With the support of Holt donors, Aaron and Mallory Layendecker received a Special Needs Adoption Fund grant to help them adopt their son from Colombia. Read their thank you letter to Holt donors and learn more about adoption grants available to Holt families below!
Dear Contributing Donors,
Hello. We are so thankful for your donation to the Special Needs Adoption Families grant. We feel very honored that we were selected to be a recipient of a $3,000 grant. This grant helped cover costs that we honestly weren’t sure how would be paid.
We are a family of five, now six. We have felt the calling to adopt since we were young children. Mallory tried to convince her parents to adopt when she was in elementary school. Aaron was able to witness his two cousins be adopted internationally from China and Cambodia. … We still felt like we had love in our hearts and space in our home for another child. We prayed about this for a while and felt like it was the time to take the biggest leap of faith we ever had by applying for adoption. We had spoken to one of our pastors who had adopted through foster care, a family friend who had adopted from China when Mallory was a teenager and Mallory’s friend who was adopted from China. We were able to ask questions about each of their experiences and what they thought might be a good fit for us. Everyone was so supportive and encouraging, but at this point we didn’t know what agency or even country to pursue.
Aaron is a high school Spanish teacher and with his ability and knowledge, it made sense to pursue a Spanish-speaking country. Adopting from Colombia just felt right. We have a lot of Latinos in our area of town and felt like that would really help our child to have good social mirrors. We didn’t want our child to feel like he or she stood out in class, but rather blended in and felt at home.
In January of 2023, Mallory was looking at the waiting child list and saw a little boy who she thought might be our son. She requested the file and then later that day told Aaron what she had done. Ha! Once we got the file we sat at the computer and read the whole thing in one setting. It felt like we were being blasted with information from a fire hose. We weren’t able to comprehend everything but we were able to write down some good questions. We started asking all the questions and felt like everything was just falling into place. A week later we submitted our LOI (letter of intent) for our son. We were doing it!
We waited for our dossier to be approved. Then, we waited for our LOI approval. Then, our match. The waiting was brutal! However, once we were matched with our son, we were full steam ahead getting all the papers completed and turned in. It felt like Mallory had a part-time job just working on adoption paperwork.
One of the things that we were nervous about in our son’s file was a liver condition that he was diagnosed with. We weren’t sure what that would look like once we got back home, but I am happy to report that it is really a nonissue! Our son has apraxia of speech and is mostly nonverbal. Since bringing him home, he has learned to use many more sounds and has three words that he says often — Mama, Papa and no. We are hopeful and prayerful that verbal communication will be his main form of communication in the future.
We are working hard to get him all of the help that he needs in order to catch up and also fill in some gaps in development. He has an Individualized Education Plan (IEP) at school that includes therapy 4X a week, attends outside therapy 1x a week and is also seeing the chiropractor 2x a week. It is a lot of running around and going to appointments, but we have already seen so much growth in the 6 months we have been home. This growth gives us hope for his future and development. It hasn’t been easy. In fact, it has been quite hard, but we know growth doesn’t happen easily. It happens through trials and consistent care. We have also grown so much in our parenting as well since adopting. We have grown more patient, understanding, empathetic, knowledgeable in areas we never would have thought of, persistent in advocating, and, of course, tired. Ha!
We are forever thankful for your generous gift to the Special Needs Adoption Fund to help us bring our son home and to give him the greatest gift of all, a sense of belonging in a family.
With grateful hearts,
Aaron and Mallory Layendecker
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