Considering international adoption

Maybe you have been moved to adopt and you are wondering where to start. I've been reflecting back on our journey so far and have a few suggestions I would make for anyone contemplating international adoption.

1. Sponsor a child.
This may seem like a strange place to start but I'm glad we did this. We didn't feel like we were ready financially to adopt but we wanted to do something.  Sponsoring a child through World Vision was a great way to talk to our kids about children in financial need around the world.  We started praying and caring for this little girl in Ethiopia and she became part of our family.  There are great organizations like Compassion, World Vision, and Show Hope and they all seem to do an amazing job to change the lives of children in some of the neediest places.

2. Get debt free and have a zero based budget.
There would be no way we could have gotten where we are financially in this adoption if we hadn't done this step.  We took Financial Peace University at our church from Dave Ramsey's organization.  In 18 months, we paid off $39,000 and now the only debt we have is our mortgage.  We have a zero based budget where we plan every dollar before the month begins.  We can be intentional about where our money is going and make a plan.

3. Pray pray pray
Pray for wisdom and direction and learn all you can about orphans.  This is probably the most important step.  Make sure you and your spouse are in the same place emotionally and spiritually.

4. Save at least $5000-$7000
That seems insignificant in a process that may end up costing nearly $40,000 but its a great place to start.  It is enough with our agency to pay for the 1st installment of the agency fees and a home study. Then make a plan.  Plan how much you are able to contribute each month (including how much you can cut from other places), how much you can find quickly (savings, bonuses, extra paychecks, tax returns), and how much you will need to raise in addition to what you can contribute.

5. Make a fundraising plan
Start buy setting up a fundraising website like we have at AdoptTogether.  You need to have a completed home study before it will become active. Then, you can decide what other fundraising options you want to consider. For us, that meant selling shirts, having a yard sale, a pancake breakfast and selling other crafts.  Set up a blog and make a plan for how you are going to share your story on social media.

6. Explore adoption grants
There are a lot of grants out there and they can go a long way in helping families adopt.  Many of them only apply to families under a certain income, faith or location.  We have currently applied for four that we qualified for.  Most of them require you to have a completed home study and many of them can be quite lengthy to complete, but even if just one comes through it would be worth all that effort.

7. Go to an informational seminar or do a webinar
Information is power and hearing other people's stories can really answer a lot of your questions.  We went to a seminar from our agency and it was so key in us feeling right about this and moving forward. It can also just give you an overall feel of an agency and know if it is the right one for your family. Talk to as many adoptive families as you can find and don't be afraid to ask questions.

DTC!

Finally our dossier is in China (DTC is Dossier to China)! Now we wait for it to be logged in, translated and approved. It is still a long way from the finish line but it is a huge step and feels like a light shining in the darkness of waiting.

We don't know how long all of that will take.  We ask that you pray with us for it to all happen quickly.  Liam has been waiting 7 years and we don't want him to wait another moment to have a family.

We got the news that our dossier was on its way while we were volunteering at Catalyst Dallas last Friday.  It was an amazing chance to serve others and still get to hear the amazing line up of speakers. My heart was encouraged to hear so many of them saying the same message of not giving up when things look hopeless.  They all told their own testimony of persistence in the face of overwhelming odds and I needed to hear it.

We heard Bob Goff speak just minutes after getting the email from our agency and I was overwhelmed with emotion at the end of his talk.  If you haven't read "Love Does", go out and get it today and if you have, I hope it impacted your life. We all need to take the resources God gives us and go out and live the gospel.  We all need to be changed into the next, more humble version of ourselves.  I'm going to keep working at becoming that Sarah; the one that loves even bigger, serves even faster and shares Christ even more boldly.

