Beginning Our Adoption Journey

Let the home study (and the fundraising) begin! For those of you unfamiliar with the adoption process, a home study is a series of interviews/visits with a social worker, for the purpose of evaluating our fitness as an adoptive family, educating/preparing us for the adoption and gathering information about our family to help match us with a child whose needs we are able to meet. We had our Orientation Interview with our social worker this week, and she said the home study generally takes 3-6 months. She also assured me she will leave her white gloves at home when she comes to our house for the next interview! Phew! We are just really anxious to get started. There’s also a lot of practical tasks/paperwork to start on – fingerprinting, background checks, etc. That stuff is right up my alley. I know, I am one sick nerd. I could do paperwork all day, especially if there is a cup of coffee nearby.

It’s been so exciting to watch how the adoption is impacting Sydney and Brody (our children already in the nest). Brody is 2 ½ so his understanding of the situation is limited, but when I asked him if he was ready to have another sister – he said “YES! And a brother!” Maybe next time, sweet Brody. ;) Sydney is almost 6, and she is about as excited as she can be. She is anxious to know what it’s like to have a sister, and we’ve already had several talks to make sure she knows it will not be all sunshine and roses. However, having two dear sisters of my own, I know what a special bond that can be, so I am excited for her too. She has been asking me to do extra chores this week, and when I give her some coins for the extras…guess where they go? Yep, straight into the adoption fund jar! God is growing a very generous heart in her, and I love to see His work in the lives of my children.

Speaking of the adoption fund jar, we made the first installment of our agency fee this week. It completely wiped out our savings, but we are so thankful to have had the funds to get started. Now we have a few months to do some fundraising, creative saving and extra work to come up with the next installment. If you have a desire to help bring a little girl home into a family that will love her forever, we would be so humbled and honored! Josh and I absolutely loathe asking people for money, but we are also aware that we need to swallow our pride and allow God to bless us through the generosity of His people. There is a little girl in China that is waiting for us. We don’t know her name or her face yet, but she is there. She needs a forever family, a home, special medical care, love – and like all of us, she needs to know of Jesus. We are anxious to provide her with those things, but we cannot do it alone. Our little girl is more important than our pride. Our family would be eternally grateful if you would be willing to be involved in changing the life of one little girl - our little girl - forever. Here are some ideas for how you can be a part of our adoption:

~ PRAY! Pray for orphans in general, our little girl specifically, our family, our fundraising efforts, etc. Pray that God would take our “loaves and fishes” and multiply them for His glory through this adoption.

~ We will be having a garage sale at my Mom & Dave’s house (see Upcoming Event info in the sidebar) on October 19-20th with all the proceeds going toward the adoption. Sydney will have a bake sale there too. ;) If you are local to the Atlanta area, we would greatly appreciate any goods you may have to donate to the sale (prior to October 17^th). We’d be happy to pick them up too! If you don’t have any goods to donate, come shop the sale! If you live out of town, might you consider gathering donations from your friends/church/workplace and hosting a garage sale on our behalf? 

~ Collect your change! This would be a great way to get your little ones involved too. Sydney and I would be happy to roll your coins and take them to the bank! If you are out of town, you could just collect them and then send a check. Seriously (which is Sydney’s favorite word these days)…ANY amount is helpful! Do you work somewhere that may be willing to put a donation jar near a register or in a break room? Here is a link for a label I designed that you can wrap around a collection jar! We used a glue stick for ours, and it fits perfectly around 3 sides of a large glass mason jar.

~ I’m also going to start working on making some goods to sell for the adoption. I will keep you all posted when those are available. If you have your own business, would you consider having a benefit month for our adoption – where a certain % of your sales would be given to fund the adoption? We would be happy to plug your goods during that benefit month via word of mouth, on our facebook pages and on this blog!

~ Give. Maybe you just simply want to give a donation. No complaints here! ;) Contact us and we’ll get our address to you, so you can just drop a check in the mail. We have also added a “DONATE” button to this blog to give through Paypal. As a disclaimer - when you give through Paypal via a credit card, there is a 2.9% charge plus a $.30 transaction fee. So, there’s a small cost to us for that convenience, but go for it, if it’s worth it to you. There is another option as well called Popmoney, powered by Josh’s employer Fiserv, which only charges a $.95 transaction fee. Popmoney allows one-time transfers up to $500 directly from your checking account/debit card to our checking account. It is totally secure and very easy to use. Let me know if you are interested, and I will get the information to you. And this Momma CPA wants to make sure you know these gifts are not tax-deductible (unfortunately). We may be able to participate in a matching grant program in the future which would allow for that, but we have to have our home study completed first. 

~ Have any other ideas? We would love to hear them!

And for my fellow visual peeps out there, I’m including the following video that was put together for Orphan Sunday, which is coming up on November 4, 2012. It happens to be set to one of my all-time favorite songs (you should hear Sydney belt this one out in the car)!

