2024 Stories
The Gephart Family
Adoption was something we discussed and prayed about before marriage.
Through our nonprofit work with supporting mothers facing unplanned pregnancies, we knew we eventually wanted to play a larger role and God was leading us towards our next steps. We worked diligently for over a year while we were pursuing our first adoption, educating ourselves as much as we could about all the different perspectives in the adoption triad and acknowledging all adoptions start with a loss. But God makes all things new, and through honoring their story, we knew that we could love these babies while also loving their biological families and inviting them into ours. They are valuable because they are worthy. No matter the circumstance, no matter the situation. Both the biological mother and the child she carried for 9 months make the world a better place and we are committed to loving them without judgement.
We always wanted a big family. We are what you would consider “open to life, hopefully adoptive parents”, meaning, we plan to stay home study ready as long as we feel called to love and care for more children.Our first home study was completed in December 2018 and we were matched in January 2019. Similarly, a year later we renewed our home study and were matched very quickly, and we completed our 2nd adoption in February 2020. The 3rd time around we were homestudy ready for 18 months, presented to 30 different cases and experienced two disruptions which resulted in us unable to recover over $9000. We matched with our son in October 2022 and he was born later that month. We knew we would want to pursue a 4th adoption so we began the process when our son turned 1. We became homestudy ready and official again January 1st, 2024. Amazingly, just yesterday, we were matched with a sweet mama who is due at the end of February! We are floored but also short quite a bit of money to make this happen.
One thing we try to do with our adoption process is to share our story with as many people as possible. We feel that by educating people, more people will have a glimpse into the process of adoption and in turn, can find compassion and love in their hearts for the expectant mother and father as well as the experience of everyone in the adoption triad.
With God, anything is possible. We believe we are called to care for these children and to be a witness of love to them, their biological families and anyone who comes across our story. We know that story will be one of love utter surrender to the will of God. Thank you for being a part of our journey.
We actually feel like this is part of our calling throughout the entire process! We speak often open and honestly about the adoption process, shedding light onto areas that aren't spoken about often. We shared our entire last two experiences from start to finish on our social media account, including the two adoption losses. We share financials and give a real glimpse into the reality of adoption costs and how to get creative raising funds and applying for grants. We have done so many fundraisers! We are big proponents of open adoption and welcoming the biological family into our family. In fact, we had our 2nd daughters entire biological family (grandparents, aunt, brother) up for thanksgiving and to stay at our home for three days. We share all of this over at Clare's instagram @oohhclare and our Adoption FB page: https://www.facebook.com/clareandphiladopt
We also are QUITE often connected with hopeful adoptive families or families just beginning to discern wether adoption is right for their family or not. We take phone calls, emails and zoom calls with anyone who requests one and don't charge a single penny. We feel like it's part of our mission to support these people as well as every single case that comes through our inbox from our agency, we pray over. We feel as if even if we aren't chosen, we were given their case and story for a reason and use every opportunity to pray (because we believe in the power of prayer) for the expectant mama and baby to make the best decision.
The Teixiera Family
After meeting working for the same missionary organization in 2008, we grew in friendship for several years before eventually dating and becoming engaged. We were married on October 22, 2011 and it became clear very early on that adoption was the only option for growing our family. We were blessed to welcome three daughters in 2014, 2016, and 2018. We followed God’s prompting and started a small family business, WalletWin, in 2017. Life has been profoundly full as we work from home and homeschool our daughters…but one thing has stayed consistent in our prayer – someone is missing from the Teixeira clan and we knew one day we would pursue adoption again. A little over a year ago we began to line up our paperwork, appointments, etc to complete our home study once again. The landscape of adoption has shifted over the last decade since we first waded into these waters. We’ve noticed many positive elements develop around really supporting the adoption triad. And while not necessarily a negative element, the costs surrounding adoption have doubled…landing most families in the $60,000+ territory. This has been a hurdle for our family, which is why we've reached out to incredible grant organizations like One17 to partner with. Our family has a lot of love to share and we are all eager to welcome home another member of our family, which not only includes another child but their entire birth family as well. We have all open adoptions and really see them as more people to love and celebrate our children alongside. Adoption is hard but it also can be beautiful and we look forward to seeing how God leads these next steps and provides for everyone involved in our adoption triad.
