Adoption Day

Our Seamark journey started on a little league baseball field in Green Cove Springs when a young man from Seamark Ranch was placed on the same team as our son.  As the season progressed and we started to learn more about the boys living at the Boys Home, God started to open our eyes as to just how privileged and blessed our own family was. We were challenged as a family to start giving back and investing in something that was much bigger than our own lives.  We started volunteering at Seamark and soon found ourselves falling in love with the Ranch, their programs, the house parents, and most importantly the boys.

While all of the other boys at the Ranch still had some family contact, this young man was placed at Seamark with a “No Contact Order”, meaning no contact from his biological family.  Seamark allowed us to go through the approval process so that we could start bringing him into our home on some weekends in hopes that we could help fill that hole in his life.  Last fall while attending a Worship Expo I felt for the first time that God was asking me if we would be open to the idea of adoption.  We already had four biological children, a very busy schedule, and I had an incorrect view that adoption was reserved for couples that couldn’t have biological children.  But God started to place people and situations in our lives that made it clear by the end of last year that we were in fact called to make this young man a permanent part of our family.  He continued to spend most weekends and breaks in our home and was placed in our home full time this July.  This past Friday his adoption was finalized and he will forever be ours and we will be forever his.

Our Seamark story is unique in that it ended with this young man becoming a member of our family.  But what isn’t unique is that there are other children who call Seamark Ranch “home” who need mentors and families who are willing to get outside of their own lives and will start to invest in them.  There are countless ways to get involved so please contact the Seamark Ranch office.  You have an opportunity to make an incredible impact on these children’s lives, and you might just be surprised to find that Seamark will make a huge impact on yours.

- Brian P.