A Nepali Christmas?

With Nepal being a country far from Christianity, they obviously do not celebrate our Christmas. But in honor of our daughter we enjoyed a few Nepali foods on Christmas Eve as a way to celebrate with her.

After our finger printing trip on Tuesday, we stopped off at an Indian Market in Omaha and picked up a few specialty ingredients I would need to finish my Nepali dinner. The menu included:

Momos (top left): A meat dumpling native to the Himalayas

Pulau (top right): A simple rice dish with spices, cashews and golden raisins
Dal Bhat (bottom): A lentil soup and rice dish that is a very typical meal in Nepal

Everything was really very good and I'd like to try different recipes in the future. Our favorite was probably the Momo! Everything should have been a bit spicier, but I kept the Scoville units low so the kids could palate them. Poor E still did not enjoy the meal. I forsee us travelling with at least 3 jars of peanut butter to Nepal next year just for him!

We followed our dinner with Christmas cookies and the exchanging of gifts. I look at my mantle now and hope and pray that there will be a stocking hanging full of gifts and a beautiful brown eyed girl running downstairs to open them next year!

Merry Christmas, sweet girl! May you be celebrating here with us in your forever home next year and may you know the immeasurable blessings of our Savior, born in a manger, who came just for you!

A Quick Trip to Omaha

We completed the last hurdle in our paperwork relay today as we drove to Omaha to be finger printed by the USCIS at Homeland Security. The weather could have delayed us, but the expected winter storm #2 has not hit yet. Jay took the afternoon off and we took the boys with us. It was a quick errand. The staff was very nice and got us in and out quickly -- probably 15 minutes. With Christmas this week, I do not expect to receive the final form for our dossier any time soon. But I hope it will arrive early in the New Year.

Once we receive this final form, we make a copy for ourselves and send the original to our agency along with our check for the Completion of Documents Fee. We are creeping towards that $4000 total. If you find yourself able to help our cause during this season of giving, we’d be forever grateful! If you’d like to give but don’t know how, just get in touch with us here, on Facebook or give us a call or send an email and we’ll fill you in.

Stay Tuned: On Christmas Eve I will be cooking 3 Nepali dishes in honor of our daughter. Log in later this week for pictures and critiques! Merry Christmas, friends!

Snow Day

"Neither snow nor rain nor heat nor gloom of night stays these couriers from the swift completion of their appointed rounds."

We've all heard that statement before. It does not apply here to our adoption. The blizzard that hit us last week not only closed schools for 3 consecutive days, but it also closed down the Omaha USCIS office on Wednesday the 9th and we were not finger printed for our 1 and final form for our dossier. Supposedly, we will be rescheduled for this appointment. How and when we will hear of that news is unknown. We'd appreciate your prayers for a quick rescheduled appointment!

Nepal is still not moving forward on adoption processing, as far as we know. Yet, we are hopeful and pray for our little Nepali girl.

In the meantime, we are ready for Christmas. The holiday parties are behind us. The shopping is done. Gifts are wrapped and under the tree. I just have to mail my Christmas cards and I hope to get those out in the next couple of days. Now to enjoy the remaining days of December doing a little holiday baking and relaxing.

Thank You!

Dear Anonymous Donor,

Jay found your financial gift on his desk this morning. What a way to start the day! We will never know who left the envelope, but we are forever grateful for you. Thank you for helping us bring our daughter home from Nepal! May you be blessed beyond measure for seeking Him and for living out Psalms 82:3. We can hardly wait to share this part of the story with our little girl!

With All our Love and Thanks,
Brooke & Jay

Good News! Bad News.

After last week’s rather melancholy tone, we were absolutely shocked to receive 2 envelopes in Saturday’s mail from Homeland Security. We have our fingerprint appointment on December 9! What could have taken 12 weeks “seems” to be moving right along. Of course, once we are fingerprinted, no one knows how long it will take the government to process them and issue this 1 final form we are waiting for. For some, this has only taken 2 weeks. For others, this has been the hold-up. But we are once again hopeful that perhaps we can actually be done with all of our paperwork before the close of 2009 as originally planned. WOW!

