Help Bring Our Child Home

Hi! Thank you for visiting our profile and helping us to bring our child home through your prayers and financial support. We live up here in rural Wisconsin on the edge of Michigan's Upper Peninsula.

This year, we began the process of bring a child into our home through adoption! In our single years, we each felt our Blessed Lord tug on our hearts to adopt a child, but this year the timing was right for us to respond to that call together. Particularly, we have been drawn to the waiting child route for adoption. Right now, we're pre-matched with a specific waiting child in Bulgaria! That means Bulgaria is holding our child for us while we complete the dossier (a collection of the required legal documents--about 10 to 15 documents required by the country), at which point they will begin the court filings associated with the adoption process (takes about 4 to 6 months).

The process of adoption is quite costly in terms of time, personal effort, and financial resources. To bring our little child home, we need your prayers first and foremost! If you also feel called to support us financially on our adoption journey, we are deeply, deeply grateful; here, on AdoptionBridge, we are able to raise one third of our total adoption costs. At each step along the way, there's agency and documentation fees to be paid. Donations made here go directly to our adoption agency; you can learn more about that here: https://adoptionbridge.org/adoptionbridge-faqs/.

May God bless you and your family and thank you for joining us on our adoption journey!

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Here's a glimpse at our adoption costs to bring our child home:

• $26,100 - adoption agency fee ($5,600 paid)
  • Covers cost of social workers assigned to the adoption case, paperwork requirements, and administrative and compliance fees; if child has a sibiling, it is an additional $8000 per sibling. When adopting from a Hague-convention country, adoptive parents are required to use a Hague-certified agency.
• $850 - IAMME monitoring/oversight fee (paid)
• $3,508 - home study fees and supporting documents ($3,358 paid)
• $364 - required education course fees (paid)
• $300 - home study review fee
• $2,500 - shipping and translation of documents
• $2,115 - USCIS filing fee and certificate of citizenship
• $1,325 - dossier apostille, translation, and shipping fees
• $100 - medical review of referral
• $3000 - required post-adopion reporting fees
• $1000 - annual home study update
  • Required if the process takes longer than a year; most adoptions take 18-72 months while waiting child adoptions can take as little as 12-18 months.
• $11,000 (estimate) - travel for two required trips and to bring the child home

Here are some interesting statistics and stories about adoption:

• The average cost for adoption is $43,000, making adoption "out of reach for the average couple" [1]. Costs for adoption typically range from $25,000 to $60,000; the variance in cost is based on many factors and not just the type of adoption that it is [2].
• 38% of Christians have seriously considered adoption, but only 5% have actually adopted [3]
• Cost is the number one reason families do not adopt [4]
• 19 million kids are orphaned worldwide [4]
• Here's one family's adoption journey: https://emilystimpsonchapman.com/adoption/

Sources: 1: Federal government; Barber on Aletia; 2: creatingafamily.org; 3: lifesong.org; 4: adopttogether.org