SNAF Stories: Bringing Victor Home

A thank you letter from Jim and Elizabeth Occhipinti to the SNAF (Special Needs Adoption Fund) donors who helped fund their adoption.

Dear Contributing Donors,

In 2010, Jim and I welcomed our fourth daughter into our family and believed that our family was complete. We had always wanted a son, but with the birth of our daughter, we made peace with the fact that our lives would be filled with ‘sugar and spice and everything nice’. Then when our youngest was only a few months old, we received an email from the Holt Korea program, aimed to find families who had previously adopted from Korea to consider adopting infant boys with normal neonatal conditions.

We felt God pricking our hearts to consider adopting again, but with our baby so young, we decided to wait and pray about it.

Victor, adopted from Korea, with Jim, his dad.

After feeling that God was once again moving on our hearts to adopt, we decided to move forward and applied to adopt through the Holt Korea program once again. Having adopted our third daughter in 2008, we were still paying off our adoption loan and our options for financing this adoption would be pretty limited. We feared the idea of raising two infants at the same time and wondered how this was going to work? We sought support from friends and family toward our adoption expenses and were able to once again access credit from our adoption loan.

We often looked at the Waiting Children on Holt’s website. Having once adopted through this program, we were excited at the opportunity to consider adopting a toddler. We applied to be considered by the Waiting Child Committee to adopt a 2 year-old little boy. Once we were matched with our (then) 2-year-old son, we knew that our country fee would be due in order for us to make arrangements to travel. At the time that we accepted our ‘match’ we were $2,000.00 short in paying the country fee in full. Desperately, we contacted the Holt staff to see whether we would be able to pay off the $2,000.00 that we were short. During that call, the Holt staff told us that we might be eligible for a Special Needs Adoption Fund grant.

After making a formal request and explaining our need for a SNAF grant, the remaining $2,000.00 we were unable to raise on our own was paid in full by the generous donations of complete strangers! We were simply amazed!

Victor with his 'forever family,' the Occhipintis

Without the SNAF grant, bringing our son home would not have been possible. It has been several weeks since we traveled to Korea! Our desperation and fears of being unable to afford our adoption have been quickly forgotten and replaced with the joy, excitement and wonderment of raising 5 extraordinary children. We so greatly appreciate your support and could not have done this without your help! Thank you for helping our family realize a dream to raise a son and for bringing our son into his forever family!

Help more children join the loving families they deserve. Click here to give a gift to the Special Needs Adoption Fund.