Born in the Heart Families THE ROACH FAMILY, South Carolina Hi, we are Brian & Hannah Roach. We met in May of 1999, & were married April 12th, 2003. We have known for some & even before we were married that having a family of kids would be near impossible with out the hand of the Lord involved. We have lost three children through two miscarriages. We do have three greyhounds, adopted from the racetrack. We have prayed about adoption for the four years that we dated. We feel that adoption is the way that God has choosen to build our family. We are in the beginning stages of adoption & we are adopting from India. We are hoping for a sibling group. We live in South Carolina. Brian is a teacher, & Hannah is a full time nanny. All in God's time & in His Way. Children, are a Heritage of the LORD THE McFARLAND FAMILY, Texas Michael and Brenda McFarland The McFarland family lives in Texas, where Michael is a Lutheran Pastor and Brenda is a software developer who works from home. They have been married for 14 years and are parents to two growing boys. Samuel is eight years old and was adopted from Solikamsk, Russia in 1996. Luke is seven years old and was adopted from Perm, Russia in 1997. They are hoping to add another boy to their family through adoption who will also be of Russian Heritage! THE ANDERSON FAMILY Hi my name is Connie and my husbands name is Jeff. We live in Indiana and work full time in the auto industry. Jeff is a machine repairman and I am a FAB opr. making sensors for airbags in a high tech "clean room". We have 3 children Austin 10 Bio, Dakota 9 bio, and Cieara 3 from Gujarat India. She came home at 18 month We are now awaiting our 2nd daughter from India. We will be naming her Dhru and she is 1. WE just got our NOC and are waiting a court date. We have 3 dogs, 1 cat, fish, a bird and 4 beared dragons. Just a small zoo. LOL Sometime life here is a bit CRAZY but when its not we enjoy movies and playing out side as a family. Life is Good!! THE CLEMENT FAMILY, Maine We are Phil and Christine Clement. We live on the beautiful coast of Maine with our three bio children and we are in the process of adopting a baby girl from China. We thought we would be traveling to China in May or June of 2005 to bring our baby home, but that date has been moved up to December or January now because we were matched to this beautiful baby in the photo: Lilanna Grace Ruobing. Lilianna was on China's Waiting Children list because she has a heart condition called VSD ( a hole in her heart). We feel we are so blessed and can't wait to meet our daugher! Phil and I have been married for almost 3 years. Our children are from previous marriages. We love being parents!! After losing a baby boy in the second trimester last year, we decided to move ahead with adoption and now we are eagerly awaiting the arrival of our baby.To read more about the Clement's adoption story, please visit: Christine's Gallery and click on Our China Adoption. THE FOREST FAMILY, California Hi, we are Paul (32) and Chandra (31) Forest. We have been married now for almost 10 years, and have known each other for over 15!! I am a professional nanny with a bachelor's degree in early childhood education & child psychology. Paul is a technical art director/computer artist/programmer for a video game company in the Bay Area in California. We have been TTC for 5 years. We have had 2 pregnancy losses, and have been told that our only hope for a biological child is through IVF and we just want to be parents so we have been led to adoption to help us create our family! We do have 3 furr babies our sweet kitties - Peep, Cleopatra, and Clawdia who are spoiled rotten! Paul and I are both avid photographers, and enjoy spending time outdoors. We love to read, and enjoy many different styles of music. Another passion is live theatre which we go see whenever we can find the time!!! We want to be parents. We love the idea of adopting to make that dream a reality. We are still at the VERY beginning stages of our adoption journey. Once we have our homestduy started we will be added to the 20 month waiitng list, that should be done by the end of April 2005, making us parents sometime in early 2007!!! Our hearts and honor of Paul's ethnic heritage have led us to Korea as our country of choice. Besides the fact that Paul is half Asian we have a great affinity for the Asian culture in general. Korea does have some weight limitations, and if we cannot qualify for Korea we will adopt from China. We want to adopt a little girl first, then a little boy and we would like them to be about 2 years apart. We are excited about taking this amazing journey and cannot wait until our earth angel is here in our arms! THE GONZALES FAMILY, New Mexico We are Manuel(32) and Carly Gonzales(28) married for 12 years. Blessed parents to 6 beautiful bio children, ages 12yog, 9yog, 7yob, 5yob, 2yog, 1yog. We feel that there are still children who are missing from our family. We have always wanted a big family and have always wanted to adopt. Our hearts have been drawn to Haiti. We just want to be able to bring children into our home, who otherwise have not