Our adoption journey began in January 2009 as we began the process for a domestic adoption through Gladney Center for Adoption in Fort Worth. We had always talked about including adoption as a way to build our family, and a few years into our marriage, we started to feel led strongly to pursue it as a way to start our family. We also felt that God was calling us to adopt within the U.S. We had a long wait and a bit of a bumpy path, but we feel strongly that part of our wait was to allow us time to save up the money needed for the adoption, the final part being our chance to participate in the Chosen: Marathon for Adoption. The one thing that made us hesitant to start the adoption process in the beginning was the cost, but we had decided to take a leap of faith because we felt so strongly that this was the path God had chosen for us. He provided. We found out about this wonderful fundraising event from a friend who was training for it but didn’t have a team and thought we might be interested in forming one. Neal started training for the race, and we sent out letters to family and friends to support our team. When we received the check with the money we had raised, we were amazed to see the exact amount we needed to pay for the remaining amount of our adoption fees – God is good! The best part was that the check came in the mail as we were holding in our arms our beautiful baby girl, Madelynn, that we had brought home just days before. Talk about timing! The Chosen: Marathon for Adoption has truly blessed our family and helped make our adoption possible.
-Kim and Neal Bilger (Pflugerville, TX)
The Koen Family participated & benefitted from our Inaugural Marathon. They brought their daughter home from Ethiopia in January 2011.
http://www.gettingbabyk.blogspot.com/
Neil and I began talking about our family plan including adoption while we were
dating and knew God had put it on both our hearts! We waited and prayed for His
timing and started our process to adopt our little boy from Ethiopia in April 2010
after being married for 7.5 years and having two beautiful girls (5.5 and almost
3). God has been amazing through this journey as He shows us His faithfulness and
provision over and over again. It has been an incredible experience thus far and
we don’t even know our little ones name yet!! As of October of 2011 we are now #15
on our agency’s waitlist and pray that our little guy will be home sometime in the
summer of
2012.
Last year, we were blessed to take part in the inaugural year of the Chosen Marathon
for Adoption. When we first heard of it from some friends we thought “Yeah right!
We’re not runners!” and we certainly had never desired to do a half or full
marathon. We finally decided that the only thing that would get us to train and
complete this goal would be to help bring our baby boy home! It would be worth all
the hard work to walk the half marathon and recruit for our team. So we created our
team “SA Lewis to Ethiopia” and one by one our team kept getting bigger and bigger.
God just kept prompting people’s hearts to take part in this amazing event and
blessed us tremendously!! We ended up with 35 team members and we didn’t even know
half of our members personally. Besides taking part of a wonderful event to promote
orphan care and adoption, we benefitted greatly from the Chosen.
With everything, including
registration fees, donations, a grant and interest-free loan from ABBA (awarded by
our application and reference letters through the Chosen), God blessed us
with close to $12,000!! We are truly humbled by this amount and continue to give
Him thanks and praise along with everyone who came along beside us!!
“SA Lewis to Ethiopia” is participating again this year and we have 39 members so
far! We thank everyone who has helped us along in support, friendship and prayer as
we look forward to bringing our little guy home BEFORE next year’s run!!
Kathryn, Neil, Claire & Eden Lewis
www.nkclewis.blogspot.com
If your adoption benefited our from 2010 Race, we’d love to hear your story. Please send directly to Lizette at lizdittmar AT yahoo DOT com.