Celebrating Adoption: Stories From Our Community
We are passionate about building a world where children are cherished—and we believe that all children belong in families. Our community is passionate about adoption, and we love getting to champion adopting families through Adoption Trunk Shows. We hope you love these beautiful stories from forever families within the Noonday community as much as we do! Read on to be inspired by these world-changing families from across the US.
Carol Kee
“Over spring break in college, I had the opportunity to go to China and meet orphans for the first time. After getting to know them throughout the week, I was forever changed and wondered if I could ever adopt a child one day. I even shared this with the guy I was dating at the time, who is now my husband, but it didn’t scare him away! After having two girls, biologically, the thought of adopting never left my mind. After much prayer, my husband and I decided to adopt. When we started sharing the news, that’s when a friend told me that Noonday Collection helps support adoptive families! We had an Adoption Trunk Show, and I was so touched by how our community drew together to help bring our son home! After two years of waiting, we received the long awaited phone call that we could fly to South Korea to meet our son David for the first time! We brought him home in the middle of December, making it our most memorable Christmas yet!”
Sheri Rogers
“Working with refugees open my eyes to the desperation driven by poverty and conflict. Because of this, before we even married I shared with my husband-to-be my desire to provide a home for a child in need. 15 years later, we have four children, including a beautiful biological daughter and three wonderful sons who’ve been internationally adopted. Our oldest two boys come from Ethiopia as a result of heartbreak and hard choices from their birth families. Our youngest son, who has down syndrome, was abandoned in rural China, a country in which special needs are highly stigmatized and resources for such needs are few. Our family has been so blessed by our sons, and challenged by their stories to make the world a better place in which all children are cherished, and mothers do not have to make the heartbreaking choice to relinquish their children.”
Photo: Living Reflection Photography
Kami Weinstein
“My sister and Noonday Hostess extraordinaire, Kara Rosen, had 4 beautiful children–but along with her husband and children, always felt there was a sibling pair waiting to be loved and rescued. After a very heart wrenching year of being matched with a brother and sister from Colombia, then later being denied, then accepted again but months later it falling through for the SECOND time—they were emotionally wrecked and wondered if it all was worth it to try again for adoption. After taking a year off for their family’s hearts to recover and regroup they were matched again in 2014, but this time with a sister pair. To let the gift of love expand their family, they stepped out in faith and said YES and had a miraculously fast adoption with two beautiful sisters (12 yrs old and 2 yrs old) from Colombia. Now, almost 2 years later this December, their family of 8 is a symbol of resilience, love and joy. The 2 adopted sisters are thriving along with their 4 siblings and have learned what it means to be loved and cherished.”
Megan Chaffee
“Adoption has been part of our family from the beginning. With my dad being adopted, and my husband having 2 sisters adopted from China, it was a major topic of conversation on our first date. When the doctors gave us a laundry list of medical issues, we know adoption was our next step. The day my husband turned 26, we started the process. We have been home for 3 years with our daughter from Ethiopia, and now we are pursuing a little girl from China with special needs. We love living this story that was written for us, even when we don’t know what the next page holds for us.”
Krystal Ribble
“My husband and I began the adoption process in 2012. Since that time, we lost three adoptions in Eastern Europe to three different little girls all around the age of 8 years old. The last loss was a super tragic one as we had spent quite a bit of time with her in our home in the US and the loss came after a lot of inter-country politics, war, and corruption. After much disappointment and some time to heal, we were notified of a little 4-year-old boy in the Caribbean who needed a family. We were able to bring him home in the summer of 2015. He is thriving with us and our family could not be happier to all be together now. This year we celebrate him turning 6 years old and we found out that we will be welcoming a new baby brother this coming March. We are thrilled!“
Haley Koning
“Our adoption story is filled, like so many others, with feelings of love, joy, anger, goodness, and sadness. After learning there were over 100,000 children in foster care in CA alone my husband and I decided we had to do something so through a series of complicated events, we took home a 2-year-old undergoing chemotherapy and radiation for rhabdomyosarcoma (cancer of the muscle cells). We thought she would be a short-term foster placement but that little blessing turned into a 14 month rollercoaster of emotions and loving a little girl who we were told we could adopt. CPS, however, changed their minds and she went back to her biological family at the end of last year.
