Fundraising

When we made the decision to adopt, we were at first concerned about the financial strains it would add to our family. When I made the decision to quit teaching last year to pursue our fertility treatments, we knew we were making the right decision. After the treatments failed and I had already cut out my part of the income, I began questioning if we had made the right choice. Then, we started thinking about adoption. Our first worry was that we already had a medical loan to pay off because of the IVF. We had friends who had recently adopted and I began to reach out to them to see what we should do in order to raise the money. I knew there were grants so I began to also look into those. Come to find out that many grants won't even let you apply until you have completed a Home Study or until you are actually placed with a child. Then, other grant applications want to make sure you have already exhausted all of your means of saving money such as asking parents or doinf fundraisers. So, we were back to fundraising.

I guess I shouldn't have doubted things were going to work out at all since we completely feel this choice to adopt was not our own, but a choice God made for us. But, my anxiety started creeping in again. I began to research ways to earn money and also looked to those adoptive parents to see what they had done.

This past weekend, we had our first fundraiser. It was a garage sale where most of the items were donated by friends and neighbors. In my doubt, I had already scoured my own home for everything we didn't need. We ended up borrowing tables from my husband's work in order to place all of the things. We had a total of five tables covered in things and even more on the driveway. We also had furniture that was donated. We didn't sell everything, but we made enough to almost cover our home study and we still have things in our garage to sell. This was further proof to us that this is the way God wants us to go.

To make things even better, after a long day with the sale, we went to eat Chinese. Gary and I don't really take too much stock in fortune cookies, but we did read our fortunes. They both said, "It is a job well done." I was moved to tears knowing what we had done all day. It also reminded me of a sermon from our pastor focused on Nehemiah. Nehemiah was in a foriegn country and he decided to go back to his homeland (Jerusalem) to help them build a wall around the city for protection. The whole time he was building the wall, the enemies kept trying to get him to quit and come down. His reply was that he would not come down until the job was finished. He tarried all night and day until he had finished the job. (Nehemiah 3-4). After the sermon, we were given a sheet of window clings with the main verse from Nehemiah. I put these window clings on my bathroom mirror, my alarm clock, my bedroom mirror and the rear view mirror in my car. Everytime I have a negative thought, I see the verse and remind myself that if we are following God's will, we are doing a good work and we shouldn't give up until the job is done. We can't let the devil bring us down with negativity. We have to keep believing God put us here in this place on our journey only to bring glory to Him and His work.

We now have the Home Study packet to compelte. It is a daunting task. We have to each write a 4-10 page autobiography that has to include specifics about our upbringing and family history and we each have a separate list of 21 questions to answer. In addition to this, we have to gather all kind of documents such as marriage license, birth certificates, etc. We have to take child care classes and CPR. We also have to have background checks and fingerprinting. Most daunting of all is that we paid a huge fee to have all of this paperwork sent to us and now we have to pay for the fingerprinting, the classes, the mail to be sent to us. But, WE CANNOT COME DOWN BECAUSE WE ARE DOING A GOOD WORK.

Thank you to all of you who have stood by us through this time in our life and who have unselfishly given of your resources and your time and most of all your prayers. We are praying that all of the paperwork is handled with care and that it all gets completed in record time and that our waiting child will be here before we know it.