The Welcome Home Initiative

Maria told me she wanted to adopt before we were even married. I was all in. In my mind, we would have three biological kids first, and then adopt.

Life had a different plan.

In 2014, at YWAM in Kona, Hawaii, God began speaking to Maria about adoption. We sat through an adoption seminar while we were there. Adoption was always part of our story. We just thought it would come later. God wrote it differently than we would have.

A year later, Adria was born.

What we thought would be a couple of years turned into ten years of secondary infertility. If you have walked through it, you know the cycle. Every month you hope. Every month you pray this is finally the one. Then another month goes by.

Those years were not easy. They also deepened our faith, strengthened our marriage, and prepared us in ways we could not see at the time.

Eventually we both knew it was time. God made it clear we were not supposed to keep waiting. Family members shared dreams that confirmed what we already believed He was speaking.

So we took the first step and started the process. We were told it would take about a year. It took sixteen months.

The invoices started long before our son did. It was expensive, and we did not cover it alone. We hosted a dinner, invited people in, and told them where we were. They gave. Family, friends, business owners, people from church, all of them giving toward a child none of them had met yet. Bevanda put in too. Between what came in and what God provided, it was covered.

Then one day we got the call. We had been matched with our son.

Our agency was out west, so we packed our bags and flew. One of the greatest gifts of the whole journey is that Maria and I were both in the delivery room when Bobo was born. Being there to welcome him into the world is a moment we will never forget.

We stayed out there two weeks while the paperwork and the interstate process were completed. Two weeks that felt like a lifetime and an instant at the same time.

Then the day came. The paperwork cleared and he was ours. We boarded a plane as a family of four. Watching Adria become a big sister has been one of the greatest blessings of our lives.

What that road also showed us is what it costs. Agency fees. Legal. Travel. Paperwork at every step. We got through it because of the people around us, and that is not something everyone has. Plenty of families are ready in every way that matters and never get there, because the cost is the only thing in the way and nobody around them can carry it.

That is why we pledged $35,000 this year to help families adopt.

We made that commitment before we knew what the year would look like, the same way the people we learned it from set theirs when business was good and kept it when business got hard. A pledge you only keep in a good year is not a pledge.