Scentsy fundraiser total: $180!!!!!!!!!
by 15 people helping to support us!
Our lofty goal was to make enough to pay for both of our sets of fingerprints for our homestudy- $88 I didn't have any idea what to expect and pretty quickly was sure that was impossible but... we OVER DOUBLED IT! I can not begin to tell you how exciting this is!!!!!!! GOD IS AN AWESOME GOD. YOU ARE AWESOME FRIENDS. Thank you Thank you Thank you.
Just Love Coffee Fundraiser total: $31 from 5 people!!!
Combining our fundrasiers, savings, my birthday gifts, and the paypal button on the side of the blog we have: $5,070 towards our adoption.
Which has paid/will pay for: $300 with our application. the first $3000 of our agency fee. $1300: homestudy. $88: fingerprints. $88: birth certificate copies. $41:marriage certificate copies $185 online hague training.
Next big costs:
Finishing up our agency fee: $3000
Passport Pictures: $44
Dossier translation fee: $1000
USCIS paperwork and fingerprints: $800
Drink Coffee? www.justlovecoffee.com/babyabell
Gretchen has amazingly offered to keep an online Scentsy store open for a fundraiser for our adoption. How incredibly gracious of her.
A note about fundraising...
Please know that we are truly using every cent from all fundraising and the paypal button directly towards our adoption. We have also completely limited (no cable, very little eating out, only have one car etc) our budget because of the lifestyle we've chosen for me to be home with the kids but it will continue until our baby comes home no matter if anything changes in our financial state. The only monthly payment we will even consider adding before our sweet baby is home is preschool for Addilyn and we are doing a lot of praying and investigating about our options for that as well. I am starting to babysit children in our home to make some extra money, right now it is solely to pay our bills and keep money in our savings so we can use it for adoption instead of our monthly bills. If I add more kids and our minimal bills are paid for that money will be evenly split between church and our adoption fund not to increase monthly bills or 'fun' money. I know that this was completely unnecessary to put out on the internet but it is super important to us for everyone to understand that we are NOT fundraising so we can continue spending and have a high budget while asking you to donate your hard earned money on us and our adoption. We truly completely believe that God is calling us to do this NOW. Financially it really doesn't make sense right now (thanks to our already limited budget). But, we believe if God is calling us to do this, He will provide financially and will do that through fundraisers, some grants (hopefully!), some donations, and us finding everything we can skrimp and save on to make it possible. While we know Christ has called all Christians to care and support orphancare and do believe He is calling or leading some of you to help make our sweet African love an orphan no more, we are doing everything possible to do the same.
The verse we have on our blog header is James 1:27 Religion that God our Father accepts as pure and faultless is this: to look after orphans and widows in their distress and to keep oneself from being polluted by the world.
We are using this as our adoption verse for obvious reasons-it commands us to care for orphans. But also, studying and learning more and more about adoption, how orphan's in so many countries live, how many in other families live, and how we in the US feel it is important to live is making us polluted. We have been very convicted of this lately. We do not need stuff. Our kids do not need 100 toys. They don't need fancy vacations, the newest toys, or the neatest (or any) resturant to experience all God has planned for and offered them. We as adults don't need a ton of clothes, starbucks, the coolest newest car or gadgets. We need to separate our true needs and wants. I am not saying any of these things are bad. Not at all. We actually get to enjoy many of those things because both Derrick and I's families have the love language of gift giving. They just are not necessities and we are trying as hard as we can to live on necessities and have been convicted on our desires for our kids and our wonderings if we should grow our family were based a lot on non necessities (will we be able to send them to a christian school? is that important to us? will we be able to afford to them to do the extracurricular activities they enjoy? can we afford all those school supplies? birthdays? will we ever been able to afford a house where our kids can have their own room?) . We are very very blessed as I said above by grandparents and family that provide many gifts to where we still have gone on fun vacations, out to eat some, and have new clothes for our kids as they grow which are great gifts and HUGE blessings to us but know that we are choosing to live on as little as possible (which is much more than our baby in Ethiopia will be used to) and would be ok if something happened and our families all the sudden couldn't be as generous, because we believe Christ has called us to live in a way that requires the lifestyle we've chosen but also because we don't need to live otherwise. This is NOT in ANY WAY a please look at how we are living and feel sorry for us. NO NO NO WAY. We are enjoying life to it's fullest and love the time we are able to spend as a family. We would not trade this life for anything (even if the one car thing has been a little annoying this week ;) ). We just want you to know that when we are fundraising or asking for help financially, we have looked through our budget and cut everything we can think of and are working to add too it so we are able to put as much as we can towards growing our family and our church and it's future growth and exciting new steps. We're not asking you to do all the work. :)
We are so thankful for each and every dime offered to help bring our baby home, but we are equally grateful for every question about adoption, reference letter written, prayer for us, our children, our future baby, every offer to 'help in any way we can', all offers to help with the kids while we have our homestudy visits, I am so excited for the day we bring our baby home who will NO LONGER BE AN ORPHAN because of you. There will be lots of hugs and I'm so grateful tears.
