On March 8, 2024, we met David and our lives were forever changed.

The weekend before, our pastor and his wife approached us with a request. They had been caring for David—along with another child in the refugee community—but needed help watching him on weekends. Nathaly and I agreed without hesitation, and that was the beginning of our relationship with our precious child.

David was just six months old at the time, recovering from severe malnourishment and a recent blood transfusion. He weighed only six pounds. His mother, gravely ill after giving birth, had been hospitalized, and his father abandoned the family just days after David’s birth. So, we began taking David into our home from Friday afternoons to Sunday evenings each week.

Then, on April 5, 2024, tragedy struck—David’s mother passed away from complications related to preeclampsia. She had traveled to Haiti in search of medical treatment but never returned. The moment we received the news, Nathaly and I knew we wanted to adopt David as our son, and would do anything in our power to give him the loving family and stability he deserved.

What we didn’t realize was just how difficult and costly the process would be. Without a birth certificate, David couldn’t be added to our local medical insurance, which became a serious issue when he was hospitalized with pneumonia for three days in June 2024. Without insurance, the cost of that stay was devastating. While he is far healthier now, he still requires fairly regular doctors visits as we work to help him recover from the malnutrition and hardship he endured.

We began the adoption process with CONANI, the government agency that oversees adoptions in the Dominican Republic. They informed us we would first need David’s mother’s death certificate—a nearly impossible task since she had died in Haiti, a country currently facing extreme instability and violence. After multiple trips to the capital city and searching through mountains of records, five months later we obtained, translated, and legalized the document.

In July 2025, we finally received David’s birth certificate from the Haitian Embassy—a huge milestone, but just one of many steps ahead. The road to guardianship and adoption will be long, complicated, and expensive.

David has already endured more hardship in his first few years of childhood than many face in a lifetime; nonetheless, he is strong, joyful, and full of life. And he is our son.

He is also soon to be a big brother, as Nathaly is expected to deliver our second child in October!

We are committed to giving him the loving, stable home every child deserves, and we would be deeply grateful for your prayers, support, and generosity. Your giving will help cover medical expenses, adoption costs, and legal fees as we work toward making him our son in every way.