Let’s get started!
Thank you for your prayers
this last week as we were deciding where we were adopting from &
which agency to go with. We have decided on adopting from Ethiopia &
will be going through .... We will be
adopting an infant girl with the option of a boy as well, possibly a
twin or under 2 years old & may be unrelated. Most other agencies
do not allow you to adopt 2 unrelated children at the same time but they
do. We will leave it up to God as to whether he wants us to have a 3rd
child right now or just Jack & Lina. He knows what is best for us
& if we can handle 3. We decided we want to adopt 2 children &
it would be a cost savings if we adopt them both at the same time as we
wouldn’t have to travel separately for the 2nd child. We are
just praying that if God wants us to adopt both right now that he will
send us 2 referrals & if not we will just receive the 1 referral for
an infant girl. He knows best what we can handle at this time &
what will work best in his plan for our life. We just have to TRUST him!
I am so excited to meet my little girl Lillina “Lina” & she’s not even born yet & our son if God chooses to bless us with him now (we don’t have a name yet)! The time line “should” go similar to this. 2-3 months to complete our home study & 3-6 months to complete all of the paperwork & complete our dossier. Hopefully, if we work quickly we will be able to get this all sent out to Ethiopia by the end of the year. Once that is sent out they are estimating 6-8 months until we receive our referral for our child(ren). Once we receive the referral it will be about 2-3 months before we travel to Ethiopia to meet our child(ren) & go to court to complete the adoption. We will be there for about 3-5 days. UNFORTUNATELY we will have to leave our child(ren) there & come back to the US for another 2-3 months while all of the adoption paperwork gets processed. That will be so hard to leave them once we’ve seen & held them in person. We will travel back about 2-3 months later to pick them up & bring them to their FOREVER home! Hopefully sometime next summer we will get a referral & see a picture of our child(ren) for the 1st time & then by next winter we will be able to bring them home. Wouldn’t that be the best Christmas gift???
I HATE asking people for things but we really need financial help for this adoption. It will be around $30,000 if we adopt 1 child & $45,000 if we adopt 2. We don’t even have a fraction of that amount. I KNOW this is what God wants us to do so I know he will provide the funds somehow. He wants us to rescue a child from a Third World Country who may not live otherwise if they remained in their country. Would you consider helping us out financially? Would you want to help an orphan have a forever family? Maybe God is not calling you to personally adopt a child but wants you assist someone else who is. Any amount would help whether its $25 or $5,000! Maybe it’s a one time gift or maybe it’s a monthly gift. We have a lot of fees that will be due in the next few months & others that are due throughout the process & at the end. Like I said I hate asking people for things especially money. I was never one that liked to do fundraisers or anything in school because I always felt like a bother to people. If your finances do not allow for a financial donation please at least forward this blog onto your friends, family members, businesses you may have a connection with. We also need LOTS of prayers for us throughout this process & of course prayers for our child(ren) that God will protect them & let them know that they are loved even though they don’t know we exist yet!
I will try to periodically share information on Ethiopia so you can become more familiar with the country (as I learn too). Did you know that there are 5,000,000 orphans in this one country? 1 in 5 children will die before they reach their 5th birthday!!! That just breaks my heart! Please help us save 1 or 2 of those children!
Thanks for taking the time to read about our journey! (as I mentioned I am NOT a writer so please forgive any grammar issues or rambling) Continue to follow us each step of the way! Thanks!
Tara (and Jeremy)
I am so excited to meet my little girl Lillina “Lina” & she’s not even born yet & our son if God chooses to bless us with him now (we don’t have a name yet)! The time line “should” go similar to this. 2-3 months to complete our home study & 3-6 months to complete all of the paperwork & complete our dossier. Hopefully, if we work quickly we will be able to get this all sent out to Ethiopia by the end of the year. Once that is sent out they are estimating 6-8 months until we receive our referral for our child(ren). Once we receive the referral it will be about 2-3 months before we travel to Ethiopia to meet our child(ren) & go to court to complete the adoption. We will be there for about 3-5 days. UNFORTUNATELY we will have to leave our child(ren) there & come back to the US for another 2-3 months while all of the adoption paperwork gets processed. That will be so hard to leave them once we’ve seen & held them in person. We will travel back about 2-3 months later to pick them up & bring them to their FOREVER home! Hopefully sometime next summer we will get a referral & see a picture of our child(ren) for the 1st time & then by next winter we will be able to bring them home. Wouldn’t that be the best Christmas gift???
