Hello friends!

First, thank you so much for your thoughts and prayers for our family, we greatly appreciate you! Second, thank you for your generosity! You helped us reach our fundraising goal in less than a year. Thank you!!

We started our domestic adoption journey about 1.5 years ago and it’s been quite the learning experience! Our son Jaden came home to us through international adoption, so we had a lot to learn this time pursuing a domestic adoption.  

In this process, we have reviewed many birth mother situations and submitted our family book and application for multiple situations, but we have not yet been matched.

A couple months ago in June, our home study was coming up for renewal and we needed to decide if we would renew our home study to continue in the domestic adoption or potentially choose another path. Renewal is not a simple quick task, it required more time to update a lot of documents and using more funds as well, so we took the time to think through our next steps.

After much prayer and consideration, we decided to transition to Foster Care! We have been learning of the great need for foster families in our city and have been inspired by others who are doing foster care in Orlando.

We’ve always wanted to be a blessing and serve where there is a need, and God has not only given us peace about this change but excitement about Foster Care! In Foster Care, the primary goal is to provide a safe, loving place for children to temporarily stay while the State works to find a way to reunite the children back with their family.

We remember back when we used to mentor students in the SHIFT College Ministry at UCF, we’ve always had a student (sometimes two!) living with us in our home throughout the years as we mentored them and taught them about life. We made the connection that Foster Care will be similar to this except it’s with children instead of college students! If a situation arises where the foster child is not able to be reunited with their family and needs to be placed for adoption, we would love to pursue the adoption if it works out.

Last week, we reached out to the local Foster Care organization in Orange County to start the process! We’ll be working on getting certified this Fall, and hopefully be ready to start fostering a child this coming Spring.

We learned that the cost for Foster Care is quite different from domestic adoption. In Foster Care, the State pays for all the paperwork and fees—so there is actually no cost charged to the foster family.

So you may be asking what will happen to these adoption funds that we have fundraised?

When we first started our fundraiser, our goal was to raise half of what we would need for the full adoption cost and pay for the other half from our own savings. After adding up all the costs we’ve used so far for paperwork and agency fees and then splitting that in half, we calculated that we’ve used about 13% of the funds we have fundraised.

The funds you’ve given would stay in this fundraiser account because tax-deductible receipts have already been issued. Also, because AdoptTogether.org is a non-profit organization that holds their funds accountable for adoption purposes only, we would not be able to use the remaining funds for foster care expenses. We would however, be able to use the funds in the future for adoption-related expenses—as there’s no expiration date!

We also learned that AdoptTogether.org allows us to transfer funds from our fundraising account to another adoption fundraiser on the same platform—which is pretty awesome!

We want to honor your gift to this fundraiser by asking how you would like us to move forward with your remaining donated funds. We have used about 13% of the donated funds, so the remainder of your donation amount would be approx 87% of the amount you had donated.

Option 1– Transfer the remainder of your donation amount to another AdoptTogether.org fundraiser that you know of specifically, either now or in the future.

Option 2– Keep your remainder donation in our AdoptTogether.org account for future adoption related expenses that we may have, or let us choose to transfer it to another AdoptTogether.org fundraiser when the opportunity arises in the future.

Please feel free to choose any option! We don’t have a preference for one or the other. We want you to choose the best option that your heart guides you to.

Please contact us to let us know which option you’d like!

Again, thank you so much for your support. We are so thankful for you!

Could you please pray for us as we pursue foster care? Also, if you’ve been considering Foster Care or Adoption for your own family, we’d love to connect with you about that also!

Grateful for you,

Tommy and Cece Wong