Having Faith

      Having faith is not an easy thing sometimes. When so many things are going wrong, or not the way you planned, it's hard to see the big picture.

       I want to tell you guys about our frustrations with adoption. Warning, I will be mentioning our religious beliefs.

      Adoption is one of the most difficult things to do, most couples who want to adopt, have been waiting for years. Like us, we have been waiting for 3 years. Many people come into your life with a possibility of finding that child that belongs to you. However, in most cases, they fall apart. 

       This past weekend, I was struggling so much, and with Bart being out of town, I went to my bishop. Whenever I need something, I always turn to the Lord. Whether it be to help me at work, or to tell him my frustrating day, that is where I go.

       I went into my bishops office with my heart heavy and told him everything that I had been frustrated with. How it seemed that no matter how faithful we have been, the thing we wanted most still wasn't happening. He then told me this: sometimes, when you are told to have faith, it's not always meaning faith. A lot of times, it means patience. Now, having patience is difficult too, you have to be content with yourself and almost need to forget about the situation. 

     When I've had almost too much, I always ask for a blessing to help me through just a little longer. That's what I did. I won't dive into details, but there was something in the blessing that really stuck out to me and has helped me be happier and find joy in my life right now. That little saying? 

"Even the most hopeless situations, can be hopeful." 

I was feeling pretty hopeless. I didn't know what to do next, but then, it became clear a few days later when a blessing happened. We still don't have a child, but that doesn't mean that one isn't being prepared for us. 

Life is too short to be sad. Enjoy it while you can. Be happy with yourself, and things will fall into place.

Till next time. ;)
Much love
Bart and Aly

Frustrations!

Sorry our update is late, I have been thinking a lot on what I should focus on, and it's been a hard decision, but the thing that stuck out to me the most, was the nitty gritty of adoption.

Constantly people ask my husband and I about our adoption efforts, and to be perfectly honest, what we tell them is not really positive. Adoption is one of the hardest things in our eyes that a family has to go through. Trying to find a birthmother, trying not to get scammed, and definitely trying not to get attached or have hope that you will get a particular child. 

There have been so many different scenarios with all of these things that we have gone through, and it makes us almost numb to anything new. We want to tell you about our stories.

Finding a birthmother doesn't seem that hard right? For us, it has been almost impossible. You see young girls (I mean 15-17 yr olds) getting pregnant and either keeping the baby because the grandparents want it and will take care of it, or they end up getting it aborted, or they choose an agency that will charge an arm and a leg! In some cases, the mother has decided to give up their child, and at the very last minute (sometimes after you have already held them in your arms) they will change their mind, and you leave empty handed. 

I would love it if every mother was able to keep their children, and in a perfect world, everyone would be able to have all they desire. Many people don't realize what a birthmother has to go through in her choice to give up her child. Would anyone want to give up their child willingly? Most would say no, I know I would say no. The courage and strength that a birthmother has to be able to provide her child with a better life, is one of the hardest decisions out there. And you never really know how hard they are striving no to make it work. How many countless hours they are putting in at multiple jobs just to make ends meet. 

I would have to say that birth others are my unsung heroes. And I can't wait to one day, get to know one in a way that we share our child's life together. 

  With adoption, your whole heart is in it. It makes it very difficult, and your emotions are going crazy! We had an experience once, which I don't know why anyone would ever do this, but it was a scam. They led us on about how she was dying of cancer, and that she needed to have someone adopt her one year old daughter. She was gorgeous and we immediately fell in love.

   She was constantly sending us pictures and things about the child. She even had her lawyer contact us. There were a couple of red flags though, that we want to tell you about! Make sure you look at the grammar! Their grammar was awful, including the lawyer. She was also living in Cameroon Africa. We thought it would be great to get a little Africa American baby, they even said that we wouldn't have to go there, because they would have a social worker bring them.

   So next point, make sure you check the adoption laws in every state and country! According to the laws, we would have to be there for a minimum of three months before we would even be considered to adopt the child! Crazy right? So, we stopped that one. Luckily before we spent any money, or we sent any money! 

