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Bottom-Line: We’ve been matched with a birthmother and baby boy!
We’re asking for your prayers, friendship, and financial support – we need to raise significant funds by December to complete the adoption. Details below. If you’d like to be removed from our mailings, just let me know – no problem and no offense!
Dear Friends and Family,
When we last wrote in June 2018 about our adoption journey, we were starting the search for a mother who would choose us to adopt her child, and we asked for your prayers, care, and financial assistance. We received a tremendous outpouring of generosity in all three areas from you, and we were (and remain) deeply humbled by your various demonstrations of love over the past 14 months. Today we are excited to tell you that we have been matched with a birthmother, and the baby boy that we hope to adopt is due to be born on January 8, 2020! Now we have a short period of time during which to raise a larger amount of money than we had anticipated.
HISTORY: As most of you know, we (Nate and Michelle) have both always longed to have a large family. Our dream has been to have a few biological children and to adopt the rest. We were married in 2010, and after several years of trying to get pregnant, we finally found success via fertility treatment; in fact, we got pregnant with Parker after the first treatment! God used that experience to show us how tenderly and deeply he cares for us; that children are (indeed) a blessing from the Lord regardless of how they arrive; and that children don’t always enter the family in the ways that we expect. After a rough pregnancy, premature birth, and 19 days in the Special Care Nursery, Parker came home and changed our lives forever.
We love being parents and have a deep longing to add more children to our family. We continued trying to get pregnant again for over two years after Parker was born, and pursued many more fertility treatments… without success. We discontinued further fertility treatments in 2018 and shifted our full efforts to pursuing adoption. Since then we’ve had a few false starts, but last week we finally made a good match with a birthmother!
The CURRENT NEED: Because this is an agency-adoption (vs. a “parental placement” adoption, which we initially set out to do last year), the process will be more expensive than we had originally planned. We expect the total cost of the adoption to be right around $42,000. We are able to put a total of ~$10,000 cash toward the adoption, and through generous gifts last year we received an additional $4,000, so now we need to raise about $28,000 by December (3 months from now) in order to complete the adoption in January. Will you consider helping us financially with a monetary gift that will go toward the various adoption fees and costs? Our intent is to spend every penny we receive on bringing our adopted child home; if any money is left-over, that money will go towards another adoption (ours or someone else’s). And, if you would like more specifics on our financial situation, please feel free to ask! If you’d like to make a financial gift, you can send the money directly to us, or you can give via our GoFundMe (http://gofundme.com/GrowTeamLee ).
The DETAILS: We were matched with “Nancy” (not the birthmother’s real name) on Wednesday, August 21 (8 days ago) via an adoption agency, and since then we have been getting to know Nancy via text messages and phone calls. Nancy is an African-American woman in her early-20s living in Louisiana. She is pregnant by the birthfather of her other two children (4 and 2 years old), the birthfather has abandoned her and the kids, and she recognizes that she is not emotionally or financially able to care for an additional child. Her family is encouraging her to get an abortion, but she says “I don’t want to kill my baby” and that she wants her baby to grow up in a stable and loving family. She is also facing some very serious legal charges, and might be in jail (or prison) by the time of the birth (and could remain there for a long time). Nancy has had a hard life and faces a harder one still due to mistakes that she has made. She seems to genuinely love all three of her children (born and unborn) and she wants a better life for all of them; she believes that we can provide that family for her baby.
We are saddened by Nancy’s story, and the fact that she might soon be separated from not only her unborn son, but also her 4- and 2-year-old son and daughter. We are also glad that we can partner with her to be the family that will give her unborn son the love, stability, and nurturing that she wants him to receive. Will you help us be that family? We have now entered a period of great uncertainty, emotional roller-coaster-like highs and lows, and big financial stretches. We covet your prayers, your friendship, your personal care – your help in bringing our son home. Please be patient with us as we navigate these unfamiliar waters – we’ve never adopted before, and it’s a very stretching, growth-inducing, faith-building, scary-but-exciting process!
As always, if you have any questions whatsoever, please don’t hesitate to ask – we are an open book, and (almost) nothing is too personal to share; we want to be open and honest about every aspect of this process.
We love you and appreciate your friendship – thank you for coming on our journey with us!
