Community Raises $30,000 for Louisiana Family’s Adoption

A Louisiana community raised $30,000 gathered from multiple fundraisers to go towards a local family’s adoption expenses.

Cody and Anthea Comardelle had talked about adopting a child for a while, but they did not expect the process to be as expensive as it was.

“Adoption was always on my heart since I was a little girl,” Anthea told the St. Charles Herald-Guide. “I always knew growing up that I would adopt and when I met my husband, it’s something we talked about.”

The adoption talk subsided when the couple experienced married life for a few years and had a son of their own. But in 2020, they reconsidered adoption, and in that summer, they had a plan.

“We applied with an agency in late August, and we were called in October and asked how far along we were in the home study because there was a baby due in January,” Anthea said.

“Everything happened so quickly. We were open to either international or domestic adoption, but with COVID, we couldn’t even fly out [of] the country. We didn’t care if it was a child or a newborn,” she added.

The quick process meant the Comardelles had to come up with just over $50,000 in adoption expenses and fast.

“Our community … we’re just so blown away,” Anthea said. “It was about $53,000 that we needed, and from August to December, we raised $30.000. Our community is small, but their love and support was huge.”

The community organized pancake sales, biking pledges, silent raffles, and pie sales, among other fundraisers, to defray the adoption’s upfront costs.

Anthea said God answered everyone’s prayers about the adoption process, including their son’s prayer for a brother.

Despite the pandemic, adoptions have been continuing via online platforms such as Zoom. In December 2020, a couple adopted four siblings in a Zoom adoption ceremony.

One foster family adopted their second child over Zoom in an August 2020 adoption ceremony, and a two-year-old boy was adopted over Zoom in April 2020 after the coronavirus canceled in-person court hearings.