Heavy/HGTV HGTV star Jenny Marrs shared a lengthy post via Instagram on July 9 about her daughter, 11-year-old Sylvie, being adopted.
HGTV star Jenny Marrs shared a lengthy post via Instagram on July 9 about her daughter, 11-year-old Sylvie, being adopted from the Democratic Republic of Congo. She said it was nearly a three-year process. And according to the “Fixer to Fabulous” designer, it was nothing short of a “miracle.”
“I wasn’t there on the day she entered this world,” Marrs, 43, wrote. “I wasn’t privy to the miracles that took place that day half a world away.”
“There is so much I just don’t know,” she continued. “Looming, gaping holes from her earliest, most formative years are painful reminders of all I have missed.”
“Yet, what I DO know is on this day, 9 years ago, I bore witness to a miracle,” she penned. “An honest to goodness God-sized, Red-Sea-parting kind of miracle.”
Marrs and her husband, Dave, started the adoption process as they were struggling to start a family of their own, the couple told People. While they were completing the paperwork, Marrs became pregnant with her twins, Nathan and Ben, now 12.
They put the process on hold until the twins were 18 months old, the HGTV stars told People. Then that is when they said they met Sylvie, who was living at an orphanage in Africa.
Dave and Jenny Marrs have been on HGTV with their show, “Fixer to Fabulous,” since 2019, according to the Internet Movie Database.
The Marrs’ tied the knot in 2005 and they have five children: 4-year-old Luke, 9-year-old Charlotte, Sylvie, and the twins, Nathan and Ben.
The couple renovates homes in their native town, Bentonville, Arkansas.
“Dave and Jenny Marrs embrace small-town America by renovating classic homes in and around their hometown of Bentonville, Arkansas,” their bio on HGTV says.
“This resourceful and creative couple transforms historic houses in desperate need of an update and turn them into charming forever homes,” it continues.
Marrs Said There Was a Problem With Sylvie’s Adoption
People wrote that the process of bringing an adopted child from the Democratic Republic of Congo to the U.S. usually takes six months, but in Sylie’s case, Marrs said it took 602 days.
“Her adoption had been finalized. She had her U.S. passport. And then the country shut down adopted kids leaving, so she couldn’t get her exit permit,” the HGTV host told People.
According to Considering Adoption, it can take six to 12 months to “receive a referral” when a adopting a child from the DRC, and then after that it can take another 12 to 24 months “to complete the adoption.”
Marrs said she was afraid Sylvie would never make it home.
“Hope had nearly been lost,” she wrote on Instagram. “Despair had slowly seeped in. We had no way of knowing if our daughter would ever be back in our arms.”
“Make no mistake – a battle took place to bring our daughter home,” the mother-of-five continued. “The exhale that took place when she was back in my arms on US soil was echoed in heaven. The spiritual battle that I couldn’t see during those long days and nights was finally over.”
An estimated 2 to 4% of Americans have adopted children and more than 3o% of people have considered it, according to the 2022 U.S. Adoption Attitudes Survey, conducted by The Harris Poll, on behalf of the Dave Thomas Foundation for Adoption.
The Marrs’ Travel With their Children Internationally
During the summer of 2023, the Marrs took their family of seven across the Atlantic to Italy. The HGTV star said via Instagram that in 2009 when she visited Italy with her parents, she and Dave prayed they would be able to have children. Fourteen years later, they returned to the same spot — and this time, five children were with them.
“We prayed in every cathedral around the country for our future children,” she said. “At the time, we had struggled for years to have kiddos and the months I spent planning the trip was a lifeline.”
“Now, we are back with my parents and our five kiddos,” Marrs continued. “It’s unbelievable to think how abundantly we have been blessed in the years since that lunch in this same place all those years ago.”
Season 5 of “Fixer to Fabulous” is slated to air in the fall of 2024.