Our Adoption Story:

Last year at this time, I (Amy) was preparing to visit the country of Uganda for a mission trip when my husband Bill said he thought we should look into adopting. I was in Uganda for 10 days and quickly fell in love with the country and the people. I saw first hand how hard the women work, and how little opportunity is available to them.

Today, our adoption is well underway!  We are about 2 weeks away from finishing our home study which has been really the BIG hurdle. We are several months away from traveling to Uganda, but we are getting ready. We will only have a few weeks notice when it's time to go.

The process to adopt from Uganda has been time consuming and a little scary with so much unknown. We have worked hard this last year, and in December we reached our fundraising goal through the sales of capes, homemade fairy doors (Amy made these), homemade light sabers (Bill made these) plus a crafting fundraiser in October with raffles, fairies and fairy doors and silent auctions. We have also had many donations from friends, family and our church family. Still, the financial portion of the adoption is somewhat overwhelming.

We were able to fundraise $10,000 but we also need to install an egress window (about $4,000) and we will need to travel to Uganda and stay there (per the Ugandan government’s rules) for 5-8 weeks. Our adoption will cost just approximately $29,000, not including the travel costs/time in Uganda. Bill and I will both need to be in Uganda for the court process to adopt our daughter, and we will be taking our son, Liam, age 10, with us.

A little background on us:

We have battled infertility in our 15 years of marriage. Our Liam was an absolute miracle, but even with fertility medications. Even though tests that said we “should” be able to have a second child, we were never able to conceive again. After several tests we were diagnosed with secondary infertility. We have always called our second child Pickles, when we dreamed of him/her. I love that we can now dream of our daughter and refer to her as Pickles.

My sister and I are both adopted and Bill and I have walked with many friends through their infertility and adoptions. After much discussion and prayer in our family, we feel like it is the right direction to complete our family. To hear Liam tell that other people we are going to adopt, and how God has her picked out for us is so wonderful. Liam can’t wait to teach her how to blow bubbles, fly kites but most of all, to be on his team for light saber battles.

We have seen how adoption is such a blessing to not only the child, but to the parents and other siblings. My family was always very open that my sister and I were adopted (my brothers are biological) and it was always spoken of in a positive way. Actually my parents joked that they had to take the boys but they got to choose us! We have 3 Godchildren, and so many special friends that are adopted. We have had wonderful mentors through this process.

When I was pregnant with Liam I went to an adoption support group with a girlfriend who was looking for her biological family. I was so surprised and felt so blessed that my parents handled being adopted so beautifully and lovingly. So many of the adopted adult children in the group had felt that they were tossed away to some degree. I couldn’t understand it, I knew how in love I was with Liam the second I knew I was pregnant with him. I don’t think giving a child up for adoption can be a lightly made decision. It has to be heart-wrenching and full of love to make the decision to place a child up for adoption. I always knew how loved I was and how much I was wanted. My birth parents were teenagers and made the choice to place me because they loved me so incredibly much and wanted me to be with parents who were ready to raise a child. My parents always stressed this point with me and even my adoption file has this notated.

It will be my honor to be Pickles’ mother and to let her know just how much she is loved and how God had a plan for us to be her forever family. It makes dealing with the infertility almost make sense. Maybe we were meant to go through the medications and tests to show us that we were meant to be a forever family to this little one.

Many Thanks!

We are so thankful for the amazing support system of friends, family and our faith family. We have taken them all along on this adventure with us. We have a blog where we can keep everyone up to date with our process (I really don’t want to forget a thing!) and we hope some day we can serve as mentors to other couples who are hoping to adopt, just as so many friends have mentored us.

Visit our blog at

www.PicklesPemberton.com