MEET KATELYN AND JONAH: a simple application and a video sharing their story led to a fully funded adoption.
What led you to choose adoption?
Jonah and I have been married for 4 years this December. We have always valued marriage and had a desire to become parents. In 2018, we were diagnosed with unexplained infertility. While that news was really hard at first, we truly believe that God turned our brokenness into a beautiful blessing through adoption. We believe in the sovereignty of God, and that He has been preparing our hearts for adoption since the beginning. After many months of praying, we began the adoption process with Faithful Adoption Consultants (FAC) in January of 2020. We felt that God was now leading us to adopt, and saw adoption as a beautiful picture of the gospel lived out. By choosing to have an open adoption, we have the privilege of supporting and being devoted to loving expectant mothers and their babies just as Jesus would love them.
How did you hear about the 2020 AdoptWithFTN campaign, and how did you decide to apply?
We heard about the 2020 FTN adoption grant through our amazing consultant, Courtney, at FAC. We had never heard of Fund the Nations before this fundraiser. She informed us of the grant opportunity, and that evening I applied. I had looked into a few different grants over the last year, and I loved how straight forward the FTN application questions were. I knew there was something special about this grant when I saw the question, “What makes your adoption story unique?” I actually laughed out loud to Jonah and jokingly said, “How much time do they have?!”. I typed out a brief explanation of our adoption journey this far and just hoped for the best. **Had we not experienced a failed match and were able to bring that baby home with us, we would not have been able to apply for this grant, because one of the qualifications was for your child to not be in your home yet.*** We were shocked to find out that we made the top 25 and then the top 10!!
How did you see the Lord at work during the campaign?
Our adoption journey hasn’t been the easiest, and after our failed match this summer, we were really struggling over if we should continue on or pull out of our contract early.We have been praying daily for wisdom and guidance, and then God gave us this incredible fundraiser opportunity. Throughout the last week, I have met so many amazing new people. We have had total strangers message us and tell us they watched our video, and encourage us by sharing their adoption story of how they also went through a similar situation, but now have their amazing son or daughter. Wednesday evening, I began crying over how many people were supporting us and cheering us on in our fundraising. I was so overwhelmed with love and support, and knew that God brought us to this fundraiser for a reason. We needed to be reminded through this fundraiser that this is where we are supposed to be.
You will now have your adoption funded as a result of your success during our campaign. What do you think made you so successful?
We really didn’t think we would win after watching the other 9 family’s videos. It was an honor to even be considered in the top 10, but our goal was to at least be in the top 5. After our failed match this summer, our adoption budget became smaller. And over the last 4 months, we have had to say “no” to many cases because we could no longer afford them. It was heartbreaking knowing we had come this far in our journey, only to feel stuck because of our new budget. So I was motivated to win. I sent out probably over 900 private facebook messages informing everyone I knew about our fundraiser and opportunity to have our adoption fully funded if we won. It totally isn't my personality to “hound” people to purchase anything fundraiser related, but this grant was just so important to us. I did a video every day updating friends and family on our campaign and our adoption journey, and I sent hundreds reminder messages. I knew that God was doing big things through this fundraiser whether we won or not. But we are so grateful for all the support we received this last week, and now are able to say “yes!” to so many more cases!
If you could tell the world one thing about adoption and supporting families during the adoption process, what would you say?
Adoption is hard. It begins with a ton of paperwork, followed by endless clearances and multiple home studies. You will feel defeated when an expectant mother chooses a different family over yours, and the wait is long. But, it is worth every paper cut, every tear, and every prayer. God has grown us so much through our adoption journey, as individuals, and as a couple. He has shown us that our hope is only in Him, and that He is still good no matter what. We have seen the amazing blessing of adoption through friends and even our own family, and it is so sweet to see God use adoption to bring so many people to Himself. It truly takes a village to support an expecting adoptive family, and this past week we were blessed to see our village come together and love on us through this campaign. We are so excited to see how God continues to use this amazing blessing of having our adoption fully funded to match us with another expectant mother in His perfect timing.