Things in Nepal right now have halted, unfortunately. We received an email from our agency this week stating “internal conflicts” within the Ministry of Women and Children. I forwarded our email to friends adopting through a different agency. Their agency says that there has been further corruption in Nepal within the adoption program on behalf of some European and some American adoption agencies. When these issues can be solved is not ours to say. But things have come to a halt. No children are being matched and no travel dates are being issued for those who have already been matched to their children! Please pray, on behalf of the waiting Nepali children and their waiting forever families, that the Ministry in Nepal would be able to weed out the corruption and resume issuing referrals and travel dates in a respectable, honorable, above-reproach manner.

12 Weeks Left?

This morning I received a very nice wall post on Facebook from a friend looking for an adoption update. Yes, it's been a while. Sorry for that! As I was typing my reply, I received an update directly from our agency.

Our final homestudy was just sent to USCIS yesterday. It was in my head that it had been sent 2 weeks ago when we received our official copy of the home study. But alas, it is still in the mail to DC. And much to my disappointment, we have been informed that it may take up to 12 weeks to be processed, approved and for us to receive that final document we need for our dossier. For those of you looking at your calendars, that would put us back to early February! Oh my! We had hoped to send our complete dossier to Nepal after the first of the year. And now it looks like we could be 2+ months later than hoped.

On the positive side, it does give us more time to fundraise. Gifts have been slow going lately but we're confident that our God will provide.

Please pray that we could receive our approval and final document, as well as the last $2800 we need for our dossier to be finished. And I'm praying to have it before the end of the year, but I know that it's all in His timing, not mine. But "He is able, more than able, to do much more than I could ever dream!"

Updates on the unrest in Nepal? I'm not sure. It's been a busy couple of weeks in our household and I haven't been to the Nepali news websites in a while. Any other adoptive families out there following the news?

Blessings to you all! More updates as they become available, but I guess it might be quite a while before we hear anything (sigh).

Unrest in Nepal

Things don't sound great in Nepal right now. There has been much protesting by the Maoist Party and threatening to blockade the entire Kathmandu Valley. Visit www.ekantipur.com for details on what is happening in detail.

This does not bode well for those of us adopting from Nepal, but we pray for a peaceful end to these protests. And in the midst of this, we receive an email from our case worker at our agency:

Dear Friends,

We have received several inquires about the activities recently happening in Nepal. As many of you have read on online newspapers and Nepal Adoption blogs, the Maoist political party has taken to the streets again, for what they call “peaceful” protests. When these types of events happen it is common that the government offices will close down for the day, and this has happened during this time as well. These activities have been happening over the last week. We understand that this is not the news from Nepal you would like to hear, but we strongly believe that the protests are not an indication that the adoption process will come to a halt or be affected in any negative way.

Many agencies in the US are currently awaiting referrals. We have hopeful that we will receive our first referrals by mid November for two families whose dossiers were submitted to the Ministry in the Spring.

Louise

So, please join us in praying for peace in Nepal and that the Nepali children can come home to their forever families across the globe!

In personal adoption news, our certified, notarized, official home study is here, actually in my possession! Three additional copies are on their way to our agency for our dossier and one more copy for the USCIS. That means we should be expecting our invitation to Omaha for our fingerprints. How long will this take? We don't know. For friends of ours, this process delayed their dossier and set them back on their agency's list. But once our fingerprints are processed, we will receive the 1 final piece of documentation for our dossier. We'll be done! Then the real waiting begins.

What's in our Dossier -- Part 3

Here we are with the last of our dossier! Okay, it isn't quite the last because we are still awaiting our I-171H form and need to be invited to Omaha for the finger printing appointment for that form to be issued. But this is the last of the bulk mailings we have for the dossier. Included in this mailing were:

• 10 passport size pictures of each adopting parent
• 2 Employment and Educational History Forms
• 2 copies of our home study agency license
• 2 copies of our home study agency non-profit certificate: the 501(C)3
• 2 copies of our home study social worker’s license or credentials
• 2 photocopies of the photo ID/signature page of our passport for each applicant
• 2 sets (12 in each set) of photographs of our home and exterior views from our home.

The home study just needs 2 sections rewritten, but should be on it's way to our agency by now. And thanks to donations by friends and family, that $300 we were waiting on for the Home Study Review Fee ($600 total) has been sent to our agency. God just showed up and dropped these gifts in our lap. Thanks to those of you who have answered the call and served us! We are completely humbled by His provision through your support!

