GREAT NEWS! We've decided to adopt two children from Haiti! We're so excited to give children an opportunity to grow up in our home and teach them the best things that we know.

We've started a fundraiser on Pure Charity to raise the funding that we need to make our adoption a success. We have a donations goal of $15,000 that will go towards the initial cost of the adoption. It's been our dream to help give a child an opportunity like this and we hope that you will consider helping us make our dream a reality.

Every donation is important and will help make this adoption a success. Would you kindly consider making a donation? Also, we would appreciate your willingness to share this with others who may want to participate.

Thank you so much for being a part of our lives and helping accomplish something that's important to all of us!

For those of you who do not yet know our adoption story, we would like to share that with you. 

If you don't have time to read the super long story below, go straight to the bottom and read the bullet points. It won't hurt our feelings. But if you like moving stories, keep reading. 

Back in March of 2012, I (Beth) was praying through Operation World, and that day's country was Cambodia. I read about all the sex trafficking that happens there, especially to very young girls. Children are sold for as little as $10 by their families into slave labor because they cannot afford to keep them. I was brokenhearted for these children and I felt a very strong urge to rescue one of these girls. Austin and I have talked about adoption for many years because we know that God has commanded his followers to take care of orphans and widows. So my immediate thought was, we should adopt one of these girls! I talked to Austin about it and he was a little apprehensive about it all.

A week later, I heard about a local ministry, Refuge of Light, that was building a shelter for girls caught in sex trafficking. I started volunteering with them, and God started doing amazing things. 

At the same time, God was telling us to go to Uganda with Parental Care Ministries. We have supported PCM for 4 years and have sponsored a girl through them for a year and a half, so we were really excited to finally get to go. God completely provided for the seemingly impossible trip fees. We went in June and were moved by God in so many ways. We got to love on orphans for a week, and that was one of the best things we were ever able to do. 



Once we got back to Tyler, we got back into the swing of things. We just relaxed and had fun as a family. However, none of us were the same. We had all changed, even our boys. For one, the boys seemed older to us after being away for 12 days. But mainly, Caed was starting to change spiritually. He was suddenly asking more questions about God. Deep questions. One day, he said,

"Mom, God is the Father of heaven." I said, "Yeah, I guess that is true, he is the Father of the whole world." Then he replied, "And Jesus gives mommies and daddies to children who don't have mommies and daddies."

I melted. I couldn't believe that he had gathered that all on his own. We had told him that we were helping orphans in Uganda, but that was the extent of it. By August of 2012, we were both ready to start the adoption process! So for the next 3 months, we prayed over all the options. We were completely open to anything (boy/girl, domestic/international, young/old, siblings). 

We prayed until January of 2013, and finally felt that we had an answer. At some point along the way we knew that God wanted us to do international adoption. One day in church, a woman was being commissioned to work with orphans in Polland. She described the living conditions of these orphans. I immediately thought about how much harder it is for orphans in third world countries than it is for them in the United States. It's obviously not an easy life for any orphan, no matter where they live, but I just knew that my heart leaned towards children in other countries. I started crying and told Austin that I thought we should do international adoption. He smiled and agreed. 

So then we had to narrow down the countries. We finally narrowed it down to Cambodia and Haiti. Then we had some more waiting to do. Cambodia hasn't been open in years to adoption in the US, but we had heard they might open in January. Haiti was open but they were changing their requirements. We didn't fit old requirements (10 years married, 35 years old or older, no biological children) but we fit the new requirements exactly (5 years or more married, 30 years old or older, 2 biological children or less). Well those requirements were supposed to go into affect in November. By January 18th, we still had no confirmation of those changes and we hadn't heard anything about Cambodia either. We got antsy and decided to write the list of all country options again and start over. Not 2 hours after I wrote the new list, we heard that Haiti had officially changed their new requirements and that the US was not accepting adoptions from Cambodia. Thanks God! We continued to pray for 2 more weeks about Haiti and we felt God saying yes. This whole process we have felt, for many reasons, that we should get a girl. 

One date night, Austin revealed to me that he had a feeling that we were going to adopt 2 children, not just one. This made me laugh, because our whole marriage, I have said that I wanted to have 2 biological children and 2 adopted children. Every time I ever said this, Austin looked at me with a look of fear! And now he was the one saying it! A few weeks later, God revealed to me through this video, that he truly wanted us to adopt siblings. I felt very strongly that he was saying a boy and a girl. That is what we have requested, but we also want to be flexible in the process. We are also requesting older children, probably age 2-4. 

We finally started all our adoption paperwork in February of 2013 with Dillon International and we are adopting from Haiti. We did our home study this summer, and now we are in the dossier process (more paperwork!). The timeline after the dossier gets really hazy. No one ever knows for sure how long an adoption in Haiti will take. It could take 1-4 years. But we knew from the start that we would have to be patient, so we are trying to be!

Our adoption as a whole will cost around $38,000. We have already paid about a fourth of that, but we have a long way to go! We need all the help we can get. 

Short Story:
* March 2012 - started praying about adoption
* June 2012 - went to Uganda to love on orphans
* August 2012 - we decided to start the adoption process
* January 2013 - we decided to adopt from Haiti
*  February 2013 - we decided to adopt siblings, ages 2-4
                             - we started the adoption process
*July - had home study
*August - started dossier
* Future - unknown time frame for final adoption, but could be 1-4 years. 
               -total amount needed for adoption - $38,000