GREAT NEWS! We've decided to adopt a child! We're so excited to give a child an opportunity to grow up in our home and teach him or her the best things that we know.

We've started a fundraiser on Pure Charity to raise the funding that we need to make our adoption a success. We have a donations goal of $4500 that will go towards the initial cost of the adoption. It's been our dream to help give a child an opportunity like this and we hope that you will consider helping us make our dream a reality.

Every donation is important and will help make this adoption a success. Would you kindly consider making a donation? Also, we would appreciate your willingness to share this with others who may want to participate.

I, Lorene, have for a very long time wanted to adopt. I remember as a child hearing stories of orphans who needed a family and feeling like someday I should adopt. Then fast forward quite a few years... Get married to a wonderful husband, have 5 amazing kids... still in the back of my mind was this thought of adoption. About a year ago we had a family photo session done for our Christmas cards. We had a bunch of cute pictures of the kids so I bought a couple collage frames to display them all in the living room. Turned out that when I ordered prints and filled the frame I ended up with one empty frame. Months passed and I never remembered to order an extra copy of one. So every day I pass these pictures of our family with one picture missing.... One day I jokingly said to Troy, maybe that empty picture frame is for our adopted child.... Fast forward another year and a half or so after much prayer and conversation to today. We are just about done with our homestudy towards Domestic Minority Adoption (In the US, not a Caucasian baby).We had our final homestudy interview today and Troy and I went over individually pretty much our life story. In thinking about it afterwards, I noticed how many times I had said "faithful" during the conversation. At our wedding we sang the hymn "Great is they Faithfulness" and God has shown over and over again to us just how faithful He is. This interview today was seperate from the kids so they didn't hear what we were saying. A bit later the Social worker was asking the kids about how they felt about adopting. She asked if they had any thoughts on what we should name the new child. Anna said "we should name her Anna:)" and John said we should name him John:). Then Lydia spoke up and said we should name her "Faithful". I said that was sweet, but then it didn't really hit me until a bit later the connection to everything I had been thinking during my previous conversation. I really feel that that will be part of our new child's name in some way "Faith" to honor a God who has time and time again been so faithful. We LOVE kids and feel they are a blessing and are so excited about the possibility of adding another life to our family. The craziest thing about this whole adoption process at this point is the financial aspect. It still seems outrageous to charge so much money, when there are so many children needing homes. But that is the way it is, but we know God will be faithful to provide.

Thank you so much for being a part of our lives and helping accomplish something that's important to all of us!