Dave and Debbie first met with Victorious Hope Adoption Consulting in 2019. At first they thought they were being led into foster care, but almost a year later we met again and they decided to pursue adoption. They quickly worked on their home study and profile book and were ready to connect with agencies in April 2020. The first hiccup in their adoption journey came when 2020 saw the number of adoptions slow down. By December of 2020 they were feeling discouraged but 2 months later they were matched with an expectant mom and 3 months later their baby girl was born. And then they really learned to trust God!
Here is their story in Debbie’s words:
“We struggled with infertility our whole married life. I was told by doctors that we would probably never have children. But God had other plans! We have one biological daughter and 2 more in heaven. Our daughter has longed to have a sibling and the Lord had put on our hearts to take care of the orphan and widow. SO, we decided to explore adoption. Family members adopted a baby and referred us to VHAC.

I’m not gonna lie, the waiting was hard! Sometimes you wonder if it will ever happen. Will a birth mom ever choose us? After several unsuccessful opportunities, you begin to question if you look funny or if your profile book is worded right. I encourage families that are in the waiting period to use this time to gather baby stuff and to dream and to pray for your baby and the birth family. We would thank God every evening for our baby and pray protection and peace over the womb. AND at just the right time, possibly when you’ve given up like we did, you’ll get a call that a mom has chosen your family and then a beautiful relationship forms and it becomes real.
We had plenty of surprises along the way! The first one is that I thought it would be extremely awkward to meet the birth mom and dad but the Holy Spirit just guided me right into the hospital room and I even was able to pray a blessing over the two of them. Both were crying. The mom said she knows Jesus and that’s why she chose us to parent her child. The dad said he never heard anyone pray before. It was awesome.
The next surprise was that our baby spent 7 weeks in the NICU withdrawing from drug abuse. God had special nurses and doctors who were believers in the hospital show us kindness and grace during this time. AND the state of our daughter’s birth picked up the medical tab when our insurance declined coverage.
Evidence of God’s faithfulness was ALL OVER this adoption! It was hard stuff to walk through because many times along the way we thought it was going to fail. I’ll give you the most miraculous day though. It was a blow your socks off kind of day!

You will need to know a few of the events that led up to this day. First, our baby is part Native American so the birth mom had to terminate her rights in front of a federal judge. In the state we were in, this was at least 10 days after the birth. With a holiday weekend and the judge on vacation, the first court date was set for 3 weeks after the birth. The birth mom had no contact with anyone (us, social workers, hospital, or lawyers) during this time. She didn’t show up at court that day. We found out later she was in jail. The federal judge gave her a second chance and scheduled the court date out another 2 weeks. During this time, we went back home to take care of our house and businesses. We had already been away from home for 3 weeks.
At the second chance court date, the birth mom didn’t show up again. We also found out later she was in jail again. BUT our lawyer petitioned the federal judge for abandonment. The judge said she needs 24 hours to consider this and see if the law allows her to grant us temporary custody of the baby.
The following day, our lawyer contacted us and said the judge wants an emergency meeting in the afternoon. He said it’s probably not looking good for us to actually adopt the baby. SO, we got EVERYONE we knew praying! This is where the miracle started taking place. About a half hour later, our lawyer messaged me and said that the birth mom contacted her lawyer and that she was released from jail that morning and her lawyer went to the streets to pick her up to take her to court! She then appealed to the federal judge to say that she wanted to make things right and get her baby to her new parents (us). Within one hour, God turned the whole situation around! She terminated rights, we got a post adoption plan agreed upon, and one of the potential fathers also signed off.
One week later we flew back and our baby was discharged from the hospital and she is now growing and thriving in our home and family. We love her so much!
Another small miracle is that our baby slept the entire 5 hour red eye flight home. I was so nervous about this because of the drug withdrawal symptoms but God answered my prayer!

We want to encourage others with this: Adoption can be messy but it’s beautiful. We now have another family that we get to pour into and we have a little girl who is the cutest, happiest baby.”