Family Introduction

We are the Santanas.
We got married in 2007, bought our first home in 2009, had our first son in February of 2011, and our second in July of 2013. Jose is a firefighter/paramedic and Ashley is a SAHM. Our older son (C) is 3 years old and our youngest (D) is 10 months old.

We have discussed at various times in our relationship the issue of adoption. Ashley was adopted and so the topic has always been very dear to her heart. We looked into different adoption agencies, different countries, etc but never really "settled" on anything in particular.

Let me pause here to explain why we feel strongly about adoption. We see it not only as a Biblical mandate to care for orphans (and widows; see James 1:27 as well as other posts) but also as a beautiful picture of the Gospel. When we couldn't help ourselves, when we didn't even realize that we needed help, Jesus gave Himself for us, thereby allowing us to be forever adopted into God's family. We want our biological children to see and understand diversity, true obedience to Christ, living out our faith, and learn to love people with different backgrounds and cultures.

We are still at the very beginning stages of our foster care journey. We are waiting for our license to come in so we can start making a difference for these kids.

In Collier County there are LESS THAN 50 Foster homes and MORE THAN 200 children in foster care. Those numbers are ridiculously off-balance. We realize we are still new to this, and don't have a lot of experience yet. But it doesn't take "experience" to tell you that those numbers don't match up, and an innocent child shouldn't have to be separated from their siblings, moved out of the county, or bounced from home to home simply due to a lack of available, loving, foster homes. Feeling so strongly about this, we have decided to make it our mission to not only love on these children, but to recruit new foster families to join us in doing so. Please let us know if there's anything we can do - answer questions, point you in the right direction, go introduce you to some people, etc. We will do whatever we can to promote foster care and get more help.

Thanks for stopping by! Keep checking back for more posts as our foster care journey continues.