I HATE asking people for things but we really need financial help for this adoption. It will be around $30,000 if we adopt 1 child & $45,000 if we adopt 2. We don’t even have a fraction of that amount. I KNOW this is what God wants us to do so I know he will provide the funds somehow. He wants us to rescue a child from a Third World Country who may not live otherwise if they remained in their country. Would you consider helping us out financially? Would you want to help an orphan have a forever family? Maybe God is not calling you to personally adopt a child but wants you assist someone else who is. Any amount would help whether its $25 or $5,000! Maybe it’s a one time gift or maybe it’s a monthly gift. We have a lot of fees that will be due in the next few months & others that are due throughout the process & at the end. Like I said I hate asking people for things especially money. I was never one that liked to do fundraisers or anything in school because I always felt like a bother to people. If your finances do not allow for a financial donation please at least forward this blog onto your friends, family members, businesses you may have a connection with. We also need LOTS of prayers for us throughout this process & of course prayers for our child(ren) that God will protect them & let them know that they are loved even though they don’t know we exist yet!
I will try to periodically share information on Ethiopia so you can become more familiar with the country (as I learn too). Did you know that there are 5,000,000 orphans in this one country? 1 in 5 children will die before they reach their 5th birthday!!! That just breaks my heart! Please help us save 1 or 2 of those children!
Thanks for taking the time to read about our journey! (as I mentioned I am NOT a writer so please forgive any grammar issues or rambling) Continue to follow us each step of the way! Thanks!
Tara (and Jeremy)
The start of our journey
I wanted to start this
blog just to keep people up to date on our adoption journey. The good,
the bad. Also we will let you know about helping us. Just to start
off, I am not a writer AT ALL so please forgive me before even beginning
to read this. I’m just going to write what I’m thinking or what is
going on. Don’t expect this to the best thing you’ve ever read!
Why are we adopting? Why don’t we just have a baby of our own? Why don’t we adopt from American or become foster parents? Why now?
Why are we adopting? I have always wanted to adopt internationally for as long as I can remember. I really don’t know when it started but it was long long ago, maybe even before high school. I just always envisioned myself adopting a little girl from another country. When Jeremy & I were dating, we discussed this & he was totally on board. I really didn’t expect him to be so ok with it. So even before we were married we knew at some time we would adopt. Didn’t know when we would or if it would be local or international. Did you know that it is believed that there are around/at least 140 MILLION orphans in the world? That is unbelievable. It is sad that more Christians & Churches haven’t stepped up to adopt these children. I know adoption isn’t for everyone, but it is hard to believe that we have let that happen. I know as a family we can’t help all of these children, but we can give one (or two) a forever home! It is the least we can do as a family. God calls us to care for the widows & orphans. God has clearly called our family to adopt a child from another country without a family & we MUST obey him. We clearly do not have the finances to adopt a child as it will cost around $30,000 for the entire process. I know that God wants this so he will provide the funds from somewhere. Maybe from grants, donations from friends, family, you. All that I know is that we must trust him to provide.
Why don’t we just have a baby of our own? Some know & some don’t, but we struggled to get pregnant with our son Jackson. Thankfully through medication God provided us with a BEAUTIFUL child. I wouldn’t trade him for anything. We were considering if we should have more children of our own now, in the future or adopt. God clearly made it apparent that now is the time for us to begin our adoption journey. Why try so hard to get pregnant again when there are so many children around the world without a mother & father? We don’t know what God has for our future if we will have more children of our own but now is not the time.
Why don’t we adopt from American or foster parent? Again, God clearly made it known to us that we are to adopt internationally. We didn’t want to go through a private adoption where there was a chance for the mother to take the child back. Paying out the large fees not knowing for sure if we would indeed get this child that we were counting on. I know that a lot can go wrong with an international adoption as well but this just wasn’t for us. I think it is fantastic for the people that are able to foster parent a child but again, that is not where God is leading us, at least not at this time in our lives. Who knows about the future.