Our current prayer requests:
-a quick log in date of our dossier
-golfers to sign up for the golf tournament
-financial provision for our travel costs
-more children to find families

Never fast enough

I had really been praying for God to open up a way for us to share about our adoption.  I have even signed up to be a storyteller for other orphans with our agency.  The idea is that we share the story of these kids and help them find families. My husband and I can only adopt so many kids but our dream is to set off a domino effect of other couples looking to adopt.

Before I could barely say "amen", God has been answering my heart's cry.  He enabled me to represent our agency at ShowHope at a local Casting Crowns concert last Saturday.  I got to tell our story thus far of our adoption to couples interested in learning about adoption. I passed out information, showed off Liam's picture and prayed and cried with people.  He also had my husband's lifegroup ask him to tell our story this morning!

At the booth with me on Saturday, I was working with one of the ladies from our agency who helped process our home study.  The first thing she said to me was, "Your adoption is going so fast!!" to which I promptly burst into tears.  She's right.  If things keep going how they are, our adoption will be about the length of a pregnancy, but try to tell a pregnant lady that those months are flying by.  Also, imagine one of your kids was in China in less than optimal conditions and you couldn't see them for 9-12 months.  That is how my heart feels.  Every day that goes by is a day further away from the last day I held Liam. He's growing older, changing and I'm not there to see it.  He's probably lost more teeth and gotten taller.  No matter how fast we go it will never be fast enough.  

So we press on.  Last week we got our fingerprint letter with Immigration and Naturalization and it set our appointment for early November.  We went in to try to get it done more quickly and it worked! Now we are just waiting for approval.

We are also so grateful for the donations.  We have already brought in over $3200 in the first 3 weeks of our online giving campaign.  Thank you all so much.  You are part of Liam's story.  Thank you for every prayer because things are going so quickly. But for this mom's heart, it can never be fast enough so keep praying!

The Potential of Social Media

buttons courtesy Craftiments

I wish we didn't have to fundraise.

Fundraising means asking people for money and I've worked all of my life to never have to do that.  I read a blog recently that said one of the "pros" to fundraising was that it humbles you and that is some serious truth.  My husband and I had $39K in student loan debt and car loan that we fought our way out of using the principles in Financial Peace University by Dave Ramsey. It got us to the place where we could finally have true financial peace.  We were going to start saving for an adoption so that we didn't have to ask for a penny.  

Well, you know what God does with our perfect plans?  He makes your cousin ask you to go to China to visit orphans after you had decided to put your plans to adopt on hold. He leads you to fall in love with a little boy with a serious heart defect.  He makes you ask for help because you can't do this alone.

And I know that by asking for help, this first of all tells the world that we don't have $20k laying around.  We did have some savings and we are using that now. We are using my husband's 3rd paychecks since he gets paid bimonthly. We are using our photography business profits.  We are using the vacation funds we saved. 

I also have to constantly fear that the world is judging our every financial decision.  I'm afraid our friends are going to give us $25 and then see us at Chick-fil-A and judge us for eating out.  I'm afraid that I'm going to post that we went to the zoo and people are going to think that we should have used that money towards the adoption. This is probably crazy but welcome to my crazy brain. We are trying to cut back in any area to fund as much as we can ourselves.  We are also still trying to maintain a healthy level of normal for our 3 girls.

So here we are. We have written a lot of checks already but the biggest financial obstacles are yet to come. We have to pay for our travel, Liam's visas/passports, the fee to the orphanage and our final payment to our agency which is estimated at about $20,000.  Due to some amazing and generous donations already, we are down to about $18,860.  

That's only about $6.82/person if all the people that follow me on Twitter or are friends with my husband and I on Facebook donated.  I know that isn't going to happen but just imagine it.  For less than the cost of a coffee and snack at Starbucks, we would have every penny we needed to bring our son home, give him a family and the medical care he needs.  

I'm not trying to guilt anyone to giving to something they don't want to.  This is simply an invitation to be a part of something amazing. That's one thing that my husband loved about our first adoption meeting with America World (our agency).  It wasn't a guilt trip or a bunch of sad pictures of lonely kids.  It was an invitation to be a part of God's redemptive story and we heard the testimonies of those who have gone through it. 