The Lay Family
We are Lexi and Andy. We live in Cincinnati, OH with our dog, Willy, who has as much personality as another human. We have close extended family on each side and love spending time with our niece and nephews. We call City Church our church home and while Sunday mornings there are fruitful, we have grown so much spiritually from spending each Tuesday night over the last year or so with our church house group. Outside of church we have a circle of friends with families that we get together with often for dinners and fellowship. We are incredibly excited, hopeful, nervous (we could add a thousand more adjectives here!) to expand our family through adoption. The journey to get to this point for us has been full of many little pieces falling into place over time. We have always known that we wanted to be parents and began trying to conceive just about a year and a half into marriage. Months went by slowly, turning into years and we were still unable to conceive on our own or with a little bit of help from doctors. With that, we took some time to live as a family of two and did our best to receive what God was giving us and doing in our home. This made it that much more surprising to the both of us when the idea of adoption slowly started to be put on our hearts as a real possibility. We have watched a few families welcome new family members through adoption. While it was a slow and steady decision to actually begin the process to pursue adoption, it was a confident decision. The agency we are working with was not taking new applicants at the time we had initially reached out, however, just two months later that changed and before we knew it we were signed up for education courses. Our agency works with expectant mothers, expectant adoptive families, and adoptive families in the state of Ohio. We learned about the beautiful and painful parts of adoption, practical things to remember, and ultimately that we will never stop learning. We went through the home study process and have spent the last handful of months waiting in anticipation for a baby to join our family. We really want to provide a child with a home where they are loved, comforted, safe, laugh a lot, and feel they can be who God created them to be. Our prayer is to have the opportunity to partner with someone who has decided to create an adoption plan for their child and have the honor of raising the child in our home.
The Chick Family
Hello! We are Nathan and Emily. We met in our early thirties among mutual friends. Marriage was such an easy and fun decision to make. Both of us wanted a family built on our faith in Jesus and recognized that same desire in the other. We have been married almost ten years now and have two beautiful boys. Long before we were married, each of us had thought of adoption as a possibility for our future. When we realized the common thought we shared, the possibility became more of a reality. We were sure it was God that had brought us together in the first place and the pieces sure seemed to fit too well to be a coincidence. So while we felt we wanted to start our family with biological children, we felt adoption would be an incredible way to complete it. We have a strong support network of friends and extended family who are excited to welcome a child into our lives and be a part of their upbringing as well. This network is mostly comprised of our immediate family members whom mostly live within fifteen minutes drive and the church community that we have been growing with for over ten years. We attend Crossroads and have been involved in their prayer ministry and Emily in leadership at Mom's group. We also were part of seeing our small group in Northern Kentucky officially become a quickly growing Vinyard Church. With them we have regularly served in ministry to the poor of the city of Covington. Additionally we have branched out into other ministry opportunities on our own in our city on occasion. Because of Jesus and our family upbringings, our family values kindness, honesty and respect, and we believe in creating a warm and welcoming atmosphere in our home. We would love to share this loving environment and all our family has to offer with a child whose biological parents can not do so. We know adoption is at the center of God's heart and we believe God has equipped us for this journey.