Orphan Sunday 2012 from Christian Alliance for Orphans on Vimeo.

A Growing Pack

Our family is SO excited to announce that we have begun the process to adopt a child from China [insert girlie squeals]! We joyfully anticipate bringing our child home to join our family, but we know it is going to be a long and challenging journey. We know it will be worth the paperwork, the fundraising, the home study, the ups and downs, the wait, the travel, and all the challenges and sacrifices that come with having a child. Why? Because we love this child already. We love her with the same love we have for our two children who are already under our roof and our baby who is already with the Lord. We are committed to loving this child forever without condition.

I decided to start this blog for a few reasons. It is our desire to share with others what God is doing in our lives (and around the world) and to proclaim His goodness and glory. We also hope to encourage our sisters and brothers in Christ to be sensitive to the stirring of their hearts toward adoption and orphan care. Lastly, we want to keep our friends and family informed, so they can be a part of bringing our child home.  

God first stirred my heart toward adoption as a teenager. I was blessed to have the opportunity to travel to Brazil and Peru on mission trips with my church youth group. Our projects varied, but my heart most deeply ached for the children at the orphanages we visited. I wept to leave those children. I wanted to take them home with me, never mind that I was only 15. While in Brazil on June 21, 1996 I wrote in my journal, “It was the most emotional day of my life thus far. It was our last day in Assis. Our last day to see and spend time with the children who had captured our hearts. Almost everyone was sobbing and wailing uncontrollably. It was tough. I cried SO much.”

When my husband Josh and I began to discuss marriage, international adoption was one of the topics that came up. We agreed that adoption was something we would most likely pursue in the future. We’ve been married for 9 years now, and this year, our desire to adopt heightened tremendously. We have moved around quite a bit since we married, but we are finally settled into a home we anticipate staying in. We live close to some of our family now, and Josh finally turned 30 this summer (the minimum age to adopt from China)! We both agreed it was time to start the process – however long, however hard, however costly. Josh immediately had a feeling we’d adopt from Asia, but we did our research and took some time to pray and seek the Lord’s leading as to where we should pursue adoption. Once we felt drawn towards adopting a child with special needs, China was just it.

In this first post, we wanted to take the time to answer a few questions that many of you might have, so here goes:

1. Why are you adopting even though you are capable of having biological children? We don’t see adoption as simply a Plan B for couples who cannot conceive. Adoption is beautiful in and of itself, because it demonstrates the heart of God and is central to the Gospel of Jesus Christ. Adoption is part of our story as followers of Christ (Galatians 4:4-7; Romans 8:15-17; Ephesians 1:4-6), and we eagerly await the full experience of our adoption when our groaning will cease (Romans 8:22-23). We also love that adoption is a positive, loving way to live out our undeniably pro-life convictions.
2. Why China when there are children in the U.S. that need families? We love adoption, both domestic and international. There are over 143 million orphans worldwide – just stop and think about all those faces – how can we not be wrecked into action? There are hundreds of thousands of orphans in China – many due to the one-child policy or because the children have some sort of special need. In our opinion, there’s not a bad place to adopt from. Where there are children without a family willing and able to love and care for them, there is a need. I love how Russell Moore puts it in the book Adopted for Life, “What better opportunity for you to model the God who adopts from every tongue, tribe, nation, and language and sets all the children together at the same table with the same inheritance and the same love?” We desire to have a family that displays the glory of God and the beauty of the gospel in this way.
3. How do you plan to fund this adoption? You may be surprised to know that the cost for a domestic or an international adoption is about the same – roughly $30,000. Wow, that is A LOT of money for this girl whose wardrobe comes from Goodwill. But here’s a “fun” fact for you that I find rather distressing - $27,000 is the cost of the average wedding in the U.S. today. In NY, the average is over $65,000. A big party that lasts one day versus changing a child’s life forever. Let’s chew on that together. You also may not realize that when you adopt, that money is NOT used to buy a child. The funds go toward agency fees, the home study, citizen/immigration fees, travel, medical reports, orphan care, dossier fees, etc. It’s a long process that requires a lot of paperwork, coordination and funds. We are committed to stepping out in faith, knowing that God will provide where He guides, and doing everything we can to save money for this adoption. We are excited to see and be humbled by God’s providence through this journey. We’ll be doing some fundraising projects along the way (start saving your change if you want to help!), applying for grants, hoping that the adoption tax credit doesn’t go away after this year, and preparing to go into debt if necessary. After all, can there be a better reason to go into debt than to give a child food, shelter, an education, unconditional love from a forever family and daily exposure to the gospel? We can’t think of any.

We would be honored if you would pray for our family, including our child-to-be. We are praying that God would be glorified as He provides the funds and prepares us for the journey ahead. We eagerly await bringing this little one home, while gaining an even greater understanding of Christ's love for us and our own adoption into the family of God!