Letter

This is the letter that we sent out to quite a few of our friends, family & church family but I thought that I'd also post it here for anyone else to read(and just in case some letters didn't make it to the addressed location). We are excited for this opportunity to help a widow, especially someone who we know personally. We hope & pray that we are a blessing to her during this project!



Dear family, church family & friends,



“Religion that God our Father accepts as pure and faultless is this: to look after orphans and widows in their distress and to keep oneself from being polluted by the world.” James 1:27

Most of you know that earlier this year, we felt God’s calling to add to our family and adopt. We decided after much research and prayer to adopt an African American baby boy from right here in the US. We have been praying for him and his birthmother for quite some time and we can’t wait to see what God has in store for us in the remainder of our journey to him.

Some of the reasons that we decided to adopt domestically was the huge need for families willing to accept children of a minority race, specifically African American. African American women are 3 times as likely to have an abortion when an unwanted pregnancy occurs. 32% of abortions performed in the US today are for African American women and that number is climbing. Also, approximately only 1 in 40 families who are willing to adopt are willing to accept full African American children. In the South, that number is more like 1 in 60. The women who have the courage to carry their babies to term are now faced with too few families willing to accept their children because of race. We want to show these women that they are making the right choice by giving their child the ultimate gift of life.

We are excited to open our home to another child but that hasn’t come without its challenges. The cost alone can be so overwhelming that a lot of people get no further than just looking into the process. We estimate with adoption fees, home study, travel, & legal fees that our costs will be around $25,000. So far we have been blessed to be able to raise $15,000 toward these expenses. We are so humbled that so many of you have already given of your time and money to bring our son home and we can’t thank you enough.


It’s difficult to put our pride aside and ask for even more help but we have decided to do another project that will not only benefit ourselves, but also someone else who needs assistance. This letter comes to you to ask for your sponsorship of this project. The idea behind this project is like a walk-a-thon. Only instead of sponsoring us to walk, you will be sponsoring us while we help a woman from our church who was recently widowed. The verse we have quoted above talks about caring for the widow and the orphan and this project joins both of those efforts. This project is going to take place on Sept. 25, 2010. We will be trimming trees, painting the garage floor and making a toy room downstairs for the grandkids. We love the idea of being able to raise money for our adoption and also help someone else in return and we pray that God will bless this project.

So we come to you with 2 requests.

1.) We ask for your prayers. These have been essential in our process and we thank all of you who have already been praying us through. We ask you to continue to pray God’s blessing on this journey and for our future birth family. Also, please pray for His blessing in this project and that we may be a blessing to this widow.


2.) We ask that if you feel led that you would consider supporting us financially by making a tax deductible donation to help us cover the remaining costs.

Our church has been kind enough to help us with this. If you would like to be a part of this sponsorship, you can send your tax deductible gift between now and October 20, 2010 to the address below with a note stating it is for the Gulker adoption fund. Make checks payable to Bethel CRC and send to:

Bethel Christian Reformed Church
341 South Main Ave.
Sioux Center, IA 51250

You may follow along on the remainder of our adoption journey at our blog: www.onlybygodsgracegulker.blogspot.com



Brian & Melissa Gulker