My family (2 bio daughters, husband and I) knew we couldn’t stop so we slowly faced our pain and continued to move forward. We were then placed with a 2-year-old little boy who had had 2 liver transplants, was g-tube dependent, had just started walking weeks prior to meeting us, couldn’t talk, and could barely hold his head up. In six months of loving this sweet boy as well as intensive physical, occupational, speech, and feeding therapy he has transformed into a thriving 3 year old who is eating, talking up a storm and almost running. It is amazing to see what love and stability can do for a child. The even better news? On October 27th we officially signed our adoption paperwork that we have been waiting 3 long years to sign and we will be going to the courthouse to make him a Koning in the middle of November. We could not be more thrilled to welcome him into our family!”
Brooke Wall
“My husband and I were high school sweethearts who both individually had desires to adopt in our future. After getting engaged, we traveled to Uganda to help our friends start an orphanage. While there, we fell in love with a 2-year-old
little boy who was living in the orphanage. From the moment we saw him, God made it very clear in both of our hearts that he was our son. I remember sobbing as I rocked his frail, little body because I knew he found his forever family. The following year we got married and left for a month-long honeymoon to Uganda to spend time with this little boy, whom we loved and wanted so badly to be a part of our family.
While there, we found out we were newly expecting our daughter, Delaney. This kind of threw a wrench in our adoption plans and forced us to slow down & wait. When Delaney turned 6 months old, we signed papers with our adoption agency to begin the process of bringing our son home. We are currently working with attorneys in both Uganda and the U.S. to get our son’s visa approved and obtain the evidence requested.
Our son is now 6 years old and is waiting for his mommy and daddy to come pick him up. We are paying for his foster care each day and are sending him to school in Uganda. We are prayerfully waiting for the exciting day when we open up our email to an approval from USCIS and can finally reunite with our precious little one that God has entrusted us with! He is adorable and perfect in every way! We feel blessed to have been adopted by Jesus into his heart and his family when we were born again and humbled that we get to turn around and do the same for our sweet little boy!”
Anna Polsgrove
“After being married for several years, we began to discuss having children. After much conversation, we knew we wanted to adopt our first child. Through much soul searching and prayer, we began the process to adopt from the country of Ethiopia. Two years later, we brought our daughter home. Her name means “bringer of light” but when we decided on her name, I don’t think we realized just how much light she would bring to not only our family, but to the world.”
April Bone
“When my husband and I met, one of the first things I talked to him about was how I had always felt a calling to adopt. And as it turns out, he felt the same way. On May 27, ten years after that conversation occurred, we would arrive back home from our journey to Korea, bringing with us our first child, a son we named Isaiah. Two years passed before we started the adoption process again—Isaiah asking for a sister who would be coming from Thailand. It was during this time that I had my first Noonday Collection Adoption Trunk Show. And not long afterward I signed on to become an Ambassador. On May 27 of this year, we once again entered the country, this time after a journey to Korea and Thailand, bringing home our daughter, Nicharee. Two different children, two different countries, two different agencies, four years apart—same Gotcha Day. Our God worked out the details of my beautiful family in a spectacular way! “
Emily Tilsen
“When I first became a Noonday Ambassador in 2013, I was encouraged to finally dig in to our dream of adopting by the amazing Ambassador adoption community. Over nearly two years we pursued every possible adoption route and finally completed our foster license late fall 2014. In February of 2015 I hosted what would be my final Trunk Show—because that very week our sweet daughter was born to a family member. Due to medical complications, our beautiful birth mama would eventually have to come to terms with the fact that she could not parent her baby, and courageously she asked us to adopt. We spent ten months completing the complicated requirements to adopt through interstate CPS procedures and traveled five times across the country to visit and snuggle our sweet girl in person. During this time, I was encouraged by a fellow Noonday Ambassador, Heather Gould, who hosted a fundraiser for our adoption travel expenses. (I had held an adoption fundraiser for HER during my first few years as an Ambassador!) Sarah came home the week before Christmas 2015 as a foster child, but this summer on June 23rd we finalized her adoption. I have recently re-launched as an Ambassador, ready to change the world again—but this time with my daughter by my side!”
