Hi! Thank you for considering partnering with us in our adoption journey! It’s been a looonnnngggg SEVEN year process and we are weary but are trusting in the Lord’s sovereignty and waiting on His perfect plan.
Summary: It’s really happening! We have a court date and travel orders! Court is on 7/27/26 and Malawi requires a three week bonding period before court, so we need to arrive 7/6! Will you please pray everything goes smoothly? Papwork (birth certificiate, passport, visa) used to take 3 weeks after court but it now averaging 8 weeks after court for a total of 11 weeks. (We are praying to be home by Labor Day!) Accommodation prices are sky high when you multiply by that many weeks! And flights were almost double because of the war in Iran. Needless to say, our travel budget has been blown out of the water. We will need $28k to finish this adoption which includes flights ($8k) and accommadation ($4k for 8 weeks but we are still looking for better deals) as well as our last two agency fees ($8.5k), our legal fees ($7.5k) for our lawyer in Malawi and misc. fees for her passport and visa.
Long story if you have time:
We started our homestudy in May 2019 and completed it relatively quickly. Then we had a glitch with a background check delay that cost us a few months. Then COVID hit and the world shut down Spring of 2020… but we continued to see God’s handiwork through all the waiting.
We were matched with a sweet boy in China in November 2020 but we got news he was adopted domestically in March 2021 while we were waiting for travel to open back up so we could go get him. Our hearts were broken, yet we persevered.
After that, we felt like pursing an adoption in Columbia, South America would be a better fit since travel to China didn’t look like it was opening up any time soon. However, several months into our process of hoping to adopt from Columbia, we have hit another road block. Columbia requires original birth and marriage certificates, both of which we only have one copy for Keith and have been advised not to let our only copies go. (Requests for new copies from South Africa are averaging well over a year and in fact, it’s been four years now since this and we still haven’t received another marriage certificate! And the extra birth certificate we requested was a copy!)
So, back to ground zero, it seemed. We were even more weary but also so confident God has the perfect match for us!
After prayerful consideration, we decided to switch to an organization that works with the country of Malawi in Africa and pursue an adoption from there. We signed on with them in November 2021 and were matched with a sweet 7 year old girl in November 2022 and have been waiting for a court date since, so we were told. However, in December 2023, our hearts were broken again with the news that some very serious allegations have surfaced about both our domestic agency and their foreign service provider, the agency on the ground there.
Our adoption tanked overnight.
BUT GOD… God has divinely connected us with several people since this happened who have fought for us and advocated for our little girl in Malawi. We were told that if we switch to a new agency that isn’t under fire, our match can proceed. I didn’t think I had it in me to start over again with a new agency… but this little girl knows about us and is waiting for us and we HAVE to go to the ends of the earth to get her. We are convinced Satan does not want her in our home and is throwing everything in the book at us to stop us. He must be so scared of the world-changer this young lady is going to be if he’s working this hard to stop it!
So, we signed on with yet another agency. I literally cried filling out that paperwork in Janury 2024. For the third time. We whizzed through their process because we already had everything done. Most of our dossier was already in Malawi! We were hopeful we’d travel by Spring 2024 but there have been countless delays in Malawi. Speficially, the government paused adoptions for a while to reevaluate their processes after they got some bad (and untrue) press there about adoptions. Then, our girl’s extended family retracted their consent in June 2025 because they were afraid of this bad press. So, our adoption of her tanked a second time.
A week before Christmas 2025, we got a call that she is eligible for adoption again and can’t wait to join our family and it’s been 100mph since then. ALL of our paperwork had expired so we needed everything again: homestudy, medical checks, financials, background checks, fingerprints and a new immigration application. We are told the lawyer in Malawi is filing the court petition on May 8th (2026) when she receives our notarized court documents via Fed Ex!
As you can imagine, adoptions under the best of circumstances are quite expensive. They can range from $30,000-40,000. After all is said and done, after three agencies, three matches, three countries and seven years, this one will about $70k. We have had some extremely generous friends walking through this journey with us and they are still some of our biggest cheerleaders. However, with these delays and changes, additional costs have been accruing and we have reached the budget our friends were able to help us with.
We want to extend an opportunity for our friends and family to join us in our journey. Would you consider joining us to adopt our little girl?
STRIPE charges an online processing fee (2.2% +.30 USD per transaction). Your donations will be decreased by this amount. You may also send a check payable to “Lifesong for Orphans”. In the memo line please write “Lugthart 08687”, to ensure it is credited to our account. Please mail to Lifesong for Orphans, PO Box 9, Gridley, IL 61744.
Lifesong has been blessed with partners who underwrite all U.S. administrative and fundraising costs (TMG Foundation and other partners). That means 100% of your donation will go directly to the adoption.
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