Most of our family and friends know the joys and the pains we have gone through as a family. When I married Vickie, I not only married my best friend, but I also got an amazing daughter in Alana. Then ten years ago God blessed our family with the birth of our son Conall. We still had a strong desire to grow our little family so a couple of years later when Vickie got pregnant, we were overjoyed. Unfortunately, our son Arlan was called to heaven before his birth, and we were all devastated. It took a while for us to heal, but when we did, we started trying to add to our family again. After years of trying to get pregnant we started to think and talk about the possibility of adopting in the future. As a family we prayed that whatever God’s will was for us that we would be happy no matter what.

Then Vickie came home from work one day and told me about a family that she worked with that was really struggling with their current pregnancy. They had been given the news that the baby was going to have Down syndrome and they didn’t think that they would be able to provide her with the extra special care she would need. We talked about it and prayed about it. Vickie said she felt led to ask the family if they would be open to us adopting the baby and asked if I would be ok with us adopting her. I was both nervous and excited, but felt like we as a family were being led into this after all our prayers. The next day at work Vickie told the parents that if they didn’t feel like they could raise a child with Down syndrome that we would be excited to adopt her. All day as I hung out and played with Conall I watched my phone for any kind of news about the possibility of this little girl joining our family. Then at 3 in the afternoon I got a text telling me that I was going to be a dad again, this time to a special little girl named Adeline Jane.

As is common with babies with Down syndrome, Addie is smaller than she should be at this stage and the doctors have said they may decide to induce early, possibly in less than a month. This has shortened the timeline we have to be able to save for the legal fees needed for adoption. We have found an adoption lawyer here and realized the financial burden this wonderful news is going to put on our family in the form of lawyers’ fees, and adoption expenses before she gets here. That is why we have decided, among other things we are doing, to set up a GoFundMe to help us defray some of those costs. We are turning to our community; our families, our friends, our church families, and anyone else with a heart led to help us bring this special little girl into her forever home. For those who can give and those that cannot, we ask all of you to pray for us through this journey. We are blessed that you will be there to walk with Adeline Jane Youell throughout her life as a member of her community, loving and supporting her as you have done with us.