The Crowe Family
Have you ever spent time living in an orphanage? When we traveled to adopt our son from India in 2018, we were only able to spend about two hours at his orphanage and we weren't allowed to see any of the other children. When we traveled to the Philippines in 2022 to adopt our daughter from the Philippines, we lived in the orphanage for an entire week during the entrustment process. While we were there, we were encouraged by the director to not only spend time with our daughter, but to also enjoy spending time with the other children who were there. Within moments of entering the orphanage we found ourselves surrounded by giant smiles and very curious faces as the children, from birth age to eighteen watched while we were taken to our room while the staff went to get our daughter. After we met and spent some very special time with our daughter, she showed us around the orphanage, kids were clamoring for attention and being six foot seven, and the stature of most of the kids being small, many little ones wanted to see what it was like being my height, they would raise their arms up to me to hold them. As I picked up one youngster and held him up over my head, he laughed with delight at how high he was, and that he could even touch the ceiling. As I put him back down, about twenty or so little boys quickly surrounded me, all with arms raised up high so that I might pick them up and do the same. I started laughing and I looked up at the director's eighteen-year-old daughter who has lived in and been part of helping at the orphanage her whole life, she smiled, laughed and said, "Now you get to pick them all up!" She told the kids to form a line, which they quickly did, and I spent the next few minutes hoisting, tossing and catching little boys and girls up and down, their laughs, giggles and chatter filled the air. After lifting all those kids in about one-hundred-degree heat and one-hundred percent humidity - I was ready for a shower! I know that little moment is one I will never forget and I’m hopeful even that moment of showing them time, attention and love holds steady in their hearts as well. The entire time we had at the orphanage was amazing, we spent time helping our daughter and the children with their schooling, we played many games with them, joined in with them on art projects and watched in amazement as they did coursework in sign language, martial arts and ballet. We sang songs together, we played on the open-air court on the top level with the older kids later in the evenings, playing basketball, football, and all kinds of different games and activities, we would even take part in a half hour workout session the director’s daughter would lead before bedtime. Before it was time for bed for the older kids, our daughter and several of her friends would come into our room and we would all sit around in a circle on our mattress on the floor and play uno (with their extra Filipino rules!) listen to music, ask with them about their lives, funny stories they might have about our daughter, ask them about their aspirations, hopes and dreams. We would also order in fun food like McDonalds fries, sodas and some of their favorite Filipino desserts to enjoy while we played cards together. Those evenings are still some of the best moments of our lives. We were forever changed by the week we spent with the kids at the orphanage, and a piece of our hearts is there to this day and forever will be. After the girls would leave the room for the night, we would talk at night about how amazing all the kids were. How joyful they were, the hope they had for a future with a family. Our hearts were broken for many of the older boys and girls because, oftentimes in adoption, people are looking to adopt a baby, or a young child – the thought of adopting older kids or teens, or sibling groups, unfortunately, isn’t a higher priority in the adoption world. It wasn’t until we saw it in person the true reality of these kids literally sitting in an orphanage, just hoping someone will choose them to be their son or daughter. As the day we were leaving arrived, we wrote letters to our daughter’s friends, the girls and the boys, to leave with them to share how special they were, how the time we spent with them filled our hearts and that we would do everything we could to bring attention to them, advocate for them and all amazing kids who were praying for their miracle – for a family. They aren’t just pictures on a page. They aren’t just an ID number on a list of waiting kids. They are real. They are valuable. They are worthy. They are worth it. We feel God’s motivation to adopt us into His family reflects how we feel about bringing these kids into ours.
The Shortridge Family
Since Nicholas and I started dating seven years ago, we always talked about raising a family together and were so excited about becoming parents together one day. We have felt led by the Holy Spirit and feel called to grow our family through adoption and we are so grateful for this opportunity to adopt. Nicholas was diagnosed with a very rare bone tumor, Ewing’s Sarcoma, as a teenager. He had 14 adult doses of chemotherapy and several surgeries. God has blessed him and our family with the gift of life. We thank God each day for his mercy and grace in Nicholas’s life. Due to the chemotherapy treatments that Nicholas received he is unable to have children on his own naturally. We truly believe that God has a bigger and greater plan than our own for our family. We believe that God knows our babies’ birthday and their names. He knows them before we have ever thought of it for ourselves. He knows every strand of hair on their head, and we know without a doubt that they are so very loved. In his perfect timing and perfect will we wholeheartedly believe that God will provide for our family. We cling to our trust and faith in God and his beautiful plan. We want to give God all of the glory and the praise as we grow and complete our family. We pray that we will show our baby the love of God and raise him/her to be a strong Christian to show others the love and be a light to all.
