How did your journey of adoption begin ?
We got married at the young ages of twenty-three ( Michael ) and twenty ( Courtney ). We wanted to spend some time getting to know each other and enjoying married life before children . About three or four years into marriage , we started talking about starting a family . Adoption quickly became a part of the conversation . I strongly felt that God was calling us in that direction . Michael liked the idea , but he is practical and knew how expensive adoption could be . After much prayer and asking God to make it clear , we both were in one hundred percent agreement .
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How did God provide the funds for adoption ?
We asked God , “ If we are supposed to adopt , please provide a way !” We tossed around ideas of how to fund an adoption . Michael was a handyman , and we had recently renovated our home and sold it , so we discussed buying an old house , fixing it up , and selling it to pay for the adoption .
In August of 2016 , I found the cutest little brick ranch home for sale online , and it was very affordable . Within fifteen minutes of touring the house , we knew we should make an offer . Calculating renovation cost and potential profit helped us land on an offer price . We gave our realtor our offer , and he said , “ I hate to tell you this , but there are sixteen other offers , and thirteen are above the asking price ! If you want to have a chance of getting the house , I would recommend raising your offer .”
We knew our offer couldn ’ t be raised in order to have enough money for adoption . We called our realtor back and told him to leave our offer as is . I remember feeling discouraged , thinking there was no way our offer would be accepted with so many offers on the table . I prayed , “ God , if we are supposed to adopt , this would certainly pay for it . If it ’ s your will , then please make it clear !”
A few days later , I was in the recording studio working on some music with my family when we got an email . It was the seller of the home telling us they had accepted our offer outright ! They didn ’ t even try to negotiate ! I hurriedly called Michael , laughed , and said , “ Well , I guess we are adopting !” We were so excited and couldn ’ t believe how clearly God had shown us what path to take .
We closed on the house in record time in September of 2016 . Over fifteen months , we renovated and marketed the home . We tried our best to put attention to detail and character in every corner of the home . When it was finally for sale , we were amazed at the interest ! We had five offers , and God brought just the right buyer to fund our adoption . The house was sold in November of 2017 , and we walked away ready to start our adoption journey .
Tell us about the adoption process .
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There are so many different avenues for adoption : fosterto-adopt , infant , private , and international . I had always loved the idea of international adoption but was open to other ideas . We quickly learned foster-to-adopt would not work with our jobs since a judge would have to sign off every time we left the state with our child before the adoption was finalized . We looked into domestic infant adoption and prayed about it , but we could not get peace about that decision .
While on tour , we sang with Newsong , who are representatives for an adoption agency named Holt International . During the concert , a rep from Holt talked about their child sponsorship program . I remember thinking , “ I think they facilitate international adoptions as well . I ’ m going to check into them !” The minute I logged onto Holt ’ s website , I felt peace . Michael and I were so impressed with their communication and helpfulness , so we agreed Holt was a great choice as our agency .
Holt offers a handful of countries to adopt from . My age eliminated some of the countries that require parents to be thirty . As we prayed about what country God wanted us to
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