*** Each Friday in November, in honor of National Adoption Month, I will highlight a fundraising family on my blog! James 1:27 says, Religion that God our Father accepts as pure and faultless is this: to look after orphans and widows in their distress and to keep oneself from being polluted by the world. Maybe He hasn’t specifically called you to adopt, but as Christians we should help bear the financial burden faced by families adopting. Our family was blessed by many financial gifts as we stepped out in faith to grow our family through adoption. This month, let’s bless the socks off these adopting families! No amount is too small. Let’s help them become Forever Families!
This week I’d love to introduce you to the Gorman Gang…
Tell me a little bit about your family…
We are the Gorman Gang. Mom, Brenda; Dad, Gary; 7-year-old Eliana; and 5-yr-old Zia Francoise who is no longer with us. This was our story just last year (May 2013) http://www.cbsnews.com/news/a-mothers-immeasurable-love-for-a-child-she-couldnt-save/.
Tell me why you decided to adopt and the details of your current journey…
We started our international adoption journey in Oct 2011 and it led us to Zia Francoise in DR Congo. After waiting for her to be in our arms for over a year and half, we were given only 33 days with her. No one knew how sick she was from the malnutrition. Damage was done to her heart, more than just the hunger in her belly, or her extremely small size , her heart was so broken that it simply couldn’t be fixed.
We thought that was the end of our journey and so we learned how to live without our sweet Zia and returned to a family of 3.
Thankfully, this was not the end. The truth is that Zia Francoise was only the beginning!!! The relationships we developed while fighting to get Zia home and fighting to save her life never forgot about us.
One called us late last year to check on us and mentioned that there was an 8yr old girl she knew about that needed a family. The girl was paralyzed in the legs from a Polio infection when she was younger. We saw her picture, we read her story, and we knew that she was destined to be a member of the Gorman Gang!! We flew out to meet her and fell more in love with her than we ever could imagine. We were able to fully fund her adoption and we were on a new journey.
We had been sponsoring a little girl since 2013 that we were introduced to through another relationship from Zia’s journey. Her name is Abi and she is 3 1/2 yrs old and blind. We received a call in July telling us that the orphanage finally had all of her paperwork and now she was available to be adopted. We have always felt very connected to Abi and her incredible journey. We new she was our girl and would also be joining the Gorman Gang. However, with the adoption of our 8yr old daughter it left us with no way to fund Abi’s adoption.
How can people support your adoption? Are you currently doing any fundraisers?
The Gorman Gang started out simply hoping, praying, to be a family of 4 – we are amazed and in awe that in 2015 the Gorman Gang will be a family of 6, including our sweet angel baby. What an amazing journey.
We knew we needed to move fast and ask for help to bring home Abi. We have T-shirts we are selling and we also are raising funds through PureCharity: https://purecharity.com/bringhomeabi?aff=4rl0x We are asking everyone to please share the T-shirt or make a donation: http://www.weareheld.com/order-a-t-shirt.html to help us bring Abi home. We can’t do it without you!!
[…] Meet the Gorman Gang […]