Adoption Update

Everyone,

We want to thank everyone for their support in our adoption process.  Many of you have supported us financially.  Some of you have watched our children for the many appointments.  Some of you have prayed for us, and all of you having been waiting in anticipation with us to bring our new addition home.  Please know that we love you and have been so blessed by your support during this time.  You have been a partner with us in this journey, and we are so grateful.  Not one penny or prayer or inquiry has been taken for granted.  All of those precious acts have shown us the love of God.

It is with a very heavy heart that we share this news with you.  The birthmother gave birth over the last fews days and has decided to keep the baby.  She did not call the advocate or the lawyer, so we know almost nothing at this point.  We have no idea if it is a boy or a girl.  We have no idea if he/she is healthy.  All we know is that this is not the child we will be adding to our home.

As you can imagine, we are taking this very hard.  Please be praying for us.  God has already shown us immeasurable mercy and grace, and we know that He will continue to.  In so many small ways over the last 24 hours, we have seen the hand of God upon our family.

Again, we thank you all for your support and want you all to know that we love you very much.

Please feel free to share this information to whomever you think may need to know.

Lafleur Family

NEW Lifesong DONATE Button!

If you've visited our site before, you may notice that we have removed our yellow Paypal Donate Button. We replaced it with a link that says DONATE through Lifesong. Although it may not be as "eye-catching," it is a wonderful thing for our family. Through God's provision, we have been approved for a matching grant, through Lifesong! That means every time one of you generously donate towards our adoption, whatever amount you donate will actually be matched 100%, helping us meet our goal even faster! We want to thank those of you who have already given, because we would not be this far in our adoption process without the support of our friends and family. If you are still considering making a donation, click on the DONATE through Lifesong button, then click DONATE on the Lifesong page. Once you're on the Lifesong Paypal screen, please indicate that your donation is for the LaFleur family adoption. Thank you so much!

Another Reason to support Adoption

I found this link on one of Al Mohler's blogs.  It is a collection of abortion statistics from May of this year.

http://www.guttmacher.org/pubs/fb_induced_abortion.html

Some of the information is incredible.  This was Mohler's take:

http://www.albertmohler.com/2011/01/13/chilling-almost-beyond-belief/

"Americans generally know that abortions happen, but the reality of abortion is kept out of sight and, for most, largely out of mind. To acknowledge that abortions do occur does not require any actual knowledge of the numbers of abortions performed and the scale of the catastrophe. News reports that emerged in recent days will make that evasion harder to justify."


Both links above are worth your time.  It is incredible when you consider just how many abortions occur and why many mothers choose this route, "three-fourths say they cannot afford a child."  This is just one of the many reasons why Christians should be pro-Adoption.  Welcoming a child into your home gives that mother a better option.    


Thanks again for your support!!


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Coming Down to the Wire

Dear Friends and Family,

Our baby is due very shortly.  Given the dates we have, our baby could come at anytime.  Because of that, many of the funds that are required to finish our adoption are starting to come due.  At the present time, we do not have all of the money that we need to complete the process, so we are asking for many of you to prayerfully consider making a donation.  The process is very expensive, and we have been incredibly blessed by so many of your prayers and gifts up to this point.  None of this would have been possible without your love and support. 


We know that God is faithful to provide, and we are excited to see how He will take care of these next few weeks. If you would like to make a donation, you can do so by credit card through this blog by clicking on the donate tab on the left of the page, or you can mail a check to : 7506 Astrid Way, Louisville, KY 40228


Please also consider linking our blog to your Facebook or Twitter.  We could use the eyeballs. 


We appreciate your consideration and especially your prayers!
Thank you,
Mark and Jennifer Lafleur

Thanks to all who have helped

It has been a while since our last update.  It turns out when you get placed with a birthmom so early in the process, you have a frantic amount of activity and then just ....... well ..... waiting and more waiting.  Waiting around does not a great blog post make.  :)   Things are moving along well.  We have finished up all the paperwork that we can do before the baby is born and are just prayerfully awaiting that day.  I am also working on a new post for this next week about our Adult Bible Followship's study through 1 John.  The Lord has taught me a great deal about adoption through our study, and I wanted to share it with you.  It will likely be four different posts because of its length, but hopefully you like it.

