Our Adoption Journey

Have you ever wanted something that you were unable to obtain? When my wife and I got married in 2001, we were looking forward to starting a family. As the months turned into years we found this impossible. We were devastated and heartbroken. Some people understood our pain and heartache and others did not. My wife being a post-partum nurse worked every shift with mothers who had just given birth. She provided exceptional care to new mothers and their babies, while longing for children of her own. I am in awe of my wife that she was able to do that. We had a difficult time understanding why our prayers were not being answered. This was a trying time for us, but we supported each other and never lost our faith in God. Eventually, my wife and I started looking at other ways to build our family. Ultimately we decided to pursue adoption.

One day on our local Adventist radio station my wife heard a commercial for a Christian adoption agency. We decided to work with this adoption agency that specialized in the foster-adopt process. It is important to note that “Currently, there are more than 400,000 children in foster care in the United States. They range in age from infants to 21 years old….Children and youth enter foster care because they have been abused, neglected, or abandoned by their parents or guardians. All of these children have experienced loss and some form of trauma. In other ways, foster children are no different from children who aren’t in foster care: they are learning and growing, and need the love and stability a permanent home provides.” (from www.adoptusakids.org)

The first fear we faced was, can I love a child that is not our biological child? The second fear was the fear of the unknown. How do I love and raise a child when I do not know their full background and what they have been exposed to? We completed the process with the agency and waited. Once we patiently let God take control, our children became available. In July 2011, we met a sibling set of three boys that needed a forever family. This was a huge decision that we needed to make within several hours.

We decided to step out in faith and opened our hearts and our home to this sibling set of three boys; one boy age four and twins 14 months old. It was suspected that one twin might be deaf, but we remedied with a simple medical procedure. The boys were placed in our home on a Thursday, and by Sabbath we headed to Soquel Camp Meeting for their first exposure to God. Eleven months later, on the Friday before Father’s Day, we went to court and adopted them. I thanked the Judge for giving me the best Father’s Day gift I could have ever received! It was not easy going from zero children to three children overnight! What a roller coaster of emotions! It took some time for God to find us our boys, but we know that divine intervention led us to them. God picked our Christian home for these precious brothers.

Our boys are thriving and doing very well. They attend our local Adventist school. Our oldest son is in fourth grade and our twins just started Kindergarten this year. We know that through God’s grace our family has been used to transform their lives for eternity. We also realize that, through no fault of their own, our children did not deserve to be born into a family that abandoned them and was unable to provide a safe home where their emotional, physical and spiritual needs could be met.

In late August 2016, we received a call informing us that our boys had a four year old brother and a three year old sister with no place to live. Would we be willing to take them in and possibly adopt them? How could we say no and not take in the brother and sister of our boys? Currently the younger brother and sister are in a foster child status. It appears that next year we will be able to adopt these younger siblings thus keeping all five together. We truly believe that God has used our family to transform the lives of these precious children, and in the process we have come to understand more fully God’s love and acceptance of us. This has become our ministry.

We agree with Focus on the Family and pray that more Christians and churches in the U.S. would work to adopt these precious children out of foster care. These are children that desperately need a loving Christian home. We would encourage anyone interested in adopting to trust God and step out in faith.

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