Today I have the pleasure to introduce you to a fellow blogger, sister-in-Christ, and I am excited to be doing it! Through a mutual friend, I met Carrie earlier this week . I interviewed Carrie concerning her adoption journey and this is what she would love for you to know:
We are the Likes Family from Louisville, KY. My name is Carrie! I have been married to my high school sweetheart, Bobby, now for almost 8 years. I am a stay-at-home-mom to four little ones: Jackson (6), Sifen (4), Beckett (3), and Aniston (1). We brought our four-year-old daughter home from Ethiopia in April 2013. We have begun the process again to adopt two more children from Africa. You can read more on my blog: About Us.
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Carrie, will you tell us what occurred to lay an adoption on your heart?
I don’t remember one specific situation or event that took place that gave us a desire to adopt. I feel like our love of caring for the orphan and our interest in adoption, took place and grew over time. My husband and I started dating in high school. I remember after dating for some time, we talked about what we wanted our future to look like. I shared with him my desire to one day, grow my family through adoption.
Fast forward ten years to 2011. We are married to one another, with two biological children. We felt God calling us to adopt internationally and started researching specifically on the need for children to be adopted from Ethiopia. We began the process to adopt our four year old daughter, Sifen. In April 2013, we were able to bring her home. We both knew, after spending time in Ethiopia, seeing the amount of children that need families, we would adopt again.
In July 2013, we started the process to adopt again from Ethiopia. But while we were redoing expired paperwork, we really started researching into The Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). We were reading news headline after headline about violence in the Congo. Children being killed. Attacks on innocent families. We had no clue the conditions that were present in what is considered to be, “The Poorest Country in the World”. We knew both Ethiopia and DRC are full of orphans. After much prayer and research, we chose to move forward with the process of adopting two children from The Democratic Republic of Congo.
Why these children in particular?
We came across a waiting children’s page through the agency we are using. There are currently two children they have listed on the page who have not yet be adopted. We aren’t interested in looking through more pictures. I really can’t bear to look at picture after picture of children who have no families to care for them. These two children are not babies, which lessens their chances of ever being adopted. one of these children in particular has been waiting years for a family while living in an orphanage. That’s no way for a child to live! We want to bring hope to these kids by giving them a family. Literally, the only thing stopping us from being match with these children today is money. We need to raise $9,500 to be matched with these two children and to move to the next steps in getting them home to us.
How has Jesus grown your faith during this process?
Jesus has changed my life through both of our adoptions! Before adopting, a lot of my concerns and what what I considered ‘happiness’ was found in materialistic things. You know what God does with someone life me? He sends you to Africa. he introduces you to people who are dying from curable diseases. He has mothers beg you for change on the side of a busy street, so they can feed the baby hanging on their back. he shows you children digging for their next meal in a heap of garbage. he has you adopt children from these living condition and you are never the same.
My understanding of how important it is to rely on God has grown tremendously through adoption. The international adoption process is very unpredictable. Things can happen that you weren’t expecting; thing can go very wrong; the timelines can dramatically fluctuate. This has made me learn to trust God when things aren’t going the way I think they should. His plan is way better than mine would ever be! He has taught me that we are not all called to adopt. Adoption isn’t for everyone, but what we are comannded to do is to care for the orphan (James 1:27). You can’t deny what Scripture says. Everyone is called to care for the orphan. That just looks different for different people. Prayer, fostering, financial support, mission trips, these are just a few of the ways people care for the orphan.
How can we help you reach your goal?
Our goal right now, is to raise $9,500. This is the amount we have to pay in order to be matched with our children. There are several ways you can help us reach our goal.
1. The easiest way to support our adoption is through prayer. Pray for our fundraising. Pray for our the health and safety of our children who we have not yet met. Pray that God works every teeny tiny detail of this adoption process in His timing and that is brings Him glory.
2. You can go to our fundraising page and make a donation. No donation is too small. Every single donation helps bring us a step closer to the almost $70,000 we will need to bring our children home.
3. We are selling bed sheets to fundraise for our adoption. If you go to my blog and click the, “Sweet Dreams Fundraiser” tab at the top of the home page, you will find all the information there. The sheets are fabulous!
4. SPREAD OUR STORY! The power of social media is amazing. You can share the link to our fundraising page / video / Facebook, through your Facebook status asking people, “Can you help?” We have had many people donate to our adoption who have never met us because they saw our story on social media.
Thank you so much for sharing this with my readers, Carrie! May God bless your adoption, and may He bring your children home soon!!
Kay's Little Korner 