A New Adventure in Serving: Joining the Creating a Family Board

Spoiler alert: I tend to stay busy. Very busy. Arguably too busy. I have a wonderful hubby and four exuberant kids. I enjoy a full-time job at an aggressively growing company. I lead an annual orphanage work trip to Mexico. I'm a committed and active member of the CenterPoint Church family. I write for Cycling Utah and help lead Team Cycle4Cure. I cycle, camp, and ski as much as I can. Life is full and grand.

And I'm proud to announce that I'll begin 2017 serving the adoption and infertility community on the Board of Directors for Creating a Family!

Creating a Family is the most popular and prolific foundation in the U.S. for adoption and infertility education. The resources found on http://creatingafamily.org have made a difference to countless thousands of families - and especially to my own! There aren't many organizations I am invested enough in to make a step like this (I can only think of two - church and Creating a Family!), so you know this must be a big deal to me.

My journey with Creating a Family started when Steve and I read the director, Dawn Davenport's, wonderful book, The Complete Book of International Adoption as we were taking our first baby steps toward Sasha's adoption. We jived well with Dawn's approach and learned so much from the book that it became our Bible throughout both girls' adoption processes and our gateway into the amazing resources on http://creatingafamily.org. Creating a Family strives to provide a well-balanced and education-focused voice in adoption, celebrating the joys of the journey and acknowledging the complexities and difficulties and yuck that often arise. It's an amazing resource.

I then had the joy of getting to know Dawn personally five years ago on our first trip to the Hogar de Amor orphanage in Colima, Mexico. As I was looking for a way that Sam, Ben, and I could serve together, I reached out on the Creating a Family Facebook group to see if anybody had a good experience with a similar trip. Dawn responded back and after several conversations offered to help me lead a trip!

Five years later the trip is still going strong and my love and respect for Dawn grows every year. She is a wise and compassionate woman who is deeply committed to the adoption and infertility community and I am grateful for her friendship and mentorship.

And now I get to serve in a whole new way as a member of the Creating a Family board! I'm so excited to see how I'll learn and grow in this new position and, at the same time, give back to an organization that has given me so much.