The essence of the “Campbell Family” touches students and guests alike as soon as they set foot on campus. No one knows how to treat newcomers like family better than a Campbell student; and it was no surprise when College of Pharmacy & Health Sciences graduates chose to grow their own families through foster care and adoption.
The path to adoption looks different for most, and Pharmacy alumni Sara (’16) and Phillip (’14) Carlisle opted to utilize the services of Christian Adoption Services, a faith based agency that serves North and South Carolina families. The Carlisles felt called to grow their family through adoption long before they got married. After one year of paperwork, background checks, educational trainings and a completed home study, they were linked to a birth mom. Their son was born just a few weeks later. Sara highlighted the importance of their community and how the support, understanding and prayer they received made a huge difference both personally and spiritually.
Pharmacy alumna Leah Mitchell (’12) began considering adoption after a difficult pregnancy with her daughter. Through a unique turn of events, God placed two foster children in the Mitchell home. Leah and her husband took parenting and foster classes so that they could become a licensed foster home through a private agency, knowing that the primary goal of foster care is to reunify children with their guardians. The Mitchell family navigates the unknown by loving big and taking each day one step at a time.
Fear of the unknown was a fairly common theme amongst these alumni. Public Health graduate Kristina Figueroa (’13) shared how fear could have stopped her and her husband from participating in a foster mission through their church, but she said “faith was the only impetus to allow His grace to be shared across borders-without fear.” The Figueroa family fostered an eight-year old boy from Belarus during the summer of 2018. Kristina discussed how her own chronic disease led her to her degree choice and kindled her desire to “give back.” Kristina believes that she and her husband were able to help their summer guest build healthy habits for himself and those he would come into contact with upon returning home to Belarus.
These CPHS alumni summarized adoption as an act of redemption, love, family, faith and sovereignty. Pharmacy alumna Heather Rhodes (’13) alluded to the beautiful yet difficult circumstances surrounding adoption by saying, “God ordains, places, meets, heals, fills, guides, reigns over every drop of pain, every ounce of joy, every hard decision, every piece of brokenness, and every heart affected by the entirety of these journeys.” She and her husband became parents to a beautiful baby boy in June 2018. The Rhodes family utilized the services of Faithful Adoption Consultants (FAC), a faith-based consulting group that walks along side adoptive families and helps them navigate the adoption journey. FAC works with agencies all over the country and helps connect waiting families to a birth-mom and baby.
Domestic infant adoptions average $40,000, making it difficult for many families to afford adoption. Pharmacy alumnus Ryan Swanson (’08) utilized the same faith-based consulting group as Rhodes, and shared that his pharmacy degree helped provide the necessary resources for he and his wife to adopt from Russia in 2012 and domestically in 2018. Swanson stated, “I feel strongly that’s one of the biggest reasons I was called into this profession.” Having a medical background also helped many of these families navigate medical information, a NICU stay and even possible prescription related scenarios.
Financial assistance is available for adoptive families. In addition to loans and grants, Swanson shared how his employer, BlueCross BlueShield of North Carolina, is pro-adoption and offers some financial assistance to adoptive families. Mitchell shed light on the foster care system and resources that can help lessen the financial strain by stating, “Foster parents receive a small compensation for the child’s needs, Medicaid for the child and in most instances childcare is paid for by the Department of Social Services (DSS).”
While there are many different paths to adoption and foster care, those who feel called to grow their families in this way understand that blood does not make a family. Swanson believes adoption to be “a beautiful picture of our own lives-how we have been adopted into God’s family as His children.” What a hopeful promise for these growing families who were united because of God’s grace and love.