Six Hearts, One Home: Our Adoption Journey

The idea of adopting a child has been on our hearts for several years. It was never a concrete idea, however - adoption was something we might do, maybe, someday in the future. In late 2023, God started to move our hearts and minds, including our children's hearts, toward making adoption something for the here and now. We have a wonderful family. We love being parents and our children love being siblings. After taking careful inventory, we concluded that our family is a gift God has entrusted us with and one that we should share with a child who needs it. 

Once we felt it was time to pursue adoption as part of the next season of our lives, we had some decisions to make - the biggest of which was whether to adopt domestically or internationally.

We decided to adopt internationally. We came to this decision for two reasons. First, the foster system in the US can sometimes lead to situations where children are placed and then removed from a foster home. We felt that, for the sake of our current children, we should avoid this. Secondly, after speaking with a psychologist, we feel strongly that maintaining the birth order of our current children is in their best interest. She advised us that interrupting the birth order can have some serious unintended consequences on our children. This means we are looking for a child younger than our youngest child. We learned that, in the US, adopted children tend to be either infants or older children. We are not necessarily looking to adopt an infant. To respect our current birth order then, we'd be looking for a child between the ages of 0 and 5. We feel this age range gives us the best chances for success, and adopting internationally gives us the best chance of finding a child in that range. 

International adoptions are done through private agencies, and any adoption through a private agency, whether domestic or international, can be quite expensive. Our expectation is, that once everything is said and done, we'll have spent between $35,000 and $45,000 to complete the adoption. This includes everything from agency fees, government fees, and travel, to odds and ends such as translation services and passports. The entire process will most likely take two to four years.

Our next steps as of now (March 2024) are to complete some preliminaries such as an orientation and required education, as well as a home study. We have about $5,000 of costs left to complete these first steps.

We believe God is working things together to connect us with a child who needs our family. We are both humbled and excited to pursue this cause and welcome another Shown. Any amount you can give will help us get past this first hurdle and bring a child home!

Adoption Bridge will allow us to raise 1/3 of our needed funds and gifts made through Adoption Bridge are tax deductible. 

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