Hello Reece’s Rainbow community! We’re the Suero family and we’re incredibly excited, and slightly shocked, to be adopting internationally again! We (Danny and Rachel) have been married for 11 years and have 6 amazing children we’re so proud to be raising: Isaac (13), Jonah (9), Oliver (8), Lily (7), Ivy (5), and Simon (2). Isaac and Lily came home from Ukraine in October 2020 thanks in large part to Reece’s Rainbow. At that time we only had Jonah, Oliver, and Ivy at home. Simon was born just 3 months after returning to the US from Ukraine.
A little background on our adoptions: In early 2020, I (Rachel) came across Lily’s profile on the Reece’s Rainbow and knew instantly that she was meant to join our family. Thankfully, after a few days of prayer and worry, I worked up the nerve to show Lily’s profile to Danny and quite unexpectedly, he felt the exact same way about her as I did! That same day we applied to our agency and hit the ground running to race to our girl. We joined the Reece’s Rainbow Facebook page early on in the process for support and it was there that something even more unexpected happened. I saw an advocacy post of a little boy who I just knew we had to try to bring home. Amazingly, Danny felt the same way about him and we were able to get the approval to bring both children home at the same time. Isaac was 10 and Lily was 4 at the time. We both had always been open to adoption, but not to children with profound medical needs, children who would never be independent, or children needing total care. We can sincerely say that advocacy WORKS because Isaac had been listed as a waiting child for over 7 years, but all it took was someone sharing his profile one more time, and for us to see that one short little video of him to change all of our ideas and plans and hopes. We never would have looked at the older boy category at that time, and without seeing that video, we likely wouldn’t have felt the connection to him that we did. We’re so thankful that his advocates didn’t give up on him and that Reece’s Rainbow listed both of our children to begin with. Beyond that, we were able to fundraise thanks to the Family Sponsorship Program which helped us afford the travel expenses needed to bring our little ones home. We remain so grateful to everyone who helped support us in adopting Isaac and Lily.
We thought that may be the end of the adoption journey for us, but a couple months ago our good friend shared the profile of a 2 year old little boy in Bulgaria with us. He had almost identical needs to Isaac and looked so incredibly similar to him that friends and family thought it was simply a photo of our son as a toddler. We had just recently moved to a new state and also experienced a heartbreaking miscarriage, and various significant health issues had plagued our family as well. It didn’t appear to be the most ideal timing, but we knew we had to consider him. Very sadly, we learned that this little boy is nearing the very end of his life and is completely unable to travel or even safely leave his orphanage. Our hearts broke for him, and we ask everyone who reads this to say a prayer for this precious boy. This experience really caused us to evaluate our plans and to evaluate if we felt we could proceed with an international adoption again. We realized that we could, and that we really wanted to, so we signed on with our agency and officially began the process to adopt a waiting child from Bulgaria. It was at this point that we ended up applying for a different waiting child. There were a few families who applied and in the end a different family was chosen. Again, our hearts broke, but also celebrated that in this case, a child will make it home to a loving family. We continued moving forward, and now we are pursuing another waiting child. We can’t wait to be able to share exactly who we’re adopting! Each one of us is incredibly excited to welcome our newest family member home and we’re doing everything possible to move quickly. Every day a child waits for a family is a day too long. We are so thankful for all of the encouragement we’ve received so far, and want everyone to know just how much every single kind word, prayer, and dollar donated means. It all matters and it all means so much to us. Thank you for considering helping our family on this journey however you may be able to!
Feel free to follow along on our Facebook adoption group!
8/25/2023 — AWAITING USCIS APPROVAL & OFFICIALLY MATCHED
The Suero family has a matching grant of $2500! When their FSP total reaches $2984, an additional $2500 will be added for them!
