Trust without borders – Our international adoption announcement

Surprise! Our family is growing! We are adopting!!

We are so thrilled to finally announce to you that we are on an adventure to bring our sweet baby home from South Korea!! We couldn’t be more excited to be on this journey and to welcome you aboard as well. Our road to parenthood has been a long and heartbreaking one, but God has never left our side. Follow along with us as we put faith over fear and trust God without borders.

Because we are guessing that you have a lot of questions, we compiled an abbreviated Q&A list. The answers are intentionally brief. We plan on expanding on several of these topics on our blog site throughout our journey.

Q: Why a blog site?
A: There were several reasons why we wanted to create a blog site. This site allows us to: 1) tell our story to others in hopes that it may help someone else; 2) share updates on our adoption journey with friends and family; 3) educate and advocate for adoption; and, 4) to document our journey for our future child. Learn more on our “About Us” page.

Q: Why adoption? Are you guys like infertile?
A: God has blessed our lives through adoption before through many wonderful family members and friends. It is something that has always been special to us. It was something we definitely talked about–together with having biological children. In our effort to be transparent, and because we know everyone will ask, yes, we are the “1” in the “1 in 8” couples who face infertility challenges. Because we decided very early on that we would not take any measures that we felt violated our beliefs or that failed to honor the sanctity of life, we knew that God’s plan for us was adoption. We talk further about that in our first blog post “Jars like us.” We feel so blessed to even be on this journey and we can’t wait to grow our family through adoption.

Q: How did you pick your agency?
A: The short and sweet answer: lots and lots of research and lots and lots of prayer. We poured over all the different agencies our state had to offer and settled on one that was right for us. We had a feeling in our gut that Holt International was the right agency for us at this particular time. Mother’s intuition already? 😉

Q: Why international adoption? Did you consider domestic adoption at all?
A: When we first started to think very seriously about adoption we looked at all our options: foster-to-adopt, domestic infant adoption, and international adoption. Each had its own unique path to parenthood. We, again, did hours and hours of research. We prayed for God’s guidance in this decision and surrendered everything over to him. Ultimately, God led us to international adoption. We know God has a child for us across the world and he’s going to bring us together.

Q: Why South Korea?
A: Once we knew international adoption was the path that we were on, we quickly narrowed our adoption program choice to several East Asian countries. With the help of our placing agency, we studied each country’s adoptive parent criteria, regulations, and adoption process. For us, South Korea quickly became God’s plan for our family after learning about their strong foster care system, available children, and anticipated wait-time. We knew we wanted to adopt a baby/toddler to fit within the timeframe of our marriage (4 years) and with South Korea’s shorter timelines we knew that would be a higher probability than other countries.

Q: What is the profile of your child?
A: Well, we haven’t been matched with a child yet, so we don’t know! 🙂 Obviously, each child and story is different, but we were given some general information based on the average adoption process in South Korea. When we are matched with our child (Korea matches us with a child in need of a forever home), he or she will be about 6-12 months old. When we are able to bring our child home, he or she will most likely be about 1.5-2 years old. We are not specifying a gender, but most babies adopted from South Korea are males. Because of that we were told to anticipate a boy, but we could very well be matched with a girl! It doesn’t matter to us. We are just so thrilled to be able to be parents.

Q: How long will this journey take? I’ve heard it can take a really long time.
A: We’ve been told by our agency the process will take 1.5-2 years on average from start to finish. That is based on an average of recent timelines by other adoptive families in the Korea program. A lot of the process depends on how quickly an adoptive family can get through each phase of the journey. We are highly motivated to keep this process moving as quickly as possible and are praying for God’s strength and guidance through each step of the way. We know it’s worth the wait!

Q: Will your child keep their Korean name?
A: We are still thinking about that. We feel strongly about celebrating our child’s culture and are considering using their name, in some way, to do that.

Q: How much does adoption cost?
A: We are anticipating spending between $46,000-56,000 to bring our child home.

Q: Do you have to travel to Korea?
A: Yes, the program requires adoptive families to travel to Korea twice. Both trips will last between 5-7 days and will happen near the end of our journey. The first trip we will get to meet our child for the first time (We can’t wait!), explore Seoul, and attend a court hearing. The second trip we will complete the visa process and bring our child home.

Q: What can we do to help?
A: We can’t stress enough that your prayers and support mean everything to us. We ask for your continued prayers throughout this process. Please pray for our child–that he/she is healthy, happy, and well-loved while we wait to bring him/her home. Pray for our child’s birthmother that she has comfort and peace in this incredibly selfless decision. We ask God to watch over her. Please pray for us as we wait to bring our baby home and prepare to become a family of three!

The cost of adoption is substantial. We are terrified, excited, anxious, humbled, and thrilled to have the opportunity to adopt. We basically go from being so scared we feel like throwing up to so blissfully happy that we cannot stop smiling. We promised ourselves we wouldn’t let the money prevent us from having a family. We strongly believe that the cost of adoption should never prevent families from being formed. We are stepping out in faith despite the looming financial hurdle we have to overcome in order to start our family. We trust that God will provide as he always does. We do plan on doing some fun, digital fundraiser events in the near future. We will share more about those once we are through the home study phase. 

“I will not leave you as orphans; I will come to you”
(John 14:18).

THANK YOU from the bottom of our hearts for your love, prayers, and support. We hope that you continue to follow along with us on our journey to bring our child home!

Love,
Bri & Chris