Lastly, there have been so many "almost" adoptions, where we find one that we just fall in love with, and they never turn out. We put in our application with these children, and we would wait on the response for weeks, getting ready for the possible opportunity of getting these children, and getting our hopes up, then having them dashed to pieces.

How expensive is adoption? Think about how much it is to buy a really nice car, and your in the ball park! Most adoptions cost anywhere from $15,000-$50,000 on average. I don't know about you guys, but as young college students, we don't have that much money laying around! But, as a young family,  we also don't want to wait forever to start a family. 

Our life may be hectic right now, but we wouldn't change these experiences for anything. We rely heavily on the love and support from our friends and family, and of course having faith in our Heavenly Father that all will be alright in the end!

-much love as always,

         Bart & Aly

What a Crazy Ride!

Hello again everyone!

Well in our post last month, we let you guys know that our homestudy has been completed!

Hooray! This was such a huge hurdle for us to be able to accomplish, and it has brought us one small step closer to our child!

This past month has probably been one of the hardest by far trying to get our Profile up and running on Adoption.com. Many of you have probably heard, but the LDS Church is helping couples like us to get our profile up on the largest adoption website in the world for free for a year. 

Most times you think that this is amazing and wonderful to be able to have this for free, and that it wouldn't be that hard to get up. Well that is where you guys are wrong!

We struggled with this website getting all of our information up and going for a good 2-3 weeks. And are still having some issues with it! 

We were told that LDS Services had to approve our account to be able to use it, well we went and talked to them after a dozen phone calls and not getting ahold of anyone to help us, and then, they didnt help us there! For us, this was just so frustrating as we are trying to start our family and being led around on a "wild kid chase"! 

After quite a few phone calls and getting the run around we finally found the guy we were looking for! Dr Theriot! He has been amazing! He got us where we needed to go, and got us in contact with one of the main people from Adoption.com and the guy who would approve our account at LDS Services!

We are proud to say that we are finally up and running after much pain and frustration. We even show up near the top too! 

We completed our profile on there, and we would like to share it with you guys as well! 

Oh! We also took our adoption pictures. (:

You guys can reach our profile and a way to contact us at:

  www.adoption.com/profiles/BartnAly-5690

As always, we want to thank you all for sharing our story and helping us find our forever family! 

Till next time!

Our Adoption Journey: Part Three

Hello Everyone! Well we have some great news! We have officially completed our Home Study, and we are now ready to Legally Adopt a child or two!

We can not express how incredibly happy we are to be this much closer to completing our family! We have thought long and hard what kind of family we want to be, and what kind of family we want to have, and we want to share that with you!

We want our Family to be very close knit. We love our family and we love being able to be together and have fun!

This is Aly's Family. We all love being together. (: we see each other often and have a great time! We have Sunday dinner every other week, but we hang out all the time. With family being close in age, we all get along and try to do as much as we can! We are always talking with Mom and Dad, and we love being able to have them there to support us in our decisions, and help us whenever they can.

This is Bart's Family. We spend a lot of time together too! On the opposite Sunday's we are at their house for Sunday dinner, and it's always a surprise. (: We try to go up to Island Park every year to spend some quality family time without outside interruption, and it is wonderful! 

They are always there to help and make sure that we are always taken care of.

We want to make sure our family is this way. we want to make sure that our children know that we will always and forever be there for them. We will always be there to help them in any possible way that we can. With the way that our careers are and how fortunate we have been in this life, we will be able to help them with a college fund, and make sure that their education will take them further in life. 

When we continued to think about the children that will one day join our family, we realized that it doesn't matter what they look like. We are open to any race, any gender, haha even any color of eyes. (; No matter what our child will look like, or be like, we will love them unconditionally. We are open to children with special needs and we would even love to have twins! That one was a different decision for us, but we have realized that we will take what we can get. We would love to have twins up to 3 years of age, or even a sibling couple. Maybe a four year old and an infant. (: 

No matter how our family is made, or how many children we are able to get, they will all be loved so very much. With our family shown above, and us, plus so many more, we will have a family that will shower these children with love.

Please keep us in mind if you, or someone you know is looking for a home for a child, and spread the word to all you know!