Jordyn Glaser
“Adoption is anything but practical! If people were in it because it was the easy option, they would give up at the 18th time you have to have your fingerprints taken (by the FBI, the state, the county, the city and Child Protective Services). It is not a fall back plan or “Plan B”. We fully believed God had a child for us through adoption and because of that we chose to push forward and completely start over after our first adoption process fell through.
We took a huge leap of faith, and you know what? God provided! With fundraisers like Noonday Trunk Shows we were able to move forward, and on January 5th, 2015, we got THE call! We had finally been matched with a baby that was due in the spring. On April 17th we loaded into our SUV and drove across the country for 42 hours straight to arrive just in time for the birth of our beautiful little girl. On April 20th, 2015 our daughter Esme entered the world and at that moment I knew why God gave us roadblocks and speed bumps and detours; I knew why He made us WAIT. It was all for our daughter. People keep saying she is a lucky little girl, but we know the truth…we are the ones that have been BLESSED by her!”
Sherri Smetana
“We adopted our son Henry from the Democratic Republic of Congo. He was found on the banks of a river alone and 5 pounds right after birth. We were told we could get him home by the time he was 9 months old, but I had to leave my twin girls in Kindergarten and went to Congo for 7 weeks to find a way to get him home after the Congo suspended exit letters for all adoptive kids. He was 18 months old before we got home for good. God helped bring our sweet baby home—our family is now complete.”
Eva McDorman
“Our hearts and lives were forever changed 2.5 years ago when my husband took his first mission trip to Haiti. Upon his return, we just knew God was calling us to adoption, so we began the long paperwork process. It’s been 2.5 years since we started this journey but we are still fighting for our child to come home. We are hopeful that we will receive our referral in just a few short months! We are blessed and thankful for the ways God has opened our eyes to the orphan crisis, especially through my work as a Noonday Ambassador. We firmly believe job creation is a long-term sustainable solution to keeping families together in vulnerable countries around the world. We opened our hearts to adoption, but it’s our eyes that were opened to the opportunities to make lasting change.”
Emily Ha
“Adoption had been on Lyndy Edwards’ heart since she was a child. Even after having 3 biological children that were now almost grown, she knew that she still had the time and energy to devote to more children, and she loved being a mom more than anything. So she and her husband, David Edwards began the process and were set to leave for Taiwan to adopt 2 children in October. 3 days before they were to leave, David was suddenly killed in a car accident when he was hit head on by a driver who fell asleep at the wheel. Most would have said, “No, life is too hard, I’m grieving, the children will find another family.” Not Lyndy. She said “God filled a need in my life before I knew I would have it. Who am I to say no?” Two months later on Christmas day, she brought home 5-year-old Molly and 7-year-old Mason. 7 years later, they are both excellent students, athletes, friends to many and believers. None of this would have happened if she had said no. Lyndy is now the biggest supporter and customer of my Noonday business because she believes so much in the purpose of Noonday and how it benefits so many and changes lives…and I’m also proud to call her my mom.”
Lisa Thomson
“Allison Loerop is an adoption advocate and Noonday enthusiast. When the Loerop family was presented with a unique adoption opportunity, they answered the call on faith and with the help of their family and friends. This help came in many forms, but a Noonday Adoption Trunk Show was particularly sweet. Many people came out to support the Loerops as they prepared to welcome Gil Andreas home—a sweet 2-month old boy with down syndrome. Shortly after coming home, it was revealed that Gil had many health concerns—including his heart. At the age of just nine months, Gil passed away.
As an Ambassador, it was a powerful statement of community when, at the wake and funeral, so many friends and family wore their “Gil” Noonday purchases. It was a powerful testament to how very much we are better together. Even in times of sadness and sorrow. Gil is a part of the Loerop story. He is also a part of my Noonday story. I’m so grateful and humbled I got to play a small role in connecting him to his earthly family.”
Noonday Founder Jessica Honegger held the first Trunk Show in her home as a way to fundraise for her family’s adoption from Rwanda. Today, Noonday continues to give 10% of sales at Adoption Trunk Shows to help adoptive families bring their children home. If you are adopting, or know someone who is, visit our Host page to learn more about how we can help families bring their children home!
