Dear friends and family,

We are excited to share the latest chapter in the Parfitt family story. We are adopting!!

Earlier this year, the Lord began calling us to adoption. Having confirmed His will for us in many amazing ways, we began the search for an agency. The Lord has very graciously been closing some doors and opening others along the way and we are excited to begin the adoption process through Nightlight Christian Adoptions.

With millions of orphans around the world, we have spent many hours researching and speaking with agency staff in order to narrow down which program to pursue. As we continue to ask the Lord to show us where our child is waiting, the three best options open to us at this time are domestic infant adoption, the Colombia program, or India special needs adoption. Each of these programs has unique characteristics to consider.

Domestic infant adoption is what's known as a "waiting family" program. There are hundreds of families waiting to welcome a newborn. Through this program, an expectant mother chooses a couple with which to place her baby. These adoptions are "open" adoptions where the adoptive parents commit to provide regular updates for the birth family as well as yearly face-to-face visits. This is a beautiful opportunity to show the love of Jesus to a birth mother and for her to see that her child is growing up in a loving home.

The Colombia program, as in all international adoption programs, is a "waiting child" program. There are thousands of children in care in Colombia, and many are waiting for their forever home. Through the Colombia program, we would have the opportunity to adopt an older child (10 years and above) or a sibling group with minor or no special needs. These children bring with them difficult histories of abuse or other trauma and desperately need the safety and stability of a loving family.

India is home to a staggering 20 million orphans (with some estimates being even greater). Through this program, we would be eligible to adopt a child with minor to moderate special needs. Some examples of these needs include clubfoot, cleft lip/palate, vision issues, hearing loss, albinism - many needs that are treatable or correctable with the medical care we have here in the US. We would also be able to adopt a much younger child (around age 2) and maintain birth order in our family.

Adoption is a costly process in many ways and we need your support to bring our child(ren) home. There are several ways you can help:

1. First and foremost, we need your prayers. Adoption was God's idea. When we repent and put our faith in Jesus, we are adopted into His family. Our enemy, Satan, hates adoption, he hates us, and he hates these kids. We know he will do everything in his power to discourage us along the way. Please pray for peace, wisdom, and encouragement. Pray that we will continue to discern the Lord's will as to which program to pursue. Please also pray for favor with our agency and any foreign government officials who will review our file.
2. We also need your financial support. In the short-term, we will have around $10,000 in adoption-related expenses over the next 3-4 months. The total cost to adopt one child ranges from $35,000-$50,000, depending on the program. This may sound overwhelming, but we know God "is able to do exceedingly abundantly above all that we ask or think" (Ephesians 3:20).
3. We are working on some creative fundraising projects that we will be letting you know about in the near future. If you have some ideas or would like to help with fundraising, please let us know!
4. We have also hired a builder (who is himself an adoptive dad!) who will be adding a large bedroom in our attic in order to make room for our growing family. We will be finishing off the project ourselves in order to save a bit on labor costs. If you are interested in helping with painting, laying flooring, or other finishing touches, we would love to hear from you!

The Bible says that God is "a Father to the fatherless" and that He "sets the lonely in families" (Psalm 68:5-6). We are grateful that the Lord has chosen our family to embrace the calling of adoption. We are thankful for your prayers and support as we continue on this journey. May all that we do be for His glory alone.

With heartfelt thanks,
The Parfitts

7.5 years ago, we were brought to international adoption. It was a decision that was not made lightly, but came so easily to us. We are anxiously awaiting the day we get to bring our child home.

Where do we even begin? This is gut wrenching gratitude that almost takes our breath away. We promise to honor our child’s family, culture, and country, we promise to raise the kindest person you’d ever meet, we promise to be present and fill their life with as much opportunity as we can, and we promise to raise a child of God. This has been the most intentional, soul shaping, emotional, exhausting process we have experienced, adoption has changed us. We are better people because of it. Adoption is built upon brokenness, in a perfect world, it would not exist. “A child born to another woman calls me mom. The magnitude of that tragedy and the depth of that privilege is not lost on me” - Jody Landers

Please join us in prayer as we pray for our sweet child, for our child’s birth parents, for their current caregivers, for safe travels, during the attachment process, for their health and developmental support, and for guidance in this next chapter for us. We invite our family and friends to be a part of this amazing journey with us. However God inspires you to invest, whether it be through prayers, words of encouragement, adoption funding, or sharing your own story and talents, we hope that you reach out!

We cannot wait to share more and for the day we get to bring our child home. To our family, friends, those that have followed our journey, and Nightlight Christian Adoptions. Thank you from the bottom of our hearts for giving us hope during this wait, we are eternally grateful. This is all we ever wanted. 🌎♥️

“I prayed for this child and the Lord has granted me what I asked of him. So now I will give him to the Lord. For his whole life, he will be given over to the Lord.” - 1 Samuel 1:27-28

Hello! I am a single male of 35 years located in Tennessee. I have completely ready to welcome a child into my home with open arms. I live on a 25acre farm with so much space to enjoy a happy life. My extended family is quite large and they are all so ready to welcome a new child to our family!!

