Joey & Bree Are Adopting!

Our Story
We met our freshman year of college.  It was music that brought us together when we both joined the same on-campus worship team.  That summer, we began to take notice of each other.  It all started when we were stranded on a pontoon in the middle of a lake.  Our two hour conversation on that lake, which seemed like only a brief moment, was the start of us falling in love.  Bree admired Joey's raw passion and his gentle spirit and Joey was drawn to Bree's ability to put people at ease and her genuine kindness.  We were married our senior year of college and dreamed of growing a family together.  

After 5 years of trying to get pregnant with no success, we began testing for infertility.  The test results came back showing that there was nothing wrong.   Not wanting to spend time and money on further fertility testing, we went on with our lives, only to be surprised two years later! It was a complicated pregnancy, including 3 months on bed rest, but Vivien Kate was born on May 8th, 2012.  We were hopeful to have more children after our daughter was born, however, the years that followed brought much disappointment and heartache.  After our 5th miscarriage and many more appointments with doctors, our desire to further grow our family seemed hopeless. 

Though things were not going the way we had planned,  we continued to let our faith in God guide us.   As we prayed and asked for direction, our hearts turned toward adoption.  The more we learned about adoption, the more we realized this is what we were called to do as a family.  


Thailand
We've spent the last 6 months gathering as much information as we could about the different options for adoption.  At the beginning of our journey, we were considering  local adoption.  After attending many meetings over the summer, we had one final information meeting scheduled.  It was at this meeting we learned about adoption from Thailand.  For reasons we could not explain, Thailand left an imprint on both our hearts.  We took another month of prayer and reflection before making our final decision and are so happy to announce that we will be adopting from Thailand! 

We applied to adopt 1-2 children (typically a sibling group) ages 0-4.   Vivien could not be more excited to be a big sister.  On her very own, she even cleared space in her bedroom for a crib.


We Need You
We cannot wait to bring another child (or two) into our home, but we know we can't do this alone.

Adoption is a costly endeavor.  Our program will cost anywhere from $20,000 - $30,000.  We are applying for grants as well as using money we have saved.   However, these efforts alone cannot cover all the costs.

In the next 2 weeks, we need to raise $1,000 to begin the approval process for adoption.  Then we will have 3-6 months to raise an additional $9,000 in order to be placed into the adoption program in Thailand.  The remainder of the funds will be due as we receive a referral from Thailand and make travel plans to bring home our new child/children.

We are so grateful for the people in our lives who believe in us and who are joining us in our journey toward adoption.  Would you consider giving financially to help grow our family?  We thank you in advance for your gifts large and small.