Why now? I was completely set on having another child of our own or adopting now as I was ready for the baby phase again. Jeremy on the other hand was not so sure now was the time. We had seen a post from our pastor about an adoption event going on so we decided to go. A week ago we attended this event called No Longer Alone. They talked about the good, bad, happy, and sad parts of the adoption process. There were testimonials from adoptive families that opened up about their journeys. When we left that night we both KNEW that this is exactly what God wanted us to do NOW!
I know the next couple of years for us will be difficult as we wait to meet our daughter who is not even born yet but we are ready! Please continue to follow us for this journey. Please be in prayer every step of the way that God will lead & bring us the right child(ren) at the right time. Please share this blog with anyone else you know that may be interested in following our journey too as well as those who may be financially stable enough to help us save the life of an orphan & bring them to their forever family!
Thanks!
Tara (and Jeremy)
Why are we adopting? Why don’t we just have a baby of our own? Why don’t we adopt from American or become foster parents? Why now?
Why are we adopting? I have always wanted to adopt internationally for as long as I can remember. I really don’t know when it started but it was long long ago, maybe even before high school. I just always envisioned myself adopting a little girl from another country. When Jeremy & I were dating, we discussed this & he was totally on board. I really didn’t expect him to be so ok with it. So even before we were married we knew at some time we would adopt. Didn’t know when we would or if it would be local or international. Did you know that it is believed that there are around/at least 140 MILLION orphans in the world? That is unbelievable. It is sad that more Christians & Churches haven’t stepped up to adopt these children. I know adoption isn’t for everyone, but it is hard to believe that we have let that happen. I know as a family we can’t help all of these children, but we can give one (or two) a forever home! It is the least we can do as a family. God calls us to care for the widows & orphans. God has clearly called our family to adopt a child from another country without a family & we MUST obey him. We clearly do not have the finances to adopt a child as it will cost around $30,000 for the entire process. I know that God wants this so he will provide the funds from somewhere. Maybe from grants, donations from friends, family, you. All that I know is that we must trust him to provide.
Why don’t we just have a baby of our own? Some know & some don’t, but we struggled to get pregnant with our son Jackson. Thankfully through medication God provided us with a BEAUTIFUL child. I wouldn’t trade him for anything. We were considering if we should have more children of our own now, in the future or adopt. God clearly made it apparent that now is the time for us to begin our adoption journey. Why try so hard to get pregnant again when there are so many children around the world without a mother & father? We don’t know what God has for our future if we will have more children of our own but now is not the time.
Why don’t we adopt from American or foster parent? Again, God clearly made it known to us that we are to adopt internationally. We didn’t want to go through a private adoption where there was a chance for the mother to take the child back. Paying out the large fees not knowing for sure if we would indeed get this child that we were counting on. I know that a lot can go wrong with an international adoption as well but this just wasn’t for us. I think it is fantastic for the people that are able to foster parent a child but again, that is not where God is leading us, at least not at this time in our lives. Who knows about the future.
Why now? I was completely set on having another child of our own or adopting now as I was ready for the baby phase again. Jeremy on the other hand was not so sure now was the time. We had seen a post from our pastor about an adoption event going on so we decided to go. A week ago we attended this event called No Longer Alone. They talked about the good, bad, happy, and sad parts of the adoption process. There were testimonials from adoptive families that opened up about their journeys. When we left that night we both KNEW that this is exactly what God wanted us to do NOW!
I know the next couple of years for us will be difficult as we wait to meet our daughter who is not even born yet but we are ready! Please continue to follow us for this journey. Please be in prayer every step of the way that God will lead & bring us the right child(ren) at the right time. Please share this blog with anyone else you know that may be interested in following our journey too as well as those who may be financially stable enough to help us save the life of an orphan & bring them to their forever family!
Thanks!
Tara (and Jeremy)
Follow our journey of international adoption to find our daughter Lina! (and possibly our son too)
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