known the joys of a loving family. After all, what is more important in life than your family! We have such a love for children, and although we are still able to have biological children we feel that we have children out there already, we just need to find them!! We are a very active family. We are always running around from one sporting event to the next. Manuel is a computer technician and an assistant high school football coach. I am a stay at home mom, PTO volunteer, and stay very busy selling stuff on ebay and am currently trying to start my own business of selling baby slings. We have always used the excuse that we can't afford an adoption, but I am determined to fundraise the needed funds to be able to make our dreams to adopt come true! THE HYDE FAMILY, Utah We are David and Tamra Hyde from Salt Lake City, Utah. We have three biological sons and have longed to have a daughter. Last August we were the first BITH family to bring home our child. Ahrana is 3.5 years old and was born in Oriss, India. We flew to India in August to meet our daughter. She has had a hard time with grief for the loss of her caregiver, and with authority, but otherwise she is adjusting very quickly. We were just in the planning stages of an Ethiopian adoption when we discovered that we are expeciting our fourth biological child in September, 2005. We were stunned but are so happy as we really do want a large family. It is possible that we will continue with the Ethiopian adoption and bring home a sister for Rani in April. We are raising funds to pay back our adoption loans and to make room for new adoptions in the future. Tamra is a stay-at-home-mom who also homeschools and is active in the community. David is a fleet mechanic for the local water district. Our children are Xander(9), Sullivan(6), Ahrana(3.5), Oliver (9.5), and the new baby in September. THE KECK FAMILY, Georgia We are Phil, Alison and Anna Keck; we live in the southern part of the United Sates and we have been married for 7 years. After wanting a child for a very long time, we adopted Anna in June of 2000 from Phnom Penh Cambodia. She was 5 months old the day they placed her in our arms. She has been a great joy and blessing in our lives and is a very happy, loving child. I am a stay at home mom and Phil is a credit manager for a restaurant supplies company. In May 2003 we started to raise the money to be able to adopt another child. In July 2004 we received a referral of a baby girl born April 28, 2004 in Taipei, Taiwan. We will name her Alana Faith Jing Keck. We hope to bring her home by Dec 2004 or early Jan 2005. THE KELSO FAMILY, Michigan Hello! We are Darby and Bill Kelso, and we live in Lake Ann, Michigan. We are adopting from Ukraine and are part of the Cathy Harris group. Right now we are in the final weeks of waiting for our INS paperwork, everything else is finished and ready to go to Ukraine after we get our state stamps, so we are hoping to get an invitation to travel in the spring. We are hoping to adopt a little girl under three, but are also open to whatever His plan is for us! We have been married for five years. Bill has no children and I have two grown children from a previous marriage. We are currently parenets to Monty, an adopted/rescused greyhound. THE LISBOA FAMILY, New York Marcy and Antonio Lisboa of Brooklyn,NY have been happily married for 5 years. Antonio is a Spanish teacher at a Catholic High School in Brooklyn and Marcy makes custom candy favors (www.sweetpackages.com)and adoption-related items. After struggling with years of infertility they realized they were destined to go to China to adopt their daughter when they read about an ancient Chinese belief that an invisible red thread connects a newborn child's soul to all those people who will play a part in that childs life,regardless of time,place or circumstance. They are anxiously awaiting the change to bring home their daughter Teyamo ,hopefully this spring. THE LOVETT FAMILY, North Carolina We are Lisha (mom) and Annika (daughter) Lovett. I am a single stay at home working mom. Adoption has always been apart of my life. As a child I grew up with a brother that became part our family through adoption. I have always had a desire to adopt children and knew someday that I would. I began my adoption journey in April 2004 when I heard about WACAP and called them for a waiting child photo album. The first time I saw my son, he was a tiny body of skin over bone. My heard cried! I called them the next day and began the process to bring him home. Deepak has Pierre Robin Sequence. He has a mild chin recession. He is living in a orphanage in India until I can bring him home. THE MITCHELL FAMILY, South Carolina We are Mike and Kim Mitchell from Greenville South Carolina. We have 3 boys ages 21, 11 and 4. Mike is a Paramedic/Firefighter and Kim works part time at our church in the Mom's Morning Out program. Our oldest son, Layne, attends Mars Hill College and also works for UPS. He is very busy and we are extremely proud of him. Our eleven year old, Syd, is in the 6th grade and is very active. He enjoys football and playing with his friends. Payton