Why all this fundraising?

I don’t know for sure but I’m guessing people are thinking... “Geez, they wanted to adopt, but yet can’t afford the adoption?”

It’s a fair question… so I’d thought I’d try to answer.

So, yes… God has set it on our hearts to adopt a beautiful little girl from China. We don’t know her yet, but we dream of her every second of every day. We just know this is the plan for our family.

But, not too many people have the money sitting in their savings account to cover the cost of adoption. It’s quite expensive.

Many people ask me… "Why does it cost so much?" Honestly, it just adds up. You are paying for many services. The adoption agency is a service that makes sure you have the mounds and mounds of paperwork just perfect for it’s travel to China, they are the ones that match us with our child, they arrange travel and schedule all the government appointments in China, they have staff in China to help us while we are there. We pay the Chinese government fees for all the paperwork they must process. We pay the US government fees for immigration processing. Plane tickets to (and in) China, 14, 16 or 18 (?) days of travel in China. And the list goes on and on.

But, that still doesn’t answer the question does it?

I often post updates on here trying to answer the “how long until you go to China?” question.

If you haven’t been following… We were first expecting that it would most likely be 18 to 24 months before we would be matched with our little girl and travel to China. Of course, we knew these were just estimates, and things might change one way or another. And change they have!

Our Grace will probably be home with us MUCH SOONER than any of us expected. Maybe even a YEAR sooner! That’s great news! Grace will be out of the orphanage, into our loving arms and she will have a family, our family. We just can’t wait!

The challenge... this good news leaves a LOT less time to save all the money we need. We are putting our faith in God that He will provide all we need to bring our Grace home.

One of the ways He is providing for us is by giving me the courage to ask others for help.

Truth is… I HATE fundraising. I don’t even like it when B has to sell popcorn for cub scouts. Usually, I just write a check for $50 and eat a lot of popcorn. But, I know, in this case, that I must swallow my pride, and ask.

So, in addition to scrimping and saving every penny we can, we are dollar by dollar fundraising our way to Grace.

Please see this post about the latest fundraiser that Hip Mom Jewelry is helping us with. This is a great opportunity to Christmas shop early for the women in your life AND help bring our Grace home.

Awesome t-shirts, lovingly designed by two of my very good friends, will be coming soon!

And S and the kids have been working on a little something as well to bring their sister (daughter) home. More info coming soon!

I hope this helps people understand. And I hope everyone knows that we are SO grateful for every person, every family, every friend that helps along on this journey.

Thank you.