With the dossier almost done, we are trying to raise funds for the Completion of Documents Fee. This fee is $4000 and you can see our ticker at the top of our blog on where we are. We keep receiving little checks here and there and the ticker is creeping forward. Wow! Yes, even a little bit helps! Please be in prayer for these finances. I am still praying that we can remain debt free through 2009. If we can accomplish this phase of fundraising, we will move onto phase 2 which will be an additional $7000 that will be due in January as our paperwork goes overseas!

We hope to hear of news of referrals going out for families on the waiting list. Our agency is confident that the families going before us should be receiving news of their children soon!

Anxious

Philippians 4:6
Do not be anxious about anything, but in everything, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God.

This week I’ve been worrying about how we’re going to handle the finances of our adoption. Yes, we know we probably won’t be able to raise all the cash we need to bring our daughter home, but I was hoping to split the total cost into thirds: Raise 10K from family/friends, Spend 10K of our own/loan, and receive 10K in grants (which are hard to come by). Wishful thinking, I know.

Our home study is still being reviewed by our agency and it seems to be taking a long time. They said it would take about a week, but we’re past 2 already. I called the agency to see if the financing is holding us up and they insist it is not. They know full well that we’re trying to raise money this year. I’ve been so concerned over the $4K Completion of Documents Fee that won’t be too far off on the calendar that this $600 fee due now for the Home Study Review totally slipped my mind. Thus, came my worries.

So, I’ve been disappointed all week and we’ve talked about just going to the bank and starting the home equity loan 3 months before what we had hoped and planned. But my prayers were answered in the form of multiple donations that arrived this week. While it doesn’t add up to the total we’ll need, we're over half way there to the $600. God totally amazed me. Just when I was about to take things back into my grimy little hands, He reigns down and reminds us that He is in control and He will be faithful to complete the dream that He gave us in the first place. He told me through 3 generous families that He will provide for us. I'm not going to the bank any time soon and I'm not anxious about it in the least!

We’re still praying about the remaining $300 due now and the $4K that will be due at end November or December. But I’ll package those worries in a beautifully wrapped box and place it at the foot of the Cross. I can’t handle it but God can!

I’m basking in His goodness and it feels great!

What's in our Dossier -- Part 2

Here we are again with another milestone -- the second shipment of paperwork to our agency! This is the second of three mailings we’ll complete and it is comprised of Certified Documents. We had to provide:

· 2 copies of birth certificates for both Jay and I
· 2 copies of birth certificates for both boys
· 2 copies of our marriage license

These all had to be certified copies, not photocopies, and with recent issue dates stamped on them so that they don’t “expire” before being sent to Nepal. This isn’t really a huge feat in and of itself, but the cost of ordering multiple copies of all this stuff added up. Your gifts and donations helped cover these expenses and help keep us debt free to date!

You may recall that in our first mailing last month, we were missing 2 key Notarized Documents for our dossier. Thankfully the first document has now arrived and was also included in today’s shipment. That included:

· 2 copies of our Nebraska State background check for both Jay and I

Our home study is done too! We've seen the rough draft and our agency should be approving it this week. Then we can have that notarized and added to our dossier as well.

Next we move onto section 3 of 3. I have most of these documents done but am waiting to receive Jay's renewed passport. We also expect to be invited (yes, you read that correctly) to Omaha to have our fingerprints taken for our Federal file. When those are taken, we will be issued our I-171H form and we’ll be done with the dossier! We hope these final things will be received within 4 to 6 weeks.

Urgent Prayer Request
Friends you may have read this on Facebook. When our paperwork is done, we will owe the next payment to our agency. The amount due will be $4000. Right now, we have a commitment from a family member to cover a quarter of that cost. Would you please join us in prayer that we will continue to receive financial support from friends and family who have received our support letter? I truly believe that with God’s provision, we can finish 2009 without taking on any loans. Please pray specifically for the $3000 that we’ll need in the next 6 weeks or so.

Shortly following that, there will be an even larger payment due to Nepal as our paperwork goes overseas in December or January. But we’ll take things one step at a time.

If you would like to be a part of the journey, donations are being accepted at our agency! Please mail a check payable to La Vida International along with a note stating it is for the Jay & Brooke Collins adoption from Nepal to:

La Vida International

150 S. Warner Rd. Ste. 144

King of Prussia, PA 19406

Thank you for your continued support! More updates to come as we finish this final section of our dossier.

Answered Prayer

We've all heard it before. God does answer prayer, but sometimes the answer isn't what we'd hope for. To that, I ask you readers, just what were you praying for this last week anyway?

