The journey to decide to adopt is different for everyone. Mine began when I was a young girl growing up in rural Nebraska. My mother gave me a book called “Dorie: The girl nobody loved” to read. Though it has been years, I still remember that the book made me think very differently about family, or the lack thereof. If I recall correctly, Dorie spent much of her childhood in a a cruel orphanage where younger and prettier girls were adopted, but she was often overlooked. She was ugly and unwanted. Her honest aching to just have a place to call home changed my life.

It was then that I began to think: Why would I ever have my own children when there were so many children in the world without homes?

Of course, many years would pass by before I would meet the love of my life and we would decide that we wanted to start a family, but the desire to adopt has never changed.

There are an estimated 163 million orphans in the world today. We hope to make the number a little smaller.