So we just announced that we will be adopting a baby in the future. What does this mean? It means we’ve been praying for about 4 months now over what the process would look like, who God would decide to place with us. We’ve been doing research and attending meetings to see what is needed and expected. And the biggest one for us is finding out what the costs are showing to be.
We have wavered between Foster to adopt and just straight adoption. We are finding with foster to adopt, they want us to be open to 6 years old or older. We aren’t really okay with that as we want to keep the birth order in our family. What does that mean? It means we want to keep Luke as our oldest child, then Dylan and then another little one. We ideally would like to have an infant but are willing to take up to 2.
With straight adoption we are able to adopt a baby, but we have a lot of hurdles to get through. First off, it costs upwards of $50k to adopt a baby here in the US. That is with lawyer fees and all the adoption fees. With our research, there are Agencies that will protect your money in case something happens and the adoption falls through. Why every agency doesn’t do this is really beside me.
We have started fundraising and our current fundraiser is going on right now! We have a 300 piece puzzle and we are “selling” each piece for $20. We will then write your name on the piece and after we have all $300 pieces filled we will put it together and hang it up! We will always remember those who helped us and provided for us to get to baby Gerhart!
I’ll be updating as much as I can or as new information comes along. But for now, we ask for prayers and for guidance. That we would go the way that God calls us. Discernment over what agency to go through.
We cannot thank y’all enough! Truly we thank you from the bottom of our hearts.
J+A
