Bring Our Kids Home: Phase 3!

For those of you who have been following our journey - skip down to "What's Phase 3?!" It'll give you more info on where we are now in our process.

For everyone else:

Hello! We're the Challis Family - Henry, Tabitha and our amazing 10-year-old son/stepson, Z. We've always talked about having a large family through adoption, though like most people we didn't think we would be starting with a kid from 7,000 miles away.... who is a teenager.... and male..... with some challenges. Who we need to race to adopt in the nick of time. To the cost of.... $30,000 give or take. We know. It's a terrifying number. But on the other side of it are two children who will have better opportunities and a family to love and care for them.

Last summer, we were blessed enough to have a fifteen year-old boy with us who had spent his entire life in Eastern European orphanages. We gave him his first taste of family life, and he gave us, well, everything we didn't realize how badly our family was missing.

For the first time in his life, he had been picked by someone - and the confidence and delight absolutely unfolded him over the summer. Boys, especially with any special needs, are chosen last if at all. As a teenager, his chances were virtually gone. His sister had been adopted, but he hadn't been. He has always lived without family, in a very rural area, in a country not equipped to take care of the vast numbers of unwanted children, particularly with any medical or intellectual challenges. But somehow - this kid's light never went out. He brought it to America, and he shared it with us. Growing to love us, and call us his Mama and Papa. Through hosting we realized that a sweet, hilarious, and affection-starved boy was showing us that he belonged right there, with us, in our family, forever.

He's smart, funny, charming and has so much great potential - unfortunately his chances of reaching that potential in his home country are unexaggeratedly non-existent. Imagine your child had no idea how to count money, crack an egg, buy anything in a store, plus had some challenges, and then was essentially dropped off on a corner to make his own way. It boggles your mind, doesn't it? That's what our boy is facing, and we are frightened for him.

There are virtually no social services. His country is a hub for human trafficking. Orphans have a high suicide rate after "graduation" at age 16. Half the boys quickly end up in prison. Current conflict with Russia has further added to the poverty in this country. His chances of supporting himself are extremely slim there, but here we can maximize all of his abilities and he can have a safe, productive life with love and support of a family to teach him everything he needs to know and feel danged blessed to be able to do it.

Immediately after he left to return to his country this summer - we started work on the home study process. Thanks to the Four F's of Adoption (faith, family, friends and fundraising) we catapulted through our initial preparation.

If you already know our story, we know you already care and love K. We thank you. We need as many people on our team as possible. It's awkward to ask people for money and favors, and we will be transparent in what we are doing and what we need so you can see that we are personally working every route possible to bring our boy home.

We are breaking this into small steps, so we can pause and apply for every grant possible along the way. We also have no time to waste because he turns 16 in May and will probably leave the orphanage in September. We applied for a grant in his name through a special needs international adoption website (where we originally saw him) and they have just awarded him $10,000 towards our in-country expenses! See? We are already making it! But grants this size are rare, and none others are this fast. Most of it will require earning, borrowing, asking.

-- So What's Phase 3? --

We've officially finished our homestudy and submitted the i600a which stops K's clock (phase 2) and are now working to submit a dossier which will go to Ukraine. Once that's accepted, we'll be invited to go to Urkaine for our first trip to see K and pick out a second child!

The fees to make this happen that we need to pay for break down to the following:

$5,040 - Remaining Adoption Agency Fee

$2,000 - Post Placement Report Fee

$170 - USCIS Fingerprinting Appointment (Henry & Tabitha)

$115 - Passport Fee

$240 - Plumfund fees

$435 - Mailing the Dossier & Related Photocopying/Paper/Supply expenses.

We really appreciate everything folks have done so far - please know your messages, support and love have meant the world to us.

If you'd like to make a tax deductible donation, please message us and we can provide you with contact information for two ways to do that. We have some significant fees, however, that are not able to be paid through a nonprofit so we are fundraising for direct donations as well. Thank you so much.