Thank you to everyone who donated to or shared our Brittany’s Hope fundraising page! We have met our $2,000 goal, so Brittany’s Hope will match that amount and we will be awarded a whopping $4,000 grant to cover adoption travel expenses! We are SO grateful for your continued support during this incredible journey to bring Sunny home.

This past winter we applied for so many grants! We received the Holt Special Needs Award of $3,000 this past spring from our adoption agency and, at the time, was the only grant we had received out of several. This $3,000 grant was applied to our $13,360 Program Fee. Three grants rejected us and two put our application “on hold” for review until closer to travel. We continued to apply for other grants this spring, but didn’t have much luck. We were really losing hope that we would be awarded any additional funding when the Brittany’s Hope grant showed up! Receiving this matching grant has really given us hope when we needed it most.

And sure enough, when it rains it pours! We just found out today we have also been awarded a $2,000 grant from the Rollstone Foundation! The Rollstone Foundation offers an adoption grant for special needs children and will go towards our adoption travel expenses. That means our grant fund total is $9,000 out of our total $37,000+ total expenses – JUST AMAZING!!!

Adoption is time-intensive and document-heavy, which makes the process extremely expensive. We’re thankful for how thorough both the US and Thailand are in ensuring the process is safe, legal, and complete, but the tremendous expense is certainly a financial hardship for our family. We can’t really explain how thankful we are for these grant blessings and hope you will celebrate this news with us! We are over-the-moon excited and give thanks over and over again for how He always provides at exactly the right time.

While we continue to make moves closer to travel, Thailand has been hit hard by COVID. The number of cases in Thailand have spiked — the worst it’s been for Thailand during the entire pandemic. Children are getting sick. The orphanages are operating under complete lockdown, caretakers are not allowed to leave the premises, and schooling has been moved entirely online, if at all. The children in the orphanages were already confined to the campuses and now they are being confined to their building, which of course impacts their overall mental health. Please say a prayer for our Sunny and all the children and caretakers in Thailand that they remain healthy and safe during this awful time.

These COVID restrictions also mean that Sunny’s annual assessment that was scheduled for late summer via ZOOM is now postponed indefinitely. We received a ZOOM assessment recording last November and that was the last update we have received on Sunny. After such a trying year, we are anxious to see and hear how he is doing. Hopefully our adoption agency will be able to advocate for us and the other adoptive families waiting for assessments and somehow still complete these updates in the coming months.

Thank you again for everyone’s support, prayers, good vibes and positive notes, texts, and messages we’ve received lately. We are so grateful for such a caring support network and truly appreciate everyone asking about updates on Sunny and our progress. It really takes a village and we are so happy you’re a part of it.

“Therefore encourage one another and build each other up, just as in fact you are doing.” Thessalonians 5:11