We are the Durnings! Thank you for stopping by our page and reading our story. We met in 2011 at a small Christian college just north of Boston. After 4 years of dating, we knew that God had brought us together and we began to envision what our future life would look like together. We got married in May of 2015 and started our life together in Boston, MA. We have always desired to be parents, to raise little ones to love the Lord and to serve him. In 2020, after eighteen months of trying for pregnancy and fertility testing, we were told that we would not be able to become parents in the traditional way. The Lord led us through that period of grieving the loss of a dream, but also helped reshape our understanding of the plan he had for our lives and family. While we didn’t have all the answers to how the Lord would grow our family, we did understand the truth that God’s character never changes.
2 Timothy 2:11-13
The saying is trustworthy, for:
If we have died with him, we will also live with him;
if we endure, we will also reign with him;
if we deny him, he also will deny us;
if we are faithless, he remains faithful—
for he cannot deny himself.
In all that we did not understand and know, we knew that we are loved by God (Romans 5:8), and have been adopted into His Family here on earth through the work of Christ (Romans 8:15-17). We knew we had been saved and transformed by him and we knew the truth that God is faithful; even in our doubt, despair, and discouragement, God is faithful. We began trusting in the Lord’s plan for our life and family, journeying with him as he reshaped our understanding of parenthood, adoption, and how to build a family with Christ as the foundation.
In 2021, we became foster-to-adopt parents and had the privilege of caring for several children that lived and spent time in our home. Fostering showed us how much we can love, guide, and raise children in the ways of Christ who are in need of parents. Our hearts broke for the children in our home who longed for the family design that God has established. For the time any child was in our home, we committed to showing them the intended design God had for the family and to teaching them about Christ’s love for them. As we transitioned our lives to Dallas, TX, our hearts were pulled toward adoption, but we still were not sure the means through which that could be achieved.
The Lord has been so kind to us by bringing us into a community that supports our desire to become parents through adoption. He has surrounded us with people who have said, “let’s trust God’s faithfulness” and challenged us to pursue this beautiful dream through private adoption. The beauty within adoption is three-fold for us: first, as a way to provide a home for a child and an option for a birth mother they may not have had before; second, as a way for that child to be exposed to the love and saving grace of Jesus Christ; third, as a way for us to grow our family.
We are partnering with Christian Homes throughout our journey of adoption. It was important to us that whatever adoption service we picked held to the same biblical foundations we shared as followers of Jesus Christ. We wanted to make sure that the birth mother we are paired with is supported, encouraged, and is told the gospel of Jesus. We know that God has been preparing us for this moment and we are praying that he is leading a birth mom toward us and toward himself.
Adoption, while so rewarding, is hard and we recognize this is a journey we cannot accomplish alone spiritually, emotionally, and financially. There are three key ways you can support us throughout our adoption journey.
- We ask that you could please pray for us and for the birth mom the Lord already has for us. Pray that we would be faithful in trusting the Lord through this process and that we would be a support to the birth mother he puts in our path. Pray for the birth mother, that God would meet her with his love and comfort as she bravely chooses life and adoption for her baby.
- Please check in with us! Ask us how we are doing in the waiting as it is hard and can be emotionally exhausting. We appreciate when people call us and pray with us in the waiting, as it lifts our spirits and encourages our soul.
- Lastly, if you are able and find it in your heart to financially contribute, we will forever be grateful for your support in helping us grow our family and investment in the life of our child. Your contribution, big or small, gives us continued hope that the Lord has a plan for us and is making a way.
We are excited to see what God has for us in this next season of life and thank you for journeying it with us.
Isaiah 25:1 – “O LORD, you are my God; I will exalt you; I will praise your name, for you have done wonderful things, plans formed of old, faithful and sure.”
We are aware as of 9/18/2024 of an issue with IP addresses with our merchant account at iDonate. We hope to have this issue resolved soon and we apologize for the inconvenience. Please use this PayPal link if you are experiencing issues with the iDonate giving form, and share your desired Family or Ministry preference in the available comment field.
To DONATE BY MAIL, please make out the check to ABBA Fund (do not write the family name on the physical check, which will invalidate the charitable aspect of your gift ... instead either print out this page to send with it or include a separate note to request that we preference your gift toward the family profiled on this page) -- then mail your check and preference request to:
ABBA Fund, PO BOX 868049, Plano, TX 75086-8049
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**AN IMPORTANT CLARIFICATION FROM ABBA FUND ABOUT YOUR DONATION**
Using the online form on this page automatically submits a request to preference your gift to the family profiled on this page as part of ABBA Fund’s Christian Family Adoption Grant Fund. ABBA Fund administers this fund and maintains full control and administration of all donated funds. We also strive to honor our donor’s preference requests in accordance with IRS and Evangelical Council for Financial Accountability (ECFA) guidelines.
The IRS allows donors to state a preference of how their contribution is used and request that the gift support a particular family — and it allows the charitable organization (ABBA Fund) to fully consider that request as long as the donor understands and acknowledges for charitably given tax-deductible gifts that the ultimate authority regarding the disposition of your gift is at the discretion of the charitable organization. By using this online form, or other method described above, you are acknowledging an understanding of those IRS guidelines.