is our youngest and he attends Mom's Morning Out with me. He is also a handful and full of life. He keeps us all on our toes. I have always felt that a little girl was missing from our family and Mike and I started discussing adoption a few years ago. Thinking that the cost of adoption was so expensive and that we really never could afford it, we never pursued any further but the yearning never went away. Even after praying for the Lord to take the desire out of my heart he has left it there and it just continues to grow. So in 2004 we decided that if this was going to be we would trust the Lord to help provide some way and that is where we are. We are working to fundraise and get the process started. We are hoping to adopt our little girl, Nicole, between the ages of 2-5 from Bulgaria. THE PETTEY FAMILY, Texas Our names are Wendon and Gidget Pettey. We have two biological sons, Oliver and Noah. Adoption has always been something we wanted to do. We were told when we had only been married for a year that we would NEVER have children. Four years later I found myself pregnant. We had a homestudy with the state but postponed adoption for a while. After Oliver was born, we decided to update our homestudy when he was 17 months old. I was planning to call our caseworker in December 2002 when I found out the doctors who told me I wouldn't have children were wrong again. We were going to go ahead and update our homestudy and had set up a date for our caseworker to come out when I started having pregnancy problems. Ultimately, Noah was born 4 weeks early. After some health problems during pregnancy we decided it would be best for our family to adopt the rest of our family. We would like to adopt a daughter or daughters between the ages of 0-5. THE ROUSE FAMILY, California We are Joe and Tina Rouse of Sacramento, Ca. We were married on November 6, 2004. We have no children with the exception of our 90lb. pound puppy. I have had the desire to adopt since I was 15 and specifically from China since I was 17. When it started getting serious between Joe and I, I was afraid to tell him of what was on my heart regarding adoption for fear of him not approving/agreeing/understanding etc. Since it was a "make it or break it" for me I finally decided to just go for it. One night when we were taking a loooooong drive I was sitting there trying to gather up my courage when out of the blue he asked me what I thought about adoption. Now, I have known him for 20 years and I KNOW that I have never talked to him about this. I just sat there shocked and didn't say anything. He got the wrong impression and started to tell me how important it was to him and how he understood that I might have a problem with it and he was willing to give me time to think about it but it was a definite thing that he wanted to do. When I finally got my wits together and told him that I was going to say the same thing to him it was HIS turn to be shocked. At first I think that he thought I was just saying that to appease him but when I broke out all of my research, he knew I really wanted the same thing. He had not had a particular country picked out but fell in love with China when I showed him my HUGE pile of info. We do not know if we can have children biologically so I do not know if I will have the experience of carrying a child in my womb. But I have been carrying one in my heart for many years now and I am ready to deliver! That is my story in a nutshell. THE STEVE FAMILY, Florida We are John and Bobbie Steve. We have been married 13 years and have 8 children. Four bio from and four adopted. The four we adopted are Katie, age 7, from Ukraine, Elijah, age 4, from the USA, Luke, age 3, from Russia and Ajia, age 1, from the Peoples Republic of China. Not long ago we learned that our son, Luke, has a biological sister, Julia, age 8, in a Russian orphanage. After financing four adoptions we are just tapped out. Although we have money to make ends meet and more than enough for one more addition to our family, there is just no way we can pull 25K together any time soon. But the longer little Julia is in the orphanage the less likely she will be to have much of a future. We want to bring her home as soon as possible. We created an audio CD that we are selling to earn some of the money, we are doing garage sales, making and selling items on ebay, making and selling candy and are a part of a terrific group called "Born in the Heart" with which we are doing fundraising. We are at the beginning of our journey so have quite a ways to go. We are prayerful that all will come together soon. THE THOMAS FAMILY, Georgia We are Melissa and Michael Thomas. We adopted our son Stephen from Ukraine in September of 2000 at the age of 22 months. He has been the joy of our lives and now we plan on going back to Ukraine to adopt a little sister for him. We are hoping for a girl between 4 and 6. For the last adoption we refinanced our house, but as the cost of adoption keeps raising we hope to raise most of the cost of the adoption through fundraisers like this cook book. Contact Us | About us | Products | Ongoing Fundraisers | Donations