With much love as always!

-Bart 'n' Aly Hancock

Hello Again Everyone!

We wanted to give an update on where we are. We have officially started our Home Study Process! We decided that it would be in the best interest of us and that special little baby if we could get this done. (:

In order to Adopt, everyone has to complete this Home Study process. It goes so in depth it is crazy! They have an interview at their office for about 2 hours, and then you have to get all of the paper work done! This involves background checks, drug checks, physicals, stability checks and so much more! Once we have those things completed, we then have to have an in home inspection.

The Home Study agency comes to our home, and has to look at everything! We have to have all of the chemicals locked away and everything in a manner as if we already had the child in our home.

Luckily, we already keep our house in a way that should qualify us!

This process should hopefully only take a month to two months, and then we will be ready to receive that special little baby!

Please keep us in mind, for those friends or family that you know of that might be thinking of giving up their child to adoption.

We would be so, so very blessed to be able to call them family!

A little about us:

Aly:

I love to cook! I am in the Kitchen as much as I can be. I hardly use recipes, and when I do, I modify them to be just a little different, and usually just a little bit better. I love my job as a Dental Office Manager! It gives me flexible hours, and I can help the company in many ways. I always love walking and exercising. We love to play board games and we love to have family time.

Family to us is one of the most important things, and that is why we are here!

Bart:

I love rocks! I love being able to look at the mountains and know what type of rock or mineral it is. I love hiking and looking for gems. I also love to cook, and it is fun to spend time together as a family in the kitchen! I am almost done with school, and I can't wait to start working in my field as an Applied Geo-Science Major. I will be able to do so many things, and help the community! I have one and a half semesters left, and it is just flying by!

Why Did we choose to Adopt?

Many people ask us this, and at first it was hard, but now, it is second nature. We have always wanted kids, and when we found out that we more than likely would not be able to have some of our own, we knew what we had to do. We knew that adopting would be our way to go. And we are very thankful for the journey that it has led us on. It has been hard at some points, but it has also been joyful. Just thinking about that baby that is out there somewhere brings tears of joy to our eyes. We are not picky about race or gender.  To us, any child will be perfect. 

We hope that you all will share this post with as many people as you can. Hopefully we will be able to get it where it needs to go. (:

If you would like to contact us for more information, please email us at: ahancock0312@gmail.com Or comment below and we will get back with you!

Sincerely,

Bart & Aly Hancock



Our Adoption Journey

Hello Everyone! We are Bart and Aly Hancock, and welcome to our Journey!

   We met in August of 2011, and ever since our first day seeing each other we haven't spent time any time apart. We were supposed to go out on a Friday, but ended up spending the entire week before hand together.
    It was true love, and we were married a few months later in March of 2012 in the LDS Bountiful Temple. We were sealed to each other for all eternity, and we are so excited to have that opportunity!

     A short while after we were married, we decided to start our family. We continued in faith, knowing that our Heavenly Father knew what was best for us. But as things continued to not happen, we decided to look a little deeper.  In October of 2012, we finally realized that having a family of our own was probably impossible. This is when our adoption journey began.
We began to go through LDS Services, starting the process, unfortunately a month into our journey, they had to close their doors to adoptions. We were heart broken. We started to feel that our dream of having a family, probably wouldn't happen for a very long time.

We decided to wait for a little bit before pursuing our dream again. And looked into probably a dozen different adoption agencies. Again, all of the fees were so so high.  We just couldn't figure out how we could afford it. We knew that we had to start saving. But like most young couples, saving money is hard when you are both going to school. Although we tried to keep saving, we knew we would never have enough for an adoption agency. Almost every place we looked started at $25,000! It was unbelievable.

This is when we decided to start looking into other options. Private adoption looked like the best option to go. Trying to get our names out there is probably one of the hardest things that we have ever tried to do.

Word of mouth is what we are trying to do.

We are continuing our Journey and are waiting for the miracle of a child to come into our lives. We ask for your help. Keep us in mind, as people come into your lives. Some of those people might be looking for a miracle of their own for a child they are hoping to have a better life.

To be continued....