We are so overwhelmed with gratitude at those who have already given.  People have donated money in absolutely stunning amounts.  Every time someone has handed us a check, I've come away grateful to be given the opportunity to see how generous people are.  

If you can give, we invite you to. It is secure, tax deductible and greatly appreciated.

You can give as little as $10 or as much as you want.

You can give monthly or weekly to break it down. If you wanted to give $100, you could give $20 for 5 months.

You can give here at AdoptTogether,

God bless you.

Why Adoption is So Expensive

One of the questions we always get about adoption is about the cost.  Why is it so expensive?  I've even heard some frustration from people who think it should be cheaper. After all, the point is to get kids into families, not make a profit. I truly understand and I wish that adoption could be cheaper but I want to pull back the veil a little and show you why adoption is so expensive.

Here is the link to the costs of a Chinese adoption from our agency. 

As you can see adoption isn't like buying a car or a house.  It isn't one lump sum payment with everything included.  It is a series of little costs and all of those costs have their purpose.  Some of them can totally vary based on a family's needs or situation.  My husband and I already have valid passports but some couples don't, so that is a possible expense.  Travel can vary by season and where you are traveling to and from.  We are blessed to live near a major international airport but if you lived in rural Wyoming, you might have to take more flights to get to China.  You might have different medical costs to get through the physical exam section.  We had to pay $25 for each of us to get a tuberculosis test, for example. 

Most of the costs are fairly fixed though.  It costs a fair sum of money for the home study because we have met with our social worker three times and she has basically written a short autobiography of our lives.  We have had to go to different offices for fingerprints and those agencies have set costs. You pay the orphanage in China around $5000 (in Yuan) for your child.  You also have another cost for their in-country exam and paperwork as well as getting them a passport and US visa so they can travel.  Imagine what a 2-3 week trip would cost to go to China for 2 people and then add in another ticket for our child to get home.  You can see very quickly how those costs add up and that they are all legitimate reasons for adoption to be very expensive.  In addition to all of this, we are paying experts at our agency to guide us through this process and they are doing a wonderful job.

So far we have made it through paying for that first blue shaded area, "Application and Dossier Building".  We have the money on hand through our savings and amazing and generous donations to cover the 2nd section "Dossier Submission and Waiting".  The problem (and blessing) in our case is that we won't be doing much waiting since we have already been matched with a specific child.  We hope that we will be quickly approved and be waiting on travelling very soon.  This means that we don't have the benefit of that waiting time for much fundraising and that the biggest amount, "Referral and Travel", will be due fairly soon.  

We are now going live with our online crowdfunding site AdoptTogether.  

We researched all the different sites like GoFundMe, etc. but this one allows you to give to adoptive families that have been verified through their agencies.  Best of all, AdoptTogether is a 501c3 organization so you receive a receipt that can be claimed on your taxes.  They take your contribution and then grant it back to us. We will also be applying for a host of other adoption grants.  You can give as much or as little as you can and if you want to give on a recurring basis like monthly until Liam comes home, you are very welcome to.  Please share our story and our site and know that we are so thankful for everyone who has given.  It is so exciting to see how God is writing Liam's story through each of you who have given and prayed for us.  

I don't need to know what's next

This is our official blog announcement that we are in the adoption process.  This is something that we have always known was going to happen "someday" but it is finally here.  We went to our first adoption seminar from our agency last Fall and we were planning on starting the process this January but Jeff felt a strong "wait" command from God so we did.  In about March, my cousin Suzette asked if I wanted to go with our agency on a trip to China.  I figured this was a great way to learn about the kids and see what their life was like before they find a family.  It was an amazing trip as you can see from previous blogs.

