this is right for us before we officially started the paperwork. I’ve never gotten a response quite like this one from God before, but he made it beyond obvious to me. Saturday night I was alone with the boys in bed and Nick was out for the evening. I was on Pinterest and had a recommended “pin” to see the top Netflix movies on adoption. I thought, why not? I watched the movie “Stuck” and immediately knew that I had to adopt. The movie is actually about the bureaucracy of the international adoption process as it follows 4 families in the adoption process, but seeing the orphanages themselves, the lack of medical care available to these children, and the statistics of those children who are not adopted; I knew this was what we needed to do. I cried sad tears of what these children go through and happy tears when the parents were united with the new children. That was it for me – at that point I knew this is where our journey is taking us.
For Nick, the story is less dramatic. Our church, Pathway Community Church, promotes adoption regularly through sermons, fundraisers, and general awareness. Nick has a few times over the years mentioned adopting to me. As Nick went through a personal spiritual journey a few years back, someone who really helped us was the Small Group Pastor, Brian. Brian’s family adopted a little girl a couple years ago and Nick was really inspired by him. He has also wanted a little girl for me before I even knew I wanted it. As soon as I brought it up to him early this year, he was always on board. He had the same questions/concerns as I did before diving into this process. This weekend after I showed him the movie from Netflix “Stuck”, he sat there in silence for a minute and then said “Ok, how do we start this?” We both knew God had answered our prayers and that this is the journey for our family.
We have officially decided on a country, agency and made the first payment! I am very excited to work with the adoption agency, their staff genuinely cares about the well being of the child and to help make the process for the families as easy as possible. They have recommended we not publicly post the country we are adopting from, because this has caused issues for others in the past and we do not want to jeopardize our adoption.
For the process, it is very overwhelming! I will do my best to explain it as I understand it. We will first start now our homestudy taking 3-4 months (we hope to push hard and get this done in 2). Then we will wait for immigration approval for 2-3 months. During this same time we will also be completing the paperwork for the dossier, which is what we will send to the country with all of our information and approvals. This usually takes 1-4 months, including 2-3 weeks for translation. Then once approved, we are officially waiting for a referral. The agency is currently anticipating we will wait approximately 24 months for this. Once we accept a match, we will travel to the country twice and on the second time take our child home. We will also have an extensive post-adoption process requiring us to send updates back to the country for a few years once we are home.
Here is the other big obstacle in considering adoption – the cost. We were blown away to find out this will cost us approximately $30,000 - $34,000. I originally decided against adoption after hearing that amount – this will take a lot of sacrifice for my family for the next few years and I wasn’t sure I was ready to sign up for that. We were talking to our TrueVine Orphan Care Pastor at Pathway Community Church (which is amazing if I haven’t said it enough!) and he recommended we read a book “Adopting Without Debt”. This was phenomenal for helping to find practical ways to save money and raise funds. The author did a great job of helping provide resources, but also the expectation that this need to adopt is beyond us. We must have faith that God will provide. She pointed out that Dave Ramsey once said on a TV show “there is not one example in the Bible of God calling someone to do something and then using debt as a tool to accomplish it.” God will provide. In my research, the other quote that has stuck home with me is “God does not call the equipped, He equips the called”. So we are taking a leap of faith through our financial concerns.
Because I am sure you are curious, the $30,000-$34,000 consists of $3500 agency fee for the homestudy assistance and immigration paperwork assistance, $1200 for the actual home study, another $5100 agency fee for the dossier assistance and translation, and then $2000 for the foreign country program expense (we will be working with the country adoption agency where the child is). Then we wait until we are matched and will have approximately $2800 fee for the foreign country program expense and $3200 for the US adoption agency and reports post-adoption. Then when we pick-up the child, we will also pay the court expenses of around $4500. The last of the cost is travel, hotel, translator fees in country, etc. that will estimate at around $10,000 for both trips. This all comes to about $32,000.
We believe through savings and sacrifice, we will be able to pay for $17,000. The next $15,000 we hope to raise the funds for. We have officially made the first payment $4,745, but am hoping to raise the next payment of $5,100 in the next 8 weeks when we hope to be done with the home study. This also took a big leap of faith for me, I am very nervous to commit right before Christmas to saving this amount of money and am afraid of the impact it would have on my boys. I am trusting that God will provide.
We plan to do fundraisers and extra work over the next couple years to help raise our adoption fund. We plan to do t-shirt sales, trying to work with a local restaurant to have a portion of proceeds donated, garage sales, I want to use my photography and sewing skills to use and try to sell things on Etsy, and Nick plans on sending out letters for IT support he can provide to smaller local businesses that we would put into our adoption fund and look to sell his arcade machine he made. We will also be applying for every grant we can find available to us. I am also in love with an organization I read about “Both Hands” where friends and family will reach out for fundraising towards our adoption, and then all of us would go to a widow’s house and help her around the house for the day (think raking leaves, trimming bushes, fixing light bulbs, painting a deck, cleaning out her car, etc.) This directly comes from James 1:27 “Religion that God our Father accepts as pure and faultless is this: to look after orphans and widows in their distress and to keep oneself from being polluted by the world.” We may also look for family and friends to do a soup night or a bowling night.
I am the last person who ever asks someone to give money, so this makes me incredibly uncomfortable, but I also know being on the other side and wanting to help those I love with big life events such as this and to help this little girl come home to a good family, I’m hoping by making some of the fundraising fun and things you would want to do anyways – it won’t be so painful. I’ve also been reminded a lot that it’s OK to accept people’s help – as my father-in-law put it so nicely on vacation when offering to help Nick watch both boys in the pool “it takes a village”.
So everybody hold on tight, because this is going to be a very difficult, frustrating, full of paperwork but ultimately the most rewarding ride of our lives. God is the Great Provider and we are much honored he has chosen us for this responsibility.
#adoption #newbeginnings #GodsJourney #internationaladoption