Last week we had asked for prayers for our home study to be finished and that our social worker would receive Jay's clearance forms from Florida and both of our FBI clearances to be completed. Well, our social worker emailed me this week and asked if she had made the request from FL or if we did. Florida is one state from which she knew she had to request the clearance. The other states we have lived in allowed us to make the request personally. But after waiting for probably a month plus, our social worker found no evidence that she had sent the request to Florida in the first place. Bummer! She apologized profusely and it's all fine and good. No harm done. But she sent us a form to fill out and send down there while she was out on vacation over the weekend. Our request should arrive there early this week and hopefully Jay's clearance will arrive within a week or two. Adoption is long process with bumps and hurdles. This is just the first of many I'm preparing for.

Seeing the End

Last week on September 11 we remembered the fellow Americans we lost. But this year we found a tremendous reason to celebrate with the arrival of our friend's adopted daughter who came home from Ethiopia! Welcome to the land of the free and the home of the brave, sweet girl! It was an incredible event to witness and we were honored to be allowed to see her when she came off the plane in her daddy's arms. What a vision of God... "a Father to the fatherless."

Seeing the end of the process puts things into perspective and renews our passion for adoption in the midst of paperwork.

We checked more things off our list recently and I haven't written about them -- adoption training courses. We're required to take 2 online courses, totalling about 10 hours of training. Our agency also shipped us a huge file of about 55 articles that they required us to read. Some of the courses and articles would scare anyone with casual interest in adoption. Titles such as Reactive Attachment Disorder, Hepatitis and Other Communicable Diseases, and You're Not My Real Mother, are tough to swallow. The learning is helpful and I'm grateful for it. It gives us more to pray for and more to be prepared for on this adventure. But it does not scare us away! This is the path God has us on and we'll follow Him to the end.

This week we'll put paperwork on hold as we celebrate C's 6th birthday. We'll celebrate at home on his big day and he'll have a party with 8 boys from school and church on Saturday out at a local indoor playpark. We also have his school carnival/fundraiser on Friday night. So, we're a little swamped this week!

Next week we'll send our passports off for renewal and we'll order the final birth certificates and marriage certificates. Once we're done with those things, we won't be done with the dossier per se, but the things we'll be waiting for will be out of our control, so we'll just wait until everything slowly comes in.

One way you could pray for us this week is that our home study social worker would receive Jay's police clearances from the State of Florida. She is also still waiting for our FBI clearances to arrive and she mentioned that those have been backed up for quite some time. So, we'd like to see those come in this week so that the home study can be officially behind us and added to our dossier.

Thanks for checking in and have a great week!

What's in our Dossier - Part One

We had a big accomplishment this week. We finished part 1 of 3 for our Nepal Dossier!

A dossier is a “country application” that consists of all the documents we need in order to adopt a child. Ours comes in the 3 basic parts: Certified Documents, Notarized Documents, and Non-notarized Documents. To a lot of families adopting internationally, the dossier is overwhelming. But if any of you know me, you know that I’m super-detailed, organized and have Administration as one of my top Spiritual Gifts. So, the dossier is not a big deal for me. In fact, if I really sat down to do it, I believe I could have it all done in a month! But I have more to do in life than work on adoption paperwork! And we have a ton of time since our dossier will not even be sent to Nepal until December or January.

Our home study also needs some of the same documents needed for the dossier. So, as we check items off 1 list, we’ve been able to cross it off the second list. Most of the things we crossed off both lists fell under the Notarized Documents section of our dossier, so I completed those first. I believe this was the longest, most detailed, crazy part of our application itself. Here’s a list of what we needed to provide:

* 2 Certificates of Financial Status (income, savings, investments, debts, etc.)
* 2 Medical Certificates for each Adopting Parent (we had physicals and were tested for communicable diseases like TB, HIV, etc.)
* 2 Commitment to Post-Placement Letters (stating we’ll report annually on how our adopted daughter is doing)
* 2 Employment Verification Letters (for Jay, but I included 2 so they know about my part-time wedding coordinating)
* 2 Non-Employment Verification Letters (for me since I’m a stay-at-home mom)
* 2 Specific Powers of Attorney to our Agency (granting them the right to act our behalf on the legalities of the adoption)
* 2 Powers of Attorney from Jay and me and vice versa (granting Jay the right to make adoption decisions on my behalf, and vice versa)

Things that we need to include in the list above but are just waiting on are:

* 3 International Adoption Home Studies (our Social Worker should have this done within the month, I expect)
* 2 State Police Clearance Letters for each Adopting Parent (we ordered these and are just awaiting their arrival)

Thank goodness we have a good friend who is a Notary! All the documents above needed her stamp and signature. We’ve kept her busy!