The Gregory Family
Two years ago we were praying about growing our family and felt God gave us a very clear call to adoption. As we pursued this conversation God seemed to be paving a path for us to adopt a child from India. We were nervous about the finances and knew that on our own this wasn’t possible but we felt so strongly that God was calling us into this so we stepped out in faith and God has provided everything we needed when we needed it. We learned after we had started our process that this would be a special needs adoption. This was another intimidating aspect for us but we knew God called us to this and we knew He called us to India. Over the past 2 years we have prayed many times over a list of special needs we were open to and God has really changed our hearts and we are so grateful for this! We honestly stressed over the list because we were told we would not receive a referral of a child that was not within the “Range” we set. After a lot of heart work and opening up a lot, really surrendering our comfort to God, we felt God reminding us that He is bigger than a list and that God would not allow a list to stand in the way of us being matched with the child He he planned for our family. Shortly after we entered the matching phase and on our phone call to explain the matching process, our case worker told us it usually takes 6-12 months to match. She followed that by saying we have however, seen God do some amazing things and move things faster than that. She then told us there is a little 2 year old boy they have been praying over and in praying for our family he kept coming to mind. Our family however, did not list that we were open to one of his needs. They wouldn’t typically refer a family to a child when this is the case but they wanted to mention it to us in case we wanted to review his file. We said yes and over the next few weeks God made it extremely clear that this was the child for our family. This child was the reason He called us to adoption and the reason He called us to India. He does have severe special needs and it was honestly scary at first but we felt such a peace about it that God has called us to this. Since then, where love has grown for our son, the fear has faded. We now are just excited to have our son home to love on him and walk this journey with him!
The Reardon Family
Hi, we're Katie and Patrick and we live in Columbus, Ohio with their two dogs, Xena and Hercules. Katie is originally from Mansfield, Ohio while Patrick is from Columbus. Katie’s parents, her brother, and his fiance currently live in Mansfield, Ohio while her sister lives in Akron, Ohio with her husband and two boys. Patrick’s mother passed away in 2006 and his father lives in Springfield, Ohio. Patrick’s brother lives in the Buckeye Lake area with his daughter. Patrick and Katie met online and, after dating for a few years, got married in June of 2017. Both Katie and Patrick were raised as Catholics and attend Church at St Agatha’s in Upper Arlington, Ohio. In 2019 we lost out first and only child due to an ectopic pregnancy. We were devastated and heartbroken. As we mourned the loss of our child, we kept coming back to our faith with reminders that everything happens for a reason. We didn’t realize it at the time but he was guiding us towards choosing open adoption. We mourned their loss for several years, weighing options between IVF and adoption. We ultimately chose adoption since we had a low probability for success without the risk of another ectopic or miscarriage through IVF and our goal was to grow our family. With that in mind we thought adoption would be a great alternative that would allow us to raise a child and provide them with a loving, supportive, and trusting home. We reviewed several agencies and finally found one that aligned with them and their values. In 2022 we joined Adoption Link, an agency in Yellow Springs, Ohio that specializes in Open Adoption. Open adoption was unfamiliar to us initially but after learning more about it, we felt it was the right choice that way the birth family could be involved. After 18 long months of waiting We've finally matched with two amazing birth parents in the Cincinnati area. These birth parents are giving us the chance to grow our family with a baby boy we're naming Maverick, with the help from the birth family in selecting his name. Over the last couple of months, it has been fun to meet the birth family and get to know the mother and father as well as their daughter prior to Maverick's arrival. The expected due date for Maverick is late April to early May, however the birth mother feels he will come early like her previous children. We are currently planning for Maverick to arrive between the end of April and the beginning of May. Through all of our heartache over the last 5 years, our prayers have been answered. We are eagerly looking forward to sharing our lives with Maverick and providing him with an abundance of love, faith, and opportunities
The Casch Family
Our hearts have longed to adopt since we were kids. Some of Chelsie’s earliest memories are of playing with dolls that were an adopted transracial family. Most of my childhood memories involve my best friend, Steven. Steven was adopted and he had five other siblings, four of which were also adopted. So when we started dating, before it got more serious, we had “the talk”. For us, that was a conversation about money, children, and in-laws. We had discussed adoption as a way to grow our family and continued to pray throughout our marriage that God would make it clear when the time was right. After our daughter Emery was about a year old, we started discussing when we would like to have another child. Then, as the time we ideally wanted to starting trying biologically became closer and closer, we realized that neither of our hearts were ready yet. We decided to table the idea for a few months. After many prayers and discussions, we decided that God was preparing our hearts for adopting our next child. In March of 2020 we went to a local adoption agency for an informational night about the different kinds of adoption. I remember getting into the car after the meeting and looking over to Chelsie who had a big smile on her face and I said, “let’s do this!”. One week later we stepped out in faith and filled out the initial application.