The greatest things we do in life are the things we can’t do alone. Realized hopes and dreams come at a cost, but the best of dreams are well worth the cost. See, the best dreams aren’t about fortune, fame, or accomplishment; they’re about eternity. They are lasting changes that impact the world so deeply that they follow a person right into forever. Real substance isn’t something you can touch; it’s something you experience. That is what family is about: substance that lasts into eternity.

Writing a simple story about how we came to the decision to adopt is simply undoable. There is no simple or short version. God began writing this story before we were born, and there’s nothing simple or short about that. He plants seeds before we even realize the ground has been broken.

Adoption isn’t just adding a child; it’s a crucial part of a family portrait that will never fade. To get straight to the heart of it all, we believe our daughter is and has been marked for our family since before she was born. We also believe we were marked for her before we were made.

Motherhood was always part of my blueprint. There was never a question in my life about whether I would be a mother, it was more of a when. It wasn’t that I dreamt only of having a daughter, or a son; I dreamed of having a family! I wanted them all. Sons, daughters, whomever God would grant to me.

Likewise, my husband grew up longing for fatherhood. As it took him a little longer than he expected to find the right mate—me!—he considered adopting on his own. The desire to be a father was just so woven into his person that he couldn’t imagine life without children in his future.

When we married eleven years ago, we were thrilled to look ahead and build our family. A military deployment made us wait. When it was over, pregnancy number one was quick to follow. Glowing with anticipation, we jumped with joy at the news that our time was here! We would be parents! And then, we weren’t. We were devastated at the loss of our first pregnancy—twins. We mourned them deeply as we clung to God’s goodness.

Time passed and we were blessed with an incredible and perfect little boy. He filled every crack and crevice of sadness with the exuberance of the Lord’s love manifested in a person. Surely, this must have been the restoration Job felt when he was given a family after he’d suffered the loss of his earlier family.

Multiple moves, another deployment, and lots of challenges later, we were waiting for our second child to arrive. Another son came barreling into the world with fury as he entered the world four months premature at the onset of the Coronavirus Pandemic. He died. Don’t cry. God quite literally raised him from the dead! He came back to life as the medical staff was calling the time of death and fought every imaginable battle out of the NICU. Our family endured trauma, grief, and isolation. There in that darkness, we met God’s grace!

Now, after the loss of twins, the difficult pregnancy of one child, and the traumatic birth of another, we are no longer able to have more biological children. We never wept a tear over this fact. Probably because we already knew that God had a daughter for us. The deep desire for a daughter was always there. I’m a firm believer that when you desire something so purely from the Creator, the desire is most likely from Him. We knew she was out there and that she was someone we didn’t conceive. She was someone we’d never met, and somehow, we knew her. We felt that beckoning without seeing her face, knowing her name, or speaking her language. We loved her and wanted her and yet, it wasn’t time.

Every step of the way, the idea of adoption has been watered and nurtured through unexpected conversations, visions, and circumstances. Every moment we thought it was time to pick the proverbial fruit from the vine, we’d hear the gentle whisper of the Father, “Not yet.” We’d set the idea aside and give it more time. We’ve recently entered into a new season of our lives. In this season, for the first time, we heard the gentle prompting of excitement, “Now!”

The timing seems crazy now. The process is daunting. The finances are impossible. All of it sets the stage for a perfect tale. It’s a story we could never write, but God’s been writing it for a while now; the story of family. This is only our side of the story. Her side is a story all its own, and yet one that was always meant to tie to ours. We are all a little orphaned in this world. It’s a busted world that left us all a little busted as well. The beauty in this story is that family can be an amazing depiction of God’s love for us. He rescues each and every one of us who asks. In this adoption journey, we simply get the privilege of being a part of it all and mirroring His perfect example of hope, redemption, and unending love.

It’s not about us finding the perfect child. It’s about us being the perfect family! This is the telling of something dynamic. The story of God’s love expressed through people; mothers, fathers, children—His creation—the story of something eternal.

“I will not leave you orphans — I am coming to you.” (John 14:18)

Nightlight has been a Godsend to us as they walk this road with us. We invite our friends and our family, as well as anyone who might feel compelled, to be a part of this journey as well. However God inspires you to invest, we invite you to join in our family, dynamic.

My husband and I have recently found out we have a slim chance of having children of our own. I come from a very loving adoptive family. I know what that longing feels like to be lived and wanted. My husband and I have both agreed that it is God’s will for us to adopt and bring a child into our lives and show them true love.

We're adopting a set of siblings from South America! We've been waiting 6 years to grow our family beyond us and our Goldendoodle, Stevie, and are so excited that our empty bedrooms and home will be filled with children in a few short years. In 2022, Ty started teaching at a Christian bilingual English-Spanish school in Madison, WI and through these past few years, God's continued to put Spanish-speaking culture and countries on our hearts and minds. When we found out about Nightlight and their International Program we knew God was working, even though we couldn't see him working behind the scenes to orchestrate this story to grow our family. Please pray for us in the long, journey ahead, but we know he will sustain us and work on our behalf because he has been sustaining us this far. Also, please consider helping us financially to bring our children home.