The urgency to adopt became so much more real and Jeff felt released by God to move forward.  So we began the process at the beginning of July.  Since then we have been approved by our agency, started our home study and become matched with a child.  It has been a whirlwind of paperwork, social worker appointments, emails, fingerprints, signatures, doctor appointments, TB tests and emotion so far.  Right now we are pre-approved for our child in China and we are considered a "paper-chasing family".  We are trying to get all of our paperwork in a row so that they can give final approval and we can start the waiting process for being approved to travel and bring him home.  

Our girls are excited and so curious about what life will be like with a brother.  Jeff and I are so extremely thrilled to have a son.  There is so much to be joyful about but so much left to do.  

One thing I'm trying to work on with my kids is contentment and trust because they are always asking a million questions.  They want to know what we are having for dinner, where we are going, what is going to happen next every moment.  I make them a yummy dinner, we go cool places and do fun things every day and yet they just NEED TO KNOW.  I'm praying about this and asking God, "Why do they do this? I give them every thing they need!" And always, He reminds me that I'm just like them.  There is a new Christian song out from Moriah Peters called, "You Carry Me", where she sings the line, "I don't need to know what's next. You'll be with me every step."

What a statement. I don't need to know what's next.  I just need to be ready and available.  I don't know how long the rest of this adoption process will take, when our son will come home or what his medical outlook will be.  But I know He will be with us every step.  It make take us places we don't expect. It make be a longer road than we want to travel.  But I'm going to trust.

One of the scariest parts to me is the money.  Chinese adoptions average about $30K and we don't have that at the moment.  I didn't expect this process to go as quickly as it has and I have no idea how we are going to finish paying for that right now.  But I have to get up every day and believe that He has that step figured out.  If He brought us to this child on the other side of the world, he surely can figure out how it is going to be paid for.  

I ask for your prayers not only for the money and the process but for the health of our son as he waits to come home. Pray that God carries all of us.

Sarah's trip to China

Less that two weeks ago and I feel like I am still there looking at the pictures.  I went to China with America World Adoption Agency's ACT program.  This program is open to anyone who wants to go visit the orphanages that they partner with in order to build relationships with orphanages, love orphans and advocate for these kids.  I truly believe that we were able to do all three during our trip to China.

Our group consisted of teens, moms who have adopted, teachers, pastors, a nurse, photographers but mostly just 13 people who love God's children.  We started in Beijing with a tour of the Great Wall and the Summer Palace.  It was a beautiful, awe-inspiring introduction to China.

 

Then we were off to the Shaanxi province.  We worked in both a larger and smaller, more rural orphanage meeting kids that you couldn't help but instantly fall in love with.  I think one of the biggest surprises was how happy and welcoming both the orphanages and the staff were.  

We started by doing crafts with the kids and getting to know them.  The kids at these orphanages are labelled "special needs" and had a variety of conditions ranging from fixed cleft lips, Down Syndrome, Cerebral Palsy, Spina Bifida, and many others.  They seemed healthy, happy and full of joy.  We got to stay long enough each day to see the rhythm of their schedule at the orphanage.  We helped take them to the playground outside, blew bubbles, fold origami, watched them perform songs, fix their hair after bath time and a million other wonderful moments. I was the photographer on the trip and focused on taking portraits of the children in the American World system for those who already were assigned to parents and those who will soon be on the waiting child list.  

We had the honor to throw an entire room full of the kids a group birthday party, paint a mural and use the money we raised funds for to buy new toys and clothing.  The joy in the room during the birthday party is hard to express. The presence of God was so real and so tangible in the faces of each child.  It is so hard to put each moment and emotion in a blog post.  Our leader prayed before we left that God would go before us and surround the children and that was answered so clearly.  I pray that each child we saw would find a home where they could know Christ and know the love of a family.

Here is my blog on our team journal.

Religion that is pure and undefiled before God, the Father, is this: to visit orphans and widows in their affliction, and to keep oneself unstained from the world. James 1:27