Trip To Gladney

We have officially made our biggest step in our adoption journey thus far. Last Thursday, Jill and I made our way to Gladney to meet face to face with our new caseworker, Sue. Normally people would just mail in most of their paperwork with a check, but that's obviously not us. We are the "lets sit and chat about how happy we are to finally be writing a check" couple. She didn't seem to mind at all. Once again we stayed about an hour longer than we planned. We spent most of our time talking about how God's guidance led us to Gladney as hopeful adoptive parents, and how His guidance led her to Gladney to help people like us.

We have been holding on to these papers for a very long time, and we were so ready to get them out of our house! We have been staring at our binder full of our completed paperwork sitting on our shelf. Sitting there screaming "Turn me in! Your baby is waiting on you!" 

We could never show how incredibly blessed you all have made us. This first part of our journey was all about getting money together. We put money in our "baby account" on a weekly basis, but the truth is it would take us a few years to save up all of this money. It is amazing watching who God uses to step forward, and help us along this journey. 

Our first payment to Gladney was for 25% of our agency fee, $1500 for Home Study, and $600 for our follow up visits after the baby is home. Which makes a grand total of $8,975. Well after the three short months since making our big announcement we have made donation deposits totaling more than $9000 into our baby account. Finally seeing that we had enough money we were ready to go write a check!

After making our appointment with Gladney we were blessed with yet another one of God's surprises. We received a very large donation directed to Gladney on our behalf.  This donation to Gladney led to us only having to write a check of $3,475 out of the baby account.

This was huge to us. It meant that we still have more than $5,500 left in the baby account which gives us a gigantic head start on our next fee. The next fee is 50% of our agency fee. We can now start on our profile book for the birth moms. When we have that put together with our next fee all that's left is being matched!

We could not be more excited to be experiencing these new milestones. We have so many people that are walking every step with us, and we are so very grateful. Thank you all for the financial, emotional, and spiritual support.