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Suess Family, Families Not Finances

Jennifer and David Suess have six children, adopting their first child internationally over 20 years ago. But when they considered international adoption recently to grow their family once more, they discovered a new reality. It has become a much longer and more expensive process — especially because they felt led to adopt two siblings, adding to the cost. That’s where the Holt Families Not Finances adoption grant came in!

As the Suess family gets ready to travel to pick up their children from Taiwan, they wrote a thank you to those who made the grant possible!

I want to express my gratitude for the grant we received to support our adoption. Especially when we shifted our thoughts from adopting a single child to siblings, the cost of the adoption suddenly became larger than we had expected. We were thrilled to receive a grant that brought the cost down so that we could adopt a sibling pair without the added expense.

A little bit about our new family: One very interesting thing about our adoption is the fact that my husband, David, was adopted himself through Holt International! It is thrilling for us to be able to come full-circle and be able to adopt our own children now through Holt!

Right now, we have six children, and are awaiting our travel itinerary for going to Taiwan to pick up our newest children! Our eldest child also came to us through international adoption. That was 23 years ago! After having five biological children before returning to adoption to add to our family, we discovered how much international adoption has changed in those 23 years. It is more expensive, has a much longer timeline, and involves a lot more hurdles.

More than the grant money itself, the knowledge that there are people out there that believe so much in the good of international adoption that they would go out of their way to fund grant programs like this makes us feel so supported in our decision and helped us to persevere through a long two-year process.

Thank you!

Jennifer and David Suess | Holt Adoptive Parents

smiling girl with Down syndrome waiting to be adopted

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