We would really like to also take a second to thank everyone that has been involved in our process so far. We are overwhelmed with the interest in our situation.  So many people have asked us for updates and have told us that they are praying for us.  It has not gotten old telling our story thus far, and we are so encouraged that so many others genuinely care about our family.  We also would like to thank everyone that have donated to the adoption.  This process can get very expensive and if it were not for the financial assistance of others, we would have no way of making this work.  Many folks have given their time and many others have given their advise.  This is a very scary process, and without the support of some of you, we would have not been able to make this work.

We believe that God is placing the child in our home that He has intended to from the beginning.  It has been overwhelming to see how he has used so many different people to ensure that this is coming to pass.  Thank you all for your part in making God's plan real in our lives.

In Him,

Mark

A Letter to an Unborn Baby

I ran across an older blog by Russell Moore that I found to be quite amazing, so I wanted to share it.  He wrote a letter to a baby that was not born yet and was going to be adopted.  This is a paragraph from that letter:

"You are no accident........

This God of Jesus Christ decided your story. He purposed that you would be born to your birthmother, and that she would have the courage and the love to give you life. He willed that you would be adopted into this family of a mom and dad who love you. He made sure that there was the kind of emptiness in their life that they would yearn to seek after you, right at the time he would bring you to them. And he put you in a family that believes the good news of the old story I’ve told to you above."

please consider reading the entire post on his website, http://www.russellmoore.com/2011/07/18/an-open-letter-to-an-unborn-baby/

We appreciate his ministry.

Mark and Jennifer Lafleur

 

Our Adoption Profile

Click here to view this photo book larger

This is the Adoption Profile Book that we created to be shown to potential birthmothers. Birthmothers are typically given a small number of profiles to look through to try to choose a family for the baby they are putting up for adoption. If they do not like any of the profiles they are initially given, they will be given another set, until they find a couple/family the would like to place their baby with. After you are chosen by a birthmother, you're given the birthmothers details, including medical information, and you have the opportunity to accept or reject the referral. To our surprise, we were chosen the first time our profile was shown, and before we even had a hard copy of our profile. We had to send the digital copy for them to show while we were waiting on our order. So, by the time we got our books, we already had our referral!

Adoption Update

We are so excited as the day draws near for us to bring our little one home.  We appreciate so much all of the help that many of you have given us, both financially and through prayer.

In the last few weeks, we have moved closer to our fund raising goals, and we are so thankful for those that have given.  The love that we have been shown has been quite overwhelming.  We still need to raise a great deal more funds before this is over, and we are excited to see how God will meet our needs, so please be praying for that.  We have also learned the hospital that our precious new baby will be born.  The sex of the child is still not known, but we know that God knows and is protecting our child even though it seems we have so very little information.

Blog updates:

In the coming days, we plan to make some more significant blog posts.  We intend to create a timeline so that folks will have the chance to better know our story and what has transpired up to this point.  We hope this will help you pray for us and feel more apart of what we are doing.  We are also going to make a post about why we chose Domestic adoption.  This was a very tough choice for us, and we know it came with some unique risks.  We want folks to know why we made the choice we made and this will be up shortly.

We thank you all for your support, and we ask that you continue to pray for us through this awesome time!!

Our Adoption Journey

This journey has been a long time coming. We have wanted to adopt for nearly 10 years now.  We have always had a heart for children that may not have a family.  How that would look in our life was not clear until recently.  We began to discuss this more seriously after our youngest child was born.  Our precious church family has adopted numerous children and this helped grow this desire even more.  We decided that we would adopt as soon as I graduated from Seminary and had acquired a full-time ministry position.  After months of seeking a position, it became clear that this was going to be a long process, and we began to consider the possibility that God may want us to go ahead with the adoption process.  After just a few days of prayer and talking with friends, we were certain that the Lord wanted us to begin the process.  We immediately put the search for a ministry position on hold and got our home and family ready to welcome a new child.  Since the decision, the Lord has taught us incredible truths about our own adoption into His family.  We invite you to join us on this journey. Whether through prayer, financial contribution, or both, you can be a part of bringing our little one home very soon! Thank you for your love and support!