Whitney & Catalino Adoption Journey
Six months ago, God placed the call of adoption on our hearts. Before that time, we expected to have children of our own, we always had the thought to adopt even if we had biological kids, but we soon realized that when God places a burden on your heart the only things you can do is to take action.
Our names are Whitney Carbo & Catalino Velazquez. We’ve been married for 6 years. We moved to Bolingbrook Illinois in 2017 after the natural disaster “Hurricane Maria”. As a couple we have overcome a lot. Here in Bolingbrook, we started from scratch, with only $2,000 in our pockets. In a matter of 2 months, we were able to rent our own apartment, buy used cars and grow in our careers. In less than 2 years we were able to buy our first home. We felt blessed in so many ways. Both in Puerto Rico and here in Illinois we’ve been having fertility treatment; we’ve been through surgery, IUI and IVF with no success in getting pregnant. Once the IVF was discontinued because my body was rejecting the treatment and medicine, we started to think about adoption more seriously.
So, we followed God's will for our lives and have decided to adopt our first child. God set us out on a journey as husband and wife and we have grown to love one another more every day. Today we would like to include you on our journey…our journey to adopt.
At this time, we have been working with Holt international” we finished and got approved on our Home Study license. We have chosen to hire a consultant team at “Mustard Seed consultants” to help us out. Our consultant showed us our first two cases with babies soon to be born in February 2022. Unfortunately, the whole process of adoption has required us to step out on faith and out of our comfort zone. We did a shoe drive with “shoes with heart” . We couldn't reach the gold they requested from us but we did receive a lot of support from neighbors, community, friends, family and coworkers. We were able to raise around $500, we also sold T-shirts through “Bonfire” and opened a GoFundMed account. We both have got inside jobs, my husband as an electrician is doing side work and I as an infant teacher started doing door dash to put aside money on our adoption savings account. When we looked at the cases shown to us the amount the agencies [of the expectant mothers] were asking roughly between $40,000 and $50,000. At this time we have $20,000 so we had to turn down both cases that we saw because we had to be able to pay at least 80% of the total in 48 hours if we had been chosen by the expectant mother. We are so thankful that we have the means to provide for a child's daily needs, but the reality is there's a substantial amount of money needed to bring our child home. Would you be willing to enter this journey with us? Your donation will be used for the sole purpose of bringing our child home. Honestly this may be the hardest thing we have done, struggling with the thought of asking you to help us but we also know God uses his people for his purpose. We would be honored to know that you help us bring our child home and knowing that this child will have the opportunity of growing in a home filled with nothing but love. No words could ever express our gratitude.