Doug & Lisa's Story

Hi everyone, we are Doug and Lisa from Manitoba.  Our adoption journey has been a work in progress in our hearts and our home for a long time…

We were married in 2001, and had our son Austin in late 2002.  After our son was born, we had multiple miscarriages, and we decided that we were done with trying to have another biological child and we discussed adoption and looked into various programs at that time.  To our surprise, we got pregnant during this “discussion” phase, and gave birth to our daughter Tyra in 2005.

That put our adoption discussions on hold for a number of years, but it was still something that was percolating in the back of our minds and our hearts.  We often said we would still consider adoption, but that it wasn’t the “right time” in our lives to move forward.

Fast forward to 2017… Doug and I went on a trip to Haiti to help friends of ours set up their new mission.  We fell in love with the country, the people and our hearts broke at the great need in Haiti.  We came home and decided that there never would be a “right time” to adopt, and despite the 1000 excuses we could come up with, God was pushing us to make a commitment. 

We applied to adopt 1 child (up to 10 years old) in December 2017, and the waiting began…

Part 2:

Our file was deposited at the child and family services office in Haiti in October of 2018, and at the time of our first homestudy update, we strongly felt the Lord’s urging to change our homestudy to include 2 children, and to up our age limit to 13.  This was a bit of a scary change to make, but as a family we felt such peace after making that change – that we couldn’t deny that it was from the Lord.

Fast forward many months of waiting to be matched with children… months that were often filled with second guessing, as well as obvious confirmation from God that we were going down the path that He was asking us to go down… and in June 2020, we were matched with 2 beautiful children!  A boy who was 13 at the time, and a girl who was 11. (They have both since had birthdays, so they are now 14 and 12).

Since we have been matched, there have been many delays (covid related and non-covid related), but we are now in the Haitian court system and in the “home stretch!”  We are quite confident that we will bring these 2 children into our home by the end of 2021.

Having ABBA grant us some funds has been such an amazing answer to our prayers!  We sold our country property and moved into our local town in order to put aside the remaining funds that we would need, but still found ourselves short.  The grant that we received from ABBA will almost completely cover that amount that we are short.  Thank-you so much to ABBA and to the people who donate to them.  We appreciate you so much!!