We need your help

Friends and family (and those of you we haven’t met yet)…

This is it. In just two short weeks, give or take, we should be adopting a baby.

Before we get into the details, here is a brief overview of our story, mainly for those that don’t really know it.

Jina and I have been married almost 14 years. After trying for many years to get pregnant with no success, we realized we were going to need to talk to the professionals. At our doctor’s prompting, we decided to try six months of artificial insemination… still no success. We started to look into adoption, but instead decided to attempt In Vitro Fertilization. It was expensive and definitely not a sure thing, but we wanted to at least try. Amazingly and against a lot of odds, we ended up pregnant. Our daughter, Lyla, changed our lives in 2008.

Jump forward to early 2011, we again started talking about adoption. At this time, it seemed obvious that we weren’t going to get pregnant naturally, and we felt this was the right path for us. We went through the exhaustive process and became certified last summer. Throughout the fall, different children were presented to us through our agency and Child Protective Services. Each time we weren’t the family chosen by the state. It was a roller coaster of emotions. Yet little did we know, that was just the beginning.

In November, we got pregnant. It was a huge shock. A major surprise. A miracle had happened.

But…just a few weeks later we lost the baby. We were devastated. We felt numb and wondered what God was trying to show us. For me, I felt done with all of it. Maybe it was enough for us to have Lyla and each other. I just couldn’t go through the ups and downs anymore. And Jina was struck with a deeper grief than we had ever known.

That brings us almost to the present.

A week and a half ago, Jina and I sat down to talk. And that conversation was a game-changer. We don’t know exactly why or how, but through the course of the conversation, we realized maybe neither of us were done. Maybe God still had a plan to build our family. We decided to let our agency know we were open to being considered for an adoption (with some parameters to safeguard our hearts a bit). But before we had a chance to call the agency…

Four days later our phone rings. A friend of a friend knew of a pregnant mom looking to place her baby for adoption. (Really… this is sometimes how this happens!) So Jina and I talked. And we prayed. And we talked some more. It seemed that this might just be it. Maybe this baby was for us. Maybe this baby would be ours.

Since that day, our lives have been turned upside down. We didn’t know much about private adoptions other than you need lawyers. So we got some of those, and now we are putting the pieces together.

And did we mention…two weeks? The birth mom is due February 14th, but with any pregnancy this far along, we know it could be any day now. Who knows.

But what we do know is that we were not expecting this at all… which is the main gist of this letter. Because of the super-fast time frame, plus the need for 3 lawyers to get it done, we need roughly $9,000-10,000 within the next couple of weeks. Needless to say, that’s a lot of money for us to come up with that quickly. When we were going through our agency, we had some time to put the funds together.  But when we got pregnant, all of that was put on hold. Now, with our hearts just responding to the situation before us, we’re unsure how it will all unfold.

So we need your help. Further down the page is a form to donate money through Pay Pal. If you feel led to help us, you can use that form or contact us for other methods.  Every little bit helps. PLEASE pass this on to any friends or people that you think might want to know our story and help as well.

Many of you have already reached out to us in a variety of ways to help make this possible. We feel so thankful for your support, prayers and most of all, friendship.

– Mike (with a lot of editing from Jina)

PS. Just to add to the unexpected fun…we have no idea if it’s a boy or a girl. Here’s to surprises!

(note, the form below has a drop-down for donation amount options, or other)

******UPDATE: Because of some offline donations we’ve received that aren’t in the total below, we’ve adjusted the amount we need to raise from $9000 to $8000. 

******UPDATE at 10:06pm: Well that’s it! Unbelievably we hit our $9,000 goal and then some tonight. We’ll have more to say and write tomorrow sometime, but right now…we are humbled, stunned and blown away that we somehow raised this much money in just 13 hours. Only God could have done that. We are so blessed. Thank you all!