The difference in a new way to adopt

Elizabeth Bordeaux didn’t know her burden to adopt would make her an adoption pioneer. Press play to hear how bold moves work.

Watch Video  

In the beginning, Elizabeth Bordeaux just wanted to help others.

Her bold move to explore a better, cheaper way to adopt had worked. Instead of pursuing adoption through an agency, she had made a successful match by connecting with an expectant mom through social media.

After years of infertility, Elizabeth and her husband, Chip, brought home little Grant in 2014. God had proven faithful to His promises for a family.

“We just felt like the cost was a huge closed door, but the Lord kept whispering, “No, I want you to do this,” Elizabeth says about her “God idea.”

At the time, Elizabeth’s adoption approach had never been tried.

Sharing what she learned with friends in coffee shops and homes started as a personal burden — something to do in time left to spare from being a full-time wife, full-time mom, and full-time marketing associate. A volunteer ministry, she thought. Nothing more.

But her ministry was having such an impact, she soon felt compelled to be more business-like about it.

Before every bold move, you fear how life will be different.

The next step was to launch a consulting firm to maximize the help she could offer those yearning to start adopted families. And she received the faith-filled courage to take it.

It was like God was expanding what was possible with every bold move.

Then, nearly a year later, God upped the ante again.

God seemed to stop her in her tracks with an acquaintance’s offhand remark at an adoption conference: “Elizabeth, you’re missing your calling.”

Elizabeth realized that bold moves always grow bolder, and bold moves always move farther. She left her job to go full-time with Quiver Full in December 2015.

“I was terrified of leaving the security of a consistent paycheck. But the question was really, ‘Am I going to trust God with this?’”

READ: How Elizabeth and Chip survived a crisis that nearly wrecked their marriage.

But where God took her after that was more shocking still.

The most powerful way to live out her ministry burden was to help adoptive parents and help the birth moms, too. And becoming a full-service child placing agency was the only way to do it.

In the summer of 2016 she gave up control of her business, so it could become a non-profit: Quiver Full Adoptions. She went from entrepreneur to an executive director employed by a board of wise, Christian men and women. Quiver Full became fully licensed in 2017.

“The Lord said, 'I can’t allow Quiver Full to be this ministry I want it to be if you don’t surrender it,” Elizabeth says.

Over the last three years, God used Elizabeth’s bold moves to help place more than 100 children with adopted families. NewSpring gave Quiver Full $20,000 through the Overflow Offering in 2017.

“I think about the last three years, and it’s been a lot of big faith leaps,” Elizabeth says.

“Ultimately it was zero percent Elizabeth and 100 percent the Lord. Before every bold move, you fear how life will be different. But it was ultimately, ‘Do I believe God’s word is true and he isn’t going to let me fail or fall? He’s put this step in front of me; do I trust he’s going to carry me through?'”

Press play to hear Elizabeth tell her story.