We are excited to introduce you to our current family!  Our family includes Brad and Tara and our three children; Isaiah, Kaleb, and Jacob. We first adopted Jacob from Ethiopia when he was just 3 months old. While we were in Ethiopia with Jacob (we stayed there for 2 months), we met two boys named Kirubel and Surafel. We completely fell in love with them and instantly started praying for a future family for them. It broke our hearts at just the thought of those two boys staying in an orphanage for one more day. Regardless, we had to return home to get back to work and begin life as a family of three. As you can imagine, our life was full of joy with the addition of Jacob to our family! We couldn’t stop thinking about Kirubel and Surafel when we got home. We continued to pray for them. In the meantime, we started the process to adopt again from Ethiopia. We were told from our agency that Kirubel and Surafel were not going to be adoptable.  We continued on with the paperwork process (and continued to pray for the two boys). It seemed as if the paper chase was taking a ridiculous amount of time and we were just hitting road block after road block. The day came when we were finally approved by the State of Illinois and our home study was approved. I bet you can guess whose files were finally approved for international adoption and were put on our agency’s waiting child list on that exact same day? You guessed it, it was Kirubel and Surafel!!!

Now that you have heard our story, let us tell you a little bit about each member of our family. Tara is kind, loving, practical, and nurturing. Brad is adventurous, honest, hard-working, and fun-spirited. We both love the Lord with all of our heart. Isaiah (13) is the best big brother one could ever imagine. He loves his brothers more than anything on this earth (movies are a close second). He recently made the decision to accept Jesus as his Lord and Savior. Kaleb (5) is very smart and creative. He loves building with Legos and eating donuts. Jacob (4) has an ornery personality but loves big! He loves to play dress up and is usually impersonating some character he has learned about in a book.

Our reason for adopting a child is one that we had agreed upon together. As far back as we both can remember, we have both always had the desire to adopt a child. We feel that God predestined us to be together and knew those plans for us to be married when He gave us this desire. It was at a Steven Curtis Chapman concert, while we were dating, that we both informed each other that we had the desire to adopt a child someday. In James 1:27, God tells us that “Religion that God our Father accepts as pure and faultless is this: to look after orphans and widows in their distress and to keep oneself from being polluted by the world”. We feel that God has called all of us to somehow care for widows and orphans. We don’t necessarily think that he wants everyone in the world to adopt, but we do feel that he calls us all to somehow take action.

We have successfully completed two other adoptions from Ethiopia. We now feel called to adopting an African American infant from the United States. The verse from James 1:27 confirmed that we were called to care for the widows and the orpans. It has always been a desire of both our hearts to have a large family. In Psalm 37:4 we are told that if we find delight in the Lord, that he will give us what our hearts want. God has placed adoption on our hearts and we truly believe that he will give us the desires of our hearts. The domestic process is much different and we look forward to seeing how the Lord will answer our prayers and keep his promises to us during this process. 

We are SO excited to be raising funds for the adoption of our baby! We have been matched with a birth mom who is due around March 1st. We have set a goal of raising $4,000 to help bring our baby home! We know that we can't do this alone and we have been humbled and blessed by so many. Thank you in advance for considering a donation to our adoption. 

Sincerely,

Tara and Brad

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The MICAH Fund will match funds raised up to $4,000.  Your tax-deductible contribution is handled by Pure Charity, on behalf of the MICAH Fund   Pure Charity provides each donor with proper tax receipts.  Grant funds are paid directly by the MICAH Fund to adoption agencies for customary services/fees.  Adoptive families do not receive funds directly.  Funds donated in excess of $4,000 would be donated to the designated family based on applicable tax law and need.  If a family exceeds their fundraising need, funds go to the MICAH Fund's general fund for the intended purpose of being distributed to additional qualifying families.