Adoption Update:
I realized that I
haven’t updated on our adoption progress (or written a blog post at all) for
months. I have some extra time today, so here it goes!
As far as the
process goes, we are on the second to last “big” step. We submitted our dossier
7 weeks ago, and we are gearing up for a long period of waiting. After 6 months
of doing paperwork and tracking down documents nearly every day, we are now in
the phase of doing NOTHING every day. As a super-Type A personality, this is
easily the hardest part of adoption for me yet, and I'm only 7 weeks in. At least when I was tracking
down clearances and filling out endless piles of paperwork, I felt productive.
Now, I just sit and wait. I lie in bed at night and wait. I dream about getting
a phone call (no, really, I did last night). I check my email every other
second. I freak out every time I get an out-of-state phone call, only to freak
out on the person on the other end (political people, union phone calls,
dentist appointment reminders) and have them take me off their call list. Even
while knowing we could be waiting most of this year (the average is 2-10 months…
if you can call that an average), I still have an incessant expectation that
our referral is coming sooner than later. So I wait. Sometimes I wait gracefully
and full of faith; other times not so much.
Since we’ve got
all this time before a super-awesome post about getting our referral, let’s
talk about money and where we are in paying for the adoption. It’s a touchy,
sensitive subject. Our hope is that we are transparent enough about the process
and our need and our sacrifice so that you who have given, or even those of you
who have yet to give, can feel completely comfortable with how the money is
being used.
As far as the
fundraising process goes, we are $7,000-$8,000
away from being fully funded, travel included. That is incredible to me,
especially based on the fact that we haven’t done any BIG event fundraisers
yet. God is so good. That was one of my biggest reservations to starting the
process.
We had always
planned to adopt, even when we were dating, but not right now. Our plan was a few
years/kids down the road, when we were rich and had the money to do it (YAH RIGHT! I
don’t foresee us ever being “rich”). We entered into marriage with
approximately $40 to our Chappell-Brinegar names (seriously…we didn’t know
whether we were taking a small honeymoon until after we opened all of the
generous cards post-reception). We finished college making $12,000 total that
first year of marriage. It was like a celebration every time we “made it” each
month. But hey, we didn’t fight about money ever, because we had none to
fight about! We were to the stage of “I bought you a birthday card, but I didn’t
sign it, so we can take it back and get our $2.99 back” broke-ness. We moved to
IL and overdrew our bank account putting gas in the U-haul in Indianapolis. We had to borrow $200 from
Daniel’s 12 year old brother. True story (but we paid him back with interest). When
I got my teaching job and Daniel was working part-time, we started saving a bit.
Then we got pregnant. Then we had to buy a house or deliver a baby as homeless
people due to our rental house being put on the market, so we bought a rat-hole
house that needed a total renovation. When Daniel got a full-time job with FCA
two days before Sawyer was born, we rejoiced at the fact that I could take a
maternity leave (since it’s unpaid, and we were about to have $0 income coming
in). In all those times, God provided exactly what we needed, and even some extra here and there. For the first time, we had two incomes, and we had a somewhat-stable
situation, and we were used to living on nothing. We followed Dave Ramsey’s
plan, paid off all of our debt, renovated our house with cash and DIY pinterest/you-tube
tutorials, and started savings 6 months of expenses for an emergency fund. We
finally made it to middle-class stability. Ha. Then a series of events (and lack of
events) made it clear to us that God was calling us into adoption- a $30,000+
venture, and we had no idea how that was going to be funded. I am thankful for
our savings, because it helped us move forward in the early adoption processes. I thought
God was allowing us to save money for the future/emergencies/etc., basically as
a safety net. Instead, he called us to walk out on the water and trust Him as
our safety net financially. I had to break my emotional ties with financial
stability and be willing to sacrifice my “safety net” for my son or daughter.
(If you’re wondering why adoption is so
costly, here are a couple blog posts that explain it better than I can)…
Why is adoption so expensive?
So far, our
adoption been funded about how our bills, our awesome house, our jobs, and our
debt pay-off have been funded- God’s complete and utter faithfulness to
provide, combined with our desire to be transparent, obedient, and good
stewards of our finances.
If you’re
interested in what our adoption costs and how God has provided, here’s a
breakdown of the costs and how we’ve paid for them:
|
Home Study:
$2500
|
$1700 from the
2013 garage sale, $800 from savings
|
|
Agency
Application fee and First Adoption payment: $4100
|
From savings
|
|
Second Adoption
payment: $11,000
|
$5,000 from
Hand in Hand Matching grant; $6,000 from our Envelope Fundraiser and our
friends’ donations
|
|
Third Adoption
payment: $6,500
|
$4,000 from two
additional grants we received, and $2,100 from donations, $400 from necklace
sales
|
|
Fingerprinting,
Immigration paperwork, various clearances from places: $1,000
|
$500 from reclaimed
wood crafts. $500 from necklaces sales
|
|
Expected fees
(child’s visa, medical physical, etc.):$1,500
|
$1409 saved
from donations ($91 left to raise)
|
|
Travel: estimated
$9-10k
Total: $35,100
|
$2,000 saved
from sponsoring extra-curricular activities at CHS
Left to raise:
around $7-8,000
|
We have tried to
sacrifice our time, skills, and savings to invest in our adoption. We do not
want to ask people to do something we aren’t willing to do. We have spent
countless hours applying for grants and working additional hours in order to be
able to pay for as much of our adoption as possible WITHOUT asking friends and
family. However, even with asking as little as possible, people have been SO
generous in their financial sacrifices to bring our little one home. I
have been challenged and humbled by people’s giving, and (you can ask Daniel),
I have been challenged to be even more generous myself. We could NOT do this
without you, and we are so so SO thankful.
Now, in the final
steps of our adoption, since I cannot just sit and wait gracefully, I am
putting all of my focus towards raising the final money to pay for travel. We
are designing t-shirts and planning two bigger fundraisers (stay tuned for
awesome details!). We are SO thankful
for your support- emotionally, financially, and spiritually! You are awesome,
and our little family (Ugandan included) is so thankful for you!
T-shirt design #1 (we are doing two t-shirts... if this one isn't your style, stay tuned for the next one!)
 |
| So close... |
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