Waiting

A lot of you have been wondering what's been going on since we last updated our blog. We have been accepted by all the agencies we applied to. Several of them need a few more documents, so we are in the process of completing that. There are already many situations with children available where we could have our parent-profile presented to the birth mother, but we don't have near the funds we need yet. Just to give you an idea of what this will cost, we need to raise at least $20,000 more for most situations where a child is available. So far we have raised about $6000. We've already put $4000 of that into our home study. For two agencies we have applied to, the very least we will pay for an adoption is $11,500 for agency fees, plus $5000 for the birth mother's living expenses, plus $2500 for legal fees. Not included in all of that is the traveling expenses. In most states, it takes about 8 days for documents to go through the courts just so the baby can cross state lines. So in the end, the average adoption will cost around $25,000. This is pretty standard everywhere that we've looked. It is not uncommon for the cost to be closer to $35,000 and sometimes as high as $50,000. It's seems like a lot, but we know God will provide all that we need.

You may ask why it costs so much. The only reason we can give you is that the agencies we've applied to take good care of their birth mothers before and after the adoption. This is really important to us and we feel that is part of the whole spirit of adoption. Some agencies are able to lower their costs or do a sliding scale fee based on income because their staff is all volunteer and they may only have a handful of adoptions a year. We have applied to one agency like that, but at this point they have no birth mothers. The agencies we have applied to that do cost more have about 20 adoption situations available at a time. Our goal in applying to more than one agency is to have our profile available to as many birth mothers as possible.

We have also started the process of applying for two adoption grants. One is a matching grant and the other awards anywhere from $3000 to $5000 to those who are approved. If the matching grant is accepted, we will let you know more about how you can give through that and have your donation matched dollar for dollar!

So, right now we feel like our job is to actively wait. By that, we mean to continue pursuing fundraising while praying for God's perfect timing in bringing us our child and for His protection over our baby and our birth mother. Please continue to pray with us in these areas. We also don't want to limit what God is doing by saying we can't adopt right now because we don't have the funds. If God makes it clear that we are to adopt a specific child, we will go ahead and start the process, fully believing that He will bring all the funds in.

Thank you for your continued prayer and support. We appreciate you all!!