We will send this first packet of dossier documents to our agency on Tuesday. They will review them all and let us know if anything needs to be altered in any way. Please pray that they are all accepted! The only hiccup we could possibly see is the “attestation clause” on our notarized documents. Some documents our agency gave us had such a clause for our Notary. Others did not. We have heard that the state of Nebraska will require attestation clauses, but our agency is in Pennsylvania and they do not require them. We’ll see! At the very least, it will be an easy change to make and we’ll just have to reprint and have things re-signed. But it would be so nice to have things done and done correctly the very first time!

Where Have We Been?

Summer fun has passed and school began this past week. But let's back up. I know it's been a couple weeks since I've posted any adoption updates.

Four weeks ago we had an added member to the family. I babysat a 4 week old baby boy for 8 days and 8 nights. It's a long story that perhaps I will write about later. It was different having a bassinette set up in the master bedroom, getting up for 3:30 a.m. feedings and hearing the cry of a newborn again. But what a sweet little boy! Our boys adored him and were on their best behavior with mommy having her hands quite full! Without divulging any details, please be in prayer over this sweet little "Baby V," as we call him. His future with his mother is uncertain. Pray that God provides for him and that his mother would make a decision that is in his best interest, not hers

August brought our annual trip home to Illinois where we stayed with my mom in Barrington, as always. Jay attended The Leadership Summit at Willow Creek and I enjoyed quality time with my mom. Jay spent the first week with us, then returned to Lincoln, leaving me and the boys an extra week for fun and relaxation. Quality time with my mom is a gift I can never thank Jay enough for! The boys and I cherish it and I know my mom does too!

What's a Home Study?

This was the question Jay kept asking as we started this whole process. Well, yesterday we found out. We had our first interview with our social worker. She came to our home and sat with us in the living room and asked us questions about us, our extended families, why we want to adopt, etc. I was a little surprised that she handed us another stack of paperwork to complete. But it was easy and I have most of it done 24 hours later. Jay needs to do his portion and we have to send quite a few requests for criminal background checks to IL, WI and MN. Yet to complete for the home study will be doctors physicals and FBI fingerprinting. We liked our social worker very much and look forward to another quick (and probably final) meeting this Friday at our house.

It's a busy week in our house with C attending VBS at church, a little baby sitting, a couple of nights out with friends, and another home study meeting. Hope it's a good week for you!

Back into the Swing of Things

We're back from an extended vacation at Jay's mom's place in Hayward, WI. A good time was had by all. It was great to be out on the lake tubing and water skiing.

Feels like we've been gone a whole month with no progress on the adoption front. While we were gone, I became extremely impressed with our agency. When I sent them our application, I wrote a cover letter explaining our July 4 vacation and that it would be nearly impossible to reach us by email. Yet, I did include Jay's email address since he gets all his messages on his cell phone. Sure enough, that little detail in my letter was not overlooked. We received 2 email from our agency just updating us on the Nepal progress. Way to go, staff!

This week we sent in our application for our home study. I had hoped to send this in before vacation, but just couldn't get through all those pages. We will have our first of 2 or 3 interviews with our social worker in the next couple of weeks. I am not worried at all about the home study process, but would appreciate prayers for smooth sailing anyway.

We will begin working on our dossier this week. It doesn't seem nearly as extreme as I once thought it to be, which is a good thing. But I know that it will certainly take time and organization. This week we will also be printing and sending our support letter. If you would like to be sure you are on our mailing list, please email us your address. Let the fundraising begin! Prayers for the financial side of our adoption are always appreciated!

Thanks again for your love and support on this journey to our Nepali daughter!

We're in!


On Wednesday this last week, I Fedexed our adoption application to our agency. On Thursday at 4:30 p.m. I got the email of acceptance. That was fast!


