Baby Kennedy Adoption Fundraising Campaign

The secret is out: WE ARE ADOPTING!

When Anthony and I began dating in 2013, we frequently dreamed of our future together: an engagement, a wedding, buying a house, traveling, and the possibility of adopting a baby one day. We were married in 2015, and since then, family and friends have frequently asked about our plans for children. Our answer has been almost instinctive each time: “We can definitely see ourselves adopting a baby.” Last year, we embarked on the journey toward making our dream a

reality!

It likely comes as no surprise that we've always had a heart for children. We each chose to dedicate our talents to caring for children: Anthony by teaching and coaching, and Emily as a pediatric speech-therapist. We love being involved in the lives of our nieces and nephew. We never turn down an opportunity to hang out with our friends who have children and have even taken on the role of aunt and uncle to some of them as well. Additionally, we have the honor of supporting and staying in touch with our sponsor-child, Dodley, who we were fortunate enough to spend time with during our mission trip to Haiti. To put it simply, we just love kids! Moreover, we recognize our God-given ability to love and accept any child as if he/she were our own. Thankfully, these children in our lives all have loving families and wonderful homes. But sadly,

we know this is not the case for all children. Our hearts break for the ones who never

experience a stable, caring, and positive home life.

We wish we could give every child in need a home, loving parents, clothes, food, etc., but we know that just isn't possible. Instead, we have decided to give every single thing we have beenblessed with to one child who we will fiercely love, raise to be a good human, and instill within him/her the truth that he/she was created on purpose, for a purpose, and made in the perfect

image of God. Our prayer is that we can do for one child what we wish we could do for all children in need.

While we are eager and determined to do everything in our power to find our baby and bring him/her home, we know God is the true author of this story. We have a plan, we have a timeline, we have all the documents, but we don't have control: God does. We know we serve a faithful Heavenly Father who promises to work all things together for our good and for our baby's good.

At this point, you may have some questions. Guess what... we do too! We don't have all the answers just yet, and we are truly just taking it day by day. We intend to share more

details of our journey with our friends and family as we move forward in the process. A dear friend has created a special Instagram account for us to post updates, answer questions, and share our thoughts and prayer requests. We would be honored to have you follow along with us by visiting the Instagram account @baby_kennedy_adoption

We cannot wait to share this experience with all of you. We know that welcoming a new baby into our lives will require the love and support of those around us; it takes a village, right? We want to personally invite you to be part of our village – part of Baby Kennedy’s village. There are two major ways in which you can support us: 1) Prayerfully: Please pray for us, for our baby, for the brave mother who will entrust her child to us, for our legal team, and for God’s will to be done in this process. 2) Financially: As you can imagine, the process of adoption is long and arduous; but probably most daunting, it is expensive. The average infant adoption in the United States costs anywhere from $40,000 to $70,000. While some small grants and funding programs are available, the distributed amounts are minimal and are given to only a small percentage of adoptive families each year. The majority of adoption costs end up being paid out-of-pocket by the adopting couple/family. These costs include (but are not limited to) the following: documentation preparation and authentication, home study fees, agency application fees, counseling for birth mother, medical expenses for birth mother and baby, legal fees, and travel expenses. While we have done our very best to prepare for this journey in every way possible (including financially), we do pray that the financial burden will be lightened. With that, we humbly ask you to consider donating to help us bring home Baby Kennedy. Being relieved of even a small portion of the overall costs would allow more of our personal resources to be used to provide our baby with necessities such as nursery furniture, clothing, formula, diapers, etc.

Regardless of how you choose to support us, we thank you from the bottom of our hearts. We know that Baby Kennedy is already so very loved!