Addilyn asked me earlier this week, "When will we know who our baby from Ethiopia is? I just want to see them!... I think Josiah is almost ready to be a big brother. But I'll stay the biggest in our family. Big Sister Addi!" She is so ready and it is so beautiful. I love seeing her mind work and her heart prepare for another younger sibling. At the grocery store she noticed many people around us had brown skin..."Like our baby from Ethiopia will have!" She's pretty amazing. And God is using her to help me prepare my heart. Josiah loves his Africa shirts as much as his superman or go spurs go shirts, always pointing out "AF-RE-CA. 'Dis Af-RE-Ca". God's moving and preparing us. I love that He's working in them, who have no idea about finances and no idea that right now, if we would (crazy fast/unheard of) get a referral, we couldn't accept it. I know it won't surprise anyone, but I'm a long term planner-I make decisions based on 5 years down the road what that decision will do. Which is why it took so long to take the plunge to adopt-we were busy researching and understanding adoption as much as possible and thinking of what our adoption could do to our family 5, 10 years down the road. So, the $30,000 price tag to adoption has been a little overwhelming for us. But, up until this point we've easily been able to break it into small goals. Application, paid. Fingerprints, paid. Homestudy, paid. That kind of thing. And a lot of those price tags were a little smaller. Now, our next price tag to accept a referral is $11,000 (for one child. If we would unexpectedly get a referral for biological siblings, it would double). A little bigger of a price tag. We'd love to say we've got rest of that in savings and rest of that planned for. But, we don't. Our current adoption fund has $1,000 in it. Sometimes I wish it would be easy, we'd get a big huge grant to cover it, or we had the finances to just give up vacation to pay for it and that's all. Well, that is in no way shape or form what God desires for us, for our story, or for His glory. Every step in our lives and our adoption can only be done through HIM. and Him alone. We had exactly enough in savings to apply/be accepted/ and pay half the agency fee. Then after that, each and every single step has been exactly what we've needed it. Remember the Scentsy Fundraiser? and then I didn't blog about it, but our tax refund mixed with two amazing and completely unexpected generous donations and we had enough for the other half the agency fee. Right on time. Throw in there an AMAZING God story of our garage sale and our 5k and He's written a pretty awesome plan. Not just in our adoption, but our lives. Derrick has gotten jobs exactly as we needed them. I have been allowed to make extra money just when we needed me to. God's got this. No matter how stressed my long term planning mind might make me. Think God is working on that? Whew. One joyous day at a time, Anna. One day.
Want to know a few ways to help? I'm sure you do! :)
Pray and continue to pray. Pray for our baby in Ethiopia-for safety, that they feel loved and cared for, even from inside an orphanage or care center. For our baby's biological family-they feel loved, cared for, and supported through the extreme circumstances they are experiencing that would cause them to consider adoption. For Addilyn and Josiah-that God continues to work and prepare their hearts for another sibling. For Derrick and I to have patience and understanding in each step of our process and to prepare our hearts and minds to be parents to more.
We were recently awarded a matching grant through hand-in-hand Christian Adoption, Inc. They will match dollar for dollar $4,000 into our adoption fund. (totaling $8000!!!) If we would surpass the $4000, rest of it would go into our adoption fund tax deductible, but unmatched. If we don't raise the whole $4,000, it will be matched up to what we raise. We were given the request to send out 50-150 letters (we got close to 50, that's a lot of people!!) so many of you got some, but in case we missed you and you are interested, here's the information of how you could donate through our grant (if you click on the picture it should get bigger):
Please note that all donations MUST be in the Hand-in-Hand office or postmarked by July 18th, 2013 (Josiah's 2nd birthday!) to be considered for our grant.
Our T-shirts were designed with the Ethiopian flag colors in mind: Green, Red, and Yellow. To understand more of the Reckless Love theme we've chosen for our adoption go here.
please go to www.recklessloveethiopia.storenvy.com to order your shirts! We have a lot left over from the 5k-so you may not have to wait long at all to receive your orders. Once we have sold out of what we have-we will make another order of shirts as necessary and the wait may be a little longer.
*** If you are local- please ask me for a free shipping code*** If I can just hand it to you, no need to pay shipping!
Thank you Thank you Thank you for considering helping us bring our baby home, an orphan NO MORE!! Thank you for the prayers as we continue this journey. We are so blessed to share this with all of you.
