Our Adoption Story

"My friends, adoption is redemption. It's costly, exhausting, expensive, and outrageous. Buying back lives cost so much. When God set out to redeem us, it killed Him." -Derek Loux

Yes, it's true. Nick and I are expecting two children at the same time, only we are not having twins...(As most of you know, our first child, a boy, is due December 8th! We are so, so excited for him to get here!) It is amazing to know that sometime in the next couple years, our family will be a family of four because we are officially adopting a baby girl from South Africa! (PS You wont be able to view our whole page on mobile, so make sure to view the non-mobile site by clicking the view desktop version!)

I would say our adoption journey has been going on in our hearts for quite some time. We knew from the time we got married that we wanted to adopt some day and that God was calling our family specifically to adopt, we just never imagined that we would already be in the process. As many of you know we work full time with Cru and for 11 months in 2013, we lived in Durban, South Africa continuing to work mainly on the college campus spreading the good news of Jesus. We worked in a couple orphanages as well and came in contact with many orphans during our year there. Essentially, you could never escape the poverty. Seeing the deep needs over there as well as knowing that adoption could take years, we decided upon our arrival back to the states that we would begin the international adoption process. There are around 2 million adoptable children in South Africa currently, and only about 2000 are adopted each year. While living in South Africa, obviously the Lord really impressed these children on our hearts. We felt a specific call to adopt internationally, and if possible, from South Africa. We turned in our formal application to our adoption agency at the end of February (this year), and towards the end of March we got our official approval into our agency's South Africa program! (A fun side note, we found out 2 weeks later that I was pregnant.) Since that time earlier this year, we have basically been working on paperwork and going through the home study process. Our home study was officially approved on October 10th, and now we have begun the fundraising so that we can move forward in the process.

We definitely realize that international adoption is very expensive, as you can see from our costs outlined on this page(not available on mobile view), but we believe that it is completely worth it and that our God is able to provide in ways we cannot imagine through the giving of our friends and family. We are applying for grants as well, and we know God will raise these funds in order for us to bring OUR DAUGHTER home! We love the quotation above that we came across during our time in South Africa because as this process very much is exhausting and frustrating at times, it reminds us that every part of it is necessary and worth it in order for a little South African girl to become ours. It is unfortunate that adoption is so expensive, but it is a beautiful picture of how God literally gave us Himself in order that we might become His. As we go through this process, God continually reminds us of our spiritual adoption into His family and we are beyond thrilled that one day in the near future we will be adding another child, whom God already knows, into our family permanently. 

As far as how you can help, first and foremost you can pray for us throughout this process that will most likely take around 2 more years.  We will need prayer as we fill out endless amounts of paperwork, as we work with our adoption agency, and as we raise what can seem like an insurmountable amount of money. 

Secondly we would love for you to consider donating to our adoption fundraising cause by donating through clicking on the donate button on the bottom right of our page (also not seen on the mobile version of the site) and giving through our paypal fundraising account.  As we said earlier, we will be raising almost every bit of our adoption costs and it is very expensive.  Every little bit absolutely helps, so we would love for you to give whatever you can to help us eventually bring our daughter home!

Lastly you can share our story.  Please feel free to share our blog on facebook, twitter, and any other social media where you think people may be called to pray for us and possibly give to our fundraising process.  We know that we alone cannot raise this amount of money and will need your help to do so! 

We are already so thankful for the support that we know y'all will give us throughout this process, and we can't wait to meet our future daughter sometime within the next couple years.  We will be posting updates to this page as they come. Thank you so much for making this possible for us to do and for giving a little girl who doesn't or won't have a family a Mom, Dad, brother, Grandparents, Aunts and Uncles, for giving her a family!

-Nick and Ashley Nabors