Love,
Nate and Michelle
We’re asking for your prayers, friendship, and financial support – we need to raise significant funds by December to complete the adoption. Details below. If you’d like to be removed from our mailings, just let me know – no problem and no offense!
Dear Friends and Family,
When we last wrote in June 2018 about our adoption journey, we were starting the search for a mother who would choose us to adopt her child, and we asked for your prayers, care, and financial assistance. We received a tremendous outpouring of generosity in all three areas from you, and we were (and remain) deeply humbled by your various demonstrations of love over the past 14 months. Today we are excited to tell you that we have been matched with a birthmother, and the baby boy that we hope to adopt is due to be born on January 8, 2020! Now we have a short period of time during which to raise a larger amount of money than we had anticipated.
HISTORY: As most of you know, we (Nate and Michelle) have both always longed to have a large family. Our dream has been to have a few biological children and to adopt the rest. We were married in 2010, and after several years of trying to get pregnant, we finally found success via fertility treatment; in fact, we got pregnant with Parker after the first treatment! God used that experience to show us how tenderly and deeply he cares for us; that children are (indeed) a blessing from the Lord regardless of how they arrive; and that children don’t always enter the family in the ways that we expect. After a rough pregnancy, premature birth, and 19 days in the Special Care Nursery, Parker came home and changed our lives forever.
We love being parents and have a deep longing to add more children to our family. We continued trying to get pregnant again for over two years after Parker was born, and pursued many more fertility treatments… without success. We discontinued further fertility treatments in 2018 and shifted our full efforts to pursuing adoption. Since then we’ve had a few false starts, but last week we finally made a good match with a birthmother!
The CURRENT NEED: Because this is an agency-adoption (vs. a “parental placement” adoption, which we initially set out to do last year), the process will be more expensive than we had originally planned. We expect the total cost of the adoption to be right around $42,000. We are able to put a total of ~$10,000 cash toward the adoption, and through generous gifts last year we received an additional $4,000, so now we need to raise about $28,000 by December (3 months from now) in order to complete the adoption in January. Will you consider helping us financially with a monetary gift that will go toward the various adoption fees and costs? Our intent is to spend every penny we receive on bringing our adopted child home; if any money is left-over, that money will go towards another adoption (ours or someone else’s). And, if you would like more specifics on our financial situation, please feel free to ask! If you’d like to make a financial gift, you can send the money directly to us, or you can give via our GoFundMe (http://gofundme.com/GrowTeamLee ).
The DETAILS: We were matched with “Nancy” (not the birthmother’s real name) on Wednesday, August 21 (8 days ago) via an adoption agency, and since then we have been getting to know Nancy via text messages and phone calls. Nancy is an African-American woman in her early-20s living in Louisiana. She is pregnant by the birthfather of her other two children (4 and 2 years old), the birthfather has abandoned her and the kids, and she recognizes that she is not emotionally or financially able to care for an additional child. Her family is encouraging her to get an abortion, but she says “I don’t want to kill my baby” and that she wants her baby to grow up in a stable and loving family. She is also facing some very serious legal charges, and might be in jail (or prison) by the time of the birth (and could remain there for a long time). Nancy has had a hard life and faces a harder one still due to mistakes that she has made. She seems to genuinely love all three of her children (born and unborn) and she wants a better life for all of them; she believes that we can provide that family for her baby.
We are saddened by Nancy’s story, and the fact that she might soon be separated from not only her unborn son, but also her 4- and 2-year-old son and daughter. We are also glad that we can partner with her to be the family that will give her unborn son the love, stability, and nurturing that she wants him to receive. Will you help us be that family? We have now entered a period of great uncertainty, emotional roller-coaster-like highs and lows, and big financial stretches. We covet your prayers, your friendship, your personal care – your help in bringing our son home. Please be patient with us as we navigate these unfamiliar waters – we’ve never adopted before, and it’s a very stretching, growth-inducing, faith-building, scary-but-exciting process!
As always, if you have any questions whatsoever, please don’t hesitate to ask – we are an open book, and (almost) nothing is too personal to share; we want to be open and honest about every aspect of this process.
We love you and appreciate your friendship – thank you for coming on our journey with us!
Love,
Nate and Michelle
