When your calling to do something overcomes your fear...that is when you can finally trust God. Some people may find the choices that others make irresponsible or hasty. Sometimes we make irresponsible and very impulsive decisions. Sometimes they don't turn out well. Adoption, isn't one of them.
Some people do not feel like they can adopt simply because it costs a lot of money. Its hard to figure out how to pay for things but there are a lot of families who just jump in and trust that the money will come. We are one of those families.
For those of you who have been wondering how much adoption costs, I'll just tell you. Our agency estimates that in 2012 the Fees and Expenses would come out to about $32,000.
The fees cover things like processing of paper work, the time it takes our social worker to come to our home and interview us and then type out a report to be sent with our dossier, fingerprinting and background checks, translation of our papers, registration of our documents, post adoption reports, travel, and different documents that cost money.
We are hoping to adopt 2 children. The fees will not be twice as much but we are looking at a total of something like $40,000 or more. We are not trying to raise $40,000. We are doing everything we can to pay for every part of this adoption ourselves. But it is a little overwhelming at times, but then we remember that God is a part of this journey.
Last weekend some friends of ours hosted a support dinner for us. They wanted to (1) Make people aware that we were adopting and (2) help us any way they could with our funds. These friends of ours are precious treasures from the Lord.
I did absolutely NOTHING for this dinner other than show up. They sent the invitations and cleaned up afterwards and EVERYTHING in between.
The dinner was absolutely special and wonderful. The tables were beautiful, the food was delicious, the guests were so kind, the music (which I am listening to right now) was so sweet, the slide show was heartwarming, and the video they showed even worked! There were pictures of us and a really cool cut out of Africa with a bible verse on it. They came and got my 147 Million Orphans stuff and lots of it sold.
There was also a table with a bowl and some envelopes. The girls made an announcement at the dinner that they had raised over $1500 for us!! That is so HUGE! Now, back to that bowl...when we got home and opened up the envelopes we counted $2,760. Several people gave us donations over the next few days.
Because these girls decided to help us, we are more than $4,500 closer to the goal!!! That's a really big deal!! Plus now that many more people know our story, we have that many more people praying for us! At the dinner they also left note cards on the table for people to write us notes and the kind words that people left us mean so much to us.
God has provided for us in so many ways and we are so grateful! The people in our lives are great instruments of his handiwork! Thank you so much, we are blessed and really don't have the right words to express how thankful we are to the people who worked on the dinner for us, those that came, those that donated, and for the ones praying for us...we love you!
I know there were other wonderful people who helped, thank you so much!!! IF ANYONE HAS FRIENDS WHO ARE ADOPTING AND YOU WANT TO HELP THEM.....Please contact me abbymhysmith@gmail.com, because this was a really great event!
Please pray for us as we await the next step in our process to be completed..it is hard to wait but boy are we growing!!! :)
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