Newcomb Journey

I (Ashley) have had a lot of worry about adoption over the past month. We are still talking to the same birth mom but our communication has drastically slowed down which has made me think that she's changing her mind. I have no proof of this but it's how I'm feeling. I've been spending a lot of time worrying instead of praying and that is never a good solution. This past week Austin's sister and I went on a girls trip to California. Our main goal was to go whale watching; we found a company in Monterey and went on Sunday morning. The fog was bad! They said the ideal visibility for finding whales is about a mile but we could only see 1/4 of a mile. We drove around for an hour and a half with nothing but then all of a sudden there were whales everywhere! Over the next hour we saw whales diving, feeding and swimming around. It was an amazing experience. After about an hour the whales swam in a different direction and it was time for us to go back to shore. As we were...

Monday (July 25th) we got a call from our adoption agency that a mom is interested in us! The agency told me all about her and asked me to text her when we hung up. The birth mom and I have been texting a few times a day since then. She's very nice, open to all my questions and has been asking me a few questions too. The plan is to keep texting until one of us feels we officially want to move forward with each other or one of us feels we want to stop communication. I don't know how long that process will take. She's about 14 weeks so we still have several months until the baby is here. While I was talking with the agency they told me to guard our hearts. They said to celebrate having a mom reach out and talk, it's very exciting! But since she is not very far along a lot can change. It's a weird balance to be both excited and cautious. Please pray that God makes His will VERY clear! I'm praying God slams doors shut or opens them wide so there in no doubt in what ...

It's been awhile since we've updated but we've been busy! We've completed 16 hours of training videos, home study, several meetings, reading 100+ pages in articles, finger prints and tomorrow night is a CPR class. We've also completed our profile that will be sent to birth moms. We are excited to be done which means we will be presented to moms starting Monday (July 3). It's been stressful to get everything done while still keeping up with family, vacations and everything summer brings but it's worth it. Please be praying. We know God has the perfect child(ren) for our family and we are excited to find out the plan!

We know that not everyone can adopt but I'm confident God has placed the heart for adoption on many around our community so we are praying those people can get connected to this adoption story! As we have started telling family and friends we have already experienced generosity from others. Again, God is showing up and is confirming that this is his will for us. Generosity has many different forms; friends have donated items for our garage sale, family members have passed on our info to others who love adoption and one of my (Austin's) clients wrote me a check for our fund raising goal. We wanted a way that people could give and also take advantage on their taxes so we partnered with ABBA Fund to do just that! www.abbafund.org/newcombfamily Thanks for anyone you can connect us with! =) The breakdown of fees are as follows: Agency Fee: $17,000 Home Study: $2,850- $4,850 Legal Service: $8,000-$15,000 (we won't know until we are matched with a birth mother and he...

It's hard to know where to start. God has taken our family on a journey of loving other people and looking back it's very cool to see how He has changed our hearts and minds over the past few years. About 3 years ago we got involved in Safe Families (it's a program similar to foster care but they partner with churches instead of the state and the goal is to reunite kids with their parents). In the 2 years we did Safe Families (SF) we had about 12 kids in and out of our home. Some stayed as little as 24 hours and one boy lived with us for 5 months. It was challenging in many ways but was rewarding as well. We loved watching our kids love on these children they had never met. Our kids shared everything with these kids (their rooms, toys and clothes), they embraced them as siblings and loved having extra kids in our home. Sometime during our SF years, God was speaking to me about adoption but I just wasn't fully ready to listen yet. I felt very confident that He had othe...

So my story starts about 6 weeks ago (Feb 2018) while I was at church. During one of the worship songs, I looked to my right and saw a new mom holding her baby, I then looked at my wife and back to the stage. In that moment I sensed God's voice telling me that we need to adopt. I was scared, excited, nervous, and emotional all in the same moment. I started to cry (which is rare for me) and as we sat down after worship was over, I wrote on the bulletin to Ashley "I feel like God just spoke to me on adoption." She responded on paper with "I'm in." And then a moment later with "Caiden will be excited." In that moment I knew we were in for a ride.

We know we want to do a domestic adoption and we have had a few friends at church who have used the same adoption agency so we figured we'd apply and see what happens. We were SHOCKED at the cost! We had no idea the whole thing would be so expensive. We actually had a hard time at first making sense of the price. It's like a business which is kind of disheartening. We still applied because we wanted a chance to have our questions answered, after our phone interview I (Ashley) felt a peace about things. Austin was still totally freaked about the money but he's the provider for our family so I understand that. We've looked at a few more agencies online but haven't decided yet if we're going to contact them or not, they are all more expensive but all seem to do the same thing. Saturday night we were laying in bed talking about a lot of different things but Austin said he wanted to pray specifically for someone to offer to help us financially with the adoption ...

The month of March we decided to be intentional about praying together and alone as we tried to decipher what God was telling us. As Christians we believe that we can talk to God through prayer and He will answer us through the Holy Spirit with a feeling we may have or different questions being answered in powerful ways. Several times during March I felt God telling us specific things. About 1/2 way through the month I (Ashley) was convicted that we hadn't been praying enough together, we often fell asleep before praying. I was also convicted that we had 2 people living in our home and we needed to be intentional on growing our relationship with them. We wanted to do well with what we were called to do at that time. One morning I felt like God was telling me that I was spending too much time running to him for answers and wasn't spending enough time with Him just talking. As the month ended, we were feeling frustrated that God hadn't answered any prayers on adoption. As we...

Ashley and I have been married for 12 years. We met at a college ministry called Cornerstone Christian Fellowship at Illinois State in Normal, IL where we only dated 4 months before we were engaged. Looking back we both shared stories how we knew the very first weekend we dated that we were going to marry each other! We decided to stay in Normal, IL to stay involved in Cornerstone mentoring the college kids we had invested in thru out college. We thought we would live in central IL forever. We had our first child there (Caiden) after a couple years of marriage. Shortly after Caiden was born, my dad offered me an opportunity to work with him selling direct mail so we decided to move up north to Geneva. Almost 10 years later (this October) we have lived in Geneva. We've had 3 more biological children (Kylar, Elijah and Tinley). God has grown both of us a ton since moving here. Ashley and the Holy Spirit have nurtured a heart for giving (both financially and thru our home) in me. ...