Dear Family and Friends,
Our family is growing! We are so excited to be in the process of
adopting a baby!
This has been a dream of each of ours for many years, since
before we were married. Individually, we had both considered adoption to be a
hopeful dream, and together we have been waiting for the right time to move
forward with the process. We are so excited that God is giving us the go-ahead,
and that now is the time to pursue having another child!
We have actually been on the
adoption path for over a year now; the whole thing is quite a process. First we
signed up with a consultant agency, Christian Adoption Consultants. Then we had
to get homestudy-approved, passing state and federal background checks,
fingerprints, extensive interviews, and even a visit to our house. All that
allowed the agency to conclude that we have a safe, loving home, and are
eligible to adopt a child! Next we had to create a 20-page photo book of our
lives and family. This “profile” gets shown to birthmothers who need to choose
a family to parent their baby.
All of this is so exciting and
scary, as it probably should be. However, we have watched God provide over and
over as we walk forward on this journey. For example, He took care of the
homestudy costs: the agency dropped their price right when we contacted them,
two friends generously donated money out of the blue, and a solar company
offered a cash incentive to install panels on our roof! All those happened within
about a month of each other, and we ended up with the exact amount needed.
We also watched God provide with
the profile books. As we concluded the design and counted up how many we would
need to print, it was about twice what we had expected. But as Ben completed
our taxes, the book publisher ran a sale that brought our total down to just
under what our tax return ended up being. We see how God clearly orchestrated
both of these events to move us along at His timing.
And now at this point, we could be
matched with a baby at any time! We hope you’ll support us in prayer as we
continue our journey. We need prayer for patience and wisdom, and also for the
birthmother who has to make several tough decisions that will eventually lead
to us. Finally, pray for the child who God already knows will be ours.
It is hard for us to ask; publicly
admitting our needs is not part of our modern American culture, but we need some
other help with this final step as well. For us, the biggest and most daunting challenge
is the cost. We anticipate the final cost to total $35,000, mostly in medical
and legal costs. We’ve been applying for grants and zero-interest adoption
loans. We plan to hold additional fundraisers and we’ve set up a page at adopttogether.org/benanddiane
where donations are tax-deductible.
While it’s the most tangible, money
will not be our only need. We’ve already received aide from friends in the
forms of layout design on our profile book, medical advice, and legal counsel,
for example. If you have a skill that you think might be helpful to us, we’ll accept
any kind of help. We also anticipate that we’ll need to travel out of state
twice. If you travel a lot and have amassed some frequent flier miles or hotel
points that you’d be willing to donate, that could be huge for us. I don’t
think we even understand all the ways you might be able to help, but God does.
We’ve seen Him provide in so many
unexpected ways already that we have faith He will continue to do so. More than
anything we’ve already mentioned, we treasure your prayers for blessing,
wisdom, and discernment for both us and also for the birth mom. Thank you for
being our community, our support and our partners in this next step for our
family.
With love,
Ben & Diane
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