This week we need to send in our USCIS application, allowing our goverment to approve us to adopt a foreign born child. I'm sure that won't be approved within 24 hours!!! We also received documents to start working on our dossier that will get sent to Nepal in December or January. Also upcoming will be the home study. I am thankful that we get to use anyone we choose for our home study since we received a wonderful referral from our friends who adopted from Ethiopia last year and loved their social worker. Any more questions out there about our adoption...

Why Nepal?

This was the harder decision! We were drawn to Asian countries first. But we didn’t meet all the qualifications for some countries and waiting lists for infant girls are long and we seemed to hit many roadblocks. So…

Africa, specifically Ethiopia was certainly an option for us! But for some reason that I cannot quite wrap my head around even yet, I just cannot see us going to Africa. I’m not drawn there. Odd. Maybe one day I’ll know why. Then…

That led us to Nepal. One of the guidelines for Nepal adoptions is that if an adoptive family has children of all 1 gender, as we do with 2 boys, we would only be eligible to adopt a girl. We have friends currently on the waiting list for their Nepal adoption and are just waiting to be matched to their daughter. The statistics alone were enough to make us want to reach out. There are over 1 million orphans in the country! More than half the Nepali population lives on less than 60 cents per day! Eighty-five percent of the population is illiterate. More than 10 children die every hour due to malnutrition and disease. And if a young girl does survive long enough, the chances of her being sold to India for human trafficking is high!

While I was a bit upset that Asia wouldn't really be an option for us, it was Jay who found out that Nepal would be a possibility. Once we learned about the programs available to us, we felt like this is where we should go.

That's it for now. We just got back from camping and I have 2 very dirty boys to clean up before running off to t-ball.

Happy Father's Day to all you dads out there! Hope it's a wonderful day!

We're officially starting the journey!

Wow. I received a surprise email last night from our adoption agency. We are to start the application process this week as opposed to waiting until July! Yikes! We have a multi-page application to send in by Friday along with a rather large check for the first of our payments. I'm under the assumption that the application will be reviewed (and hopefully accepted) by the end of this month and we will start our dossier and home study in July!

I didn't sleep at all last night knowing this large check has to go in the mail. This is what savings accounts are for, and we planned for this, but it won't be fun to see that account go down! Yet this morning, I was reminded in church that God can move this financial mountain for us. I won't be able to do it myself. He will be faithful.

OK. So that's the fun update. Now to answer another question about our adoption for you...

Why Go International?
Frankly, we find the international scene to be an easier process. Sure, it costs way more and takes more time, but the legalities of it all are just easier. We know full well that there are children in our own country who need loving homes! There are even more across our borders and most are living in poverty with little to no healthcare. They are unwanted for various, sometimes unthinkable reasons. We desire to serve those children. We also love the idea of having a child who doesn’t look exactly like us and comes from a unique culture!

Welcome to Our Blog!

Hello to all our friends across the globe! Most of you have heard by now that Jay and I are planning to adopt a daughter from Nepal next year. We have created this blog as a way for you to keep track of where we are in that process, what you can be praying for during the journey and other ways you can help. The paperwork will start in just a few weeks! In the meantime, I thought I could take some time to answer just a few preliminary questions this month. I'll try to update this at least once a week, perhaps on Sunday after church. Thanks for visiting us!


Why Adoption?
With 2 handsome, healthy boys at home, I’m sure some of you out there wonder why we’d consider adoption in the first place.

Our 2 pregnancies were wonderful and we didn’t experience any major medical complications! But both our boys were born by c-section and a body can only take so much. My doctor in Lincoln told me that 3 c-sections were about all I should consider.

So, couldn’t we just try again for a girl one more time? Sure. But I don’t think I’m ready for that yet. I’m not exactly ready to be “done” having kids at this point. I love being pregnant and I’m still young and have time on my side. We desire a girl and trying one more time gives us a 50-50 chance. Adoption gives us a 100% chance of having a girl!

I believe our move to Lincoln was a huge influence in our decision to adopt as well. While we had always talked about adoption, especially with Jay having grown up with his foster brother Ron, and the year I spent in Japan, it was always just a thought in the back of our minds.

Currently, we have numbers of other friends here in town who are also in their own adoption journey. This is simply a cause felt deep in the heart of our community. In our life group from church alone, we have one family who already adopted from Ethiopia, 1 other family considering private domestic adoption, and our leaders are also investigating their options to expand their family! The list doesn’t stop there as we know even more people who have created their homes for multi-racial children. What a great place to raise a child!

We have heard the need. We are answering the call.