Here is our Adoption Journey so far…
We are adopting River (age 8 and her little sister, Sadie (age 6) from Liberia, Africa.
These 2 precious kids will complete our family of 7.
We chose Liberia because we are impressed by Liberia’s resilience and progress as a war torn country that is healing from so much. Liberia works hard to allow adoptions when necessary and to reunite families whenever possible. We are grateful Liberia is allowing us to adopt our daughters, and hopeful as we watch Liberia grow as a country.
We started this journey in April of 2022.
In May of 2023, with the help of our friends and family, church, community, and organizations like Noonday Collection, Phill the Box, Funds2Orgs, and Adopt Together, we reached our fundraising goals to make our adoption possible. At that time, we anticipated our Liberian daughters would be joining our family in 3-6 months time.
We did not get any solid updates for months, until November of 2023, when adoptions for multiple agencies, including our agency, were suspended in Liberia.
There are multiple political conflicts that brought adoptions to a halt in November of 2023. Although these political conflicts put Liberian children at risk, the layers of the conflicts are multifaceted and complicated beyond the adoption process itself.
At this time, there are no adoptions (domestic or international) progressing in Liberian until these political conflicts are resolved. This was a decision made by Liberian governmental leadership.
In February of 2024, we decided to travel to Liberia as a family and do some real-time fact finding on what barriers prevent our family from being together.
We have met with multiple Liberian government officials and multiple individuals who play a role in working in adoptions here. We have spoken with multiple US congressional offices, and have reached out to anyone in the adoption realm that can give insight and advice in a way forward for our children. We continue to hope the US embassy in Liberia will assist us, but have not been able to get a meeting with them to discuss our concerns.
We have visited our children’s orphanage multiple times a week. We have done multiple fundraisers to keep the doors of our daughters’ orphanage open, keep the children’s needs met, and support the staff that cares for them. We have physically done all we can to assist the orphanage in maintaining quality, safety and health for the children. We have discussed our case with experts near and far.
We have been in Liberia for over 3 months, and are sadly running out of funds to remain here.
We fear if we leave, our encouragement and our persistence to represent American families will be lost with our departure. We fear if we leave, the support we have recruited for the kids here will fade. We fear if we leave, the Liberian government will be less motivated to remember our children’s case.
Thanks to each of you and the words of encouragement, financial donations, textile donations and actions of noonday purchasing power to move mountains this past year. We hope you will help us push one more mountain of money out of our way to complete our family.
We continue to humbly ask for any assistance that can be found to support our family in this quest for safety for more than just our 2 Liberian daughters, but a quest to provide a safe way home for them and their peers that wait in orphanages in Liberia.
Click here to make a tax-deductible donation to the Davenport family’s adoption travel expenses.
http://adopttogether.org/families/the-davenports-1
Click here to find out more about our story. There is a place for tax deductible donations.
https://bit.ly/adoptfaster
This is day 63 in our 2024 video update for our adoption journey of 2 little girls from Liberia. We have been in the process of adopting these 2 little girls for 705 days.
Please watch, like, subscribe and share our story as much as possible. Our story is a true representation of several families on the same journey.
YouTube link to subscribe:
https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLhvmF_X0zoUuAwUF7WzqlfZaskzIBmns2&si=0SE6xFYPJoXfkGIY
To shop our noonday fundraiser, click here:
https://bit.ly/noondayfromliberia
USCIS explanation.
The ups and downs and highs and lows keep coming….
But we will keep…. …going.
Today is Day 702.
Sometimes I wake up in Liberia in a panic, and I just want to come home. Thoughts float through my head and pierce my heart that say: “I don’t belong here. I want to go home. I shouldn’t have come. This won’t work. No one is on my side. I don’t see progress. I can’t move this stuff out of the way. We can’t win this battle.”
Then, I see their faces in my head. Like a ray of light into my darkness, the slide show of their faces plays again. The faces of our daughters in Liberia that we have waited for 2 years to meet. The faces of their friends. The graces of their presences as we sit together in the dirt of Liberia and they laugh and color and beg to braid my hair. As the ones that know they have parents coming write letters to their parents and hand them to me. As the ones that don’t have parents yet, write similar letters and hand them to me to the parents they dream of that have not yet chosen them.
The children that we meet each time we go to visit the orphanage cannot be seen by you. They need their identities protected as they wait in their state of orphanism.
But, we see them. We hear them. We know they need us, too. We know this thing of international adoption has decreased in the US from 40,000 kids a year just a decade ago, to 1500 kids a year last year. International Adoption by US citizens has decreased from 40,000 a year, to 1500 a year.
The children waiting with our daughters need us to tell you to please choose them. Please do not give up. Please to do not be swayed. Keep…. …going.
Today is day 701. I added the YouTube video below and put an older song called “Where the Angels Sleep” by Bebo Norman. The words really spoke to me today as we battle to be the panacea to the orphanism that holds our daughters’ futures hostage. As the song states, we are no farther forward, just farther along. No progress and no changes, but lots of reasons to hope that tomorrow brings us something tangibly good. For today, we enjoyed visiting them and learning about them and having just a couple of good hours to be their parents in person.
We grieved to day as my Aunt Trudy found peace in heaven last night way too soon. She encouraged our adoption and supported us in so many ways. She was a calm voice of encouragement for me as a child and an adult. Her approval mattered to me, and I am grateful for her encouragement to me. As we grieve with her family, specifically my Uncle Jimmy and my cousin, Keri, it is a comfort to me to believe she can see me from a better vantage point tonight as we wage this war of politics and poverty to gain the freedoms for our daughters that they deserve. I know my Aunt Trudy will sleep with the angels tonight. I hope she knew how much she encouraged me and so many others in her time in this life. And I look forward to the day I meet her in the next life.
