More Thoughts on Adoption Finances

I’ve blogged once before about adoption finances regarding the details of our own personal story and how our adoption was financed (click here to read). However, I wanted to touch on this subject again, because finances are such a HUGE ‘paralyzer’ in considering adoption. At the adoption awareness event on Sunday this subject came up again and again with many of the attendees that I was able to chat with. It seems that there are MANY couples out there who are completely emotionally ready to adopt. They’ve considered the effects that adoption will have on their family, lifestyle, and future and are willing to forfeit their own comfort in order to follow what Jesus has placed in their heart. Many times a husband or a wife even has a little spot already carved out in their heart for their adopted child somewhere out there in the world. BUT…..when they look at the monetary figures that go along with adoption, and stare back at their own income/living expenses, on paper it just doesn’t make sense how it could happen. An excel spreadsheet doesn’t lie. Sometimes it just doesn’t look possible. I wanted to include an excerpt on this exact topic from that book I am always mentioning “Adopted for Life” by Russell D. Moore. After the excerpt I will conclude with a few more thoughts of my own.

(excerpt from pages 135-136)
Can you put a baby on Visa or Mastercard? How can you afford to adopt when it’s so expensive? This is often one of the first questions I’m asked by couples interested in adoption. Can we afford it? Is adoption something only economically affluent people can pull off? Will this process bankrupt us for a generation or more?

First of all, yes, adoption is expensive. Some adoptions can be very expensive. But let’s put the cost in perspective. Have you ever been to a parenting seminar where an expert starts talking about money? Have you heard these experts rattle off the figure of what it takes to raise a child from birth to 18? It sounds daunting, doesn’t it? When you hear a figure like that, you don’t think of anything else on which you could ever spend that amount of cash. It sounds like something only a hyper-wealthy entrepreneur could afford. But look around. There are parents everywhere. They’re not Rockefellers or Hiltons. They’re not all tycoons or heiresses. Garbage collectors have children, as do discount store shelf-stockers and coffee shop clerks and people in every other occupation you can imagine. Child-rearing itself is expensive, but all kinds of people do it – because it’s a priority, and families adjust their internal economies to fit.

The same is true with adoption. When you hear the cost of an adoption – and the costs differ wildly depending on the kind of adoption, where it is, and so forth – you’ll be tempted to despair. That money, though, is a final figure, with everything accounted for, in most cases. The money isn’t rung up on a cash register at the end as someone scans your baby’s leg across an electronic reader. The cost is dribbled out a little bit at a time across the entire process – an attorney’s fee here, an agency’s fee there, an airline ticket here, a birth mother’s hospital bill there, and so forth….

The main reason I wanted to share that excerpt is to highlight the mindset of thinking of the adoption cost in small chunks….instead of just staring at the final, daunting figure. This mindset, combined with what I shared in my previous post about trusting God to provide for you if He has clearly led you to start the adoption process could be powerful. With these two things combined, you could essentially gain the mindset of depending on God each step of the way instead of focusing so much on the end.

I know it is common language for a Christian to say ‘God will provide’, but the truth is, that I have example after example of God doing just that….providing the financial means for families to adopt, even when it looks merely impossible from the get go. The author of the above excerpt gives his own awesome testimony of how God came through for he and his wife in this exact area of finances. He starts off the story by saying “When Maria and I started the adoption process, we had no money. I was a doctoral student, working as a part-time research assistant, and my wife was a low-paid office secretary……and yet, God was, it seemed, leading us to do something that would cost possibly more than the two of us combined made in a year….” and he goes on to share the cool way that God came through. And that’s just it, when you adopt, the entire process forces you to FULLY rely on God for your every need….from the beginning, much of your faith WILL BE TESTED in the area of finances. There are not many other ways in the life of a typical American Christian in which we are forced to completely have to rely on God to provide. I am talking the fullness of the definition of faith: Now faith is being sure of what we hope for and certain of what we do not see (Hebrews 11:1). This is one of those times when it is scary and may even seem irrational, but you must go ALL IN, which is only possible if you trust and believe that God is going to come through. Please hear me loud and clear, I am not advocating for someone deeply in debt with credit cards or loans or whatever to go more into debt by beginning an adoption. With that sort of situation it is likely that you need to begin getting your finances in order first. What I am saying though, is don't let your finances become an excuse for not obeying if God has clearly led your hearts to start an adoption. I am telling you that when I first looked up the cost of international adoption I quickly closed out of the internet and said to myself It’s totally impossible. We can’t do it. At least I looked into it. But there is no way. Lucky for me, God kept bugging me and bugging me and bugging me about adoption. And what started as us worrying about money, ended in us understanding that most of our fears centered around the idea of losing the security we had because of our money….not necessarily losing the actual amounts from our savings. I am so glad God kept bugging me. I cannot believe we almost missed out on ALL of this. God made the world and everything in it. He is the Lord of heaven and earth and does not live in temples build by hands. He is not served by human hands, as if He needed anything, because He himself gives all men life and breath and everything else (Acts 17:24-25). He’s bigger than a chunk of money.

Here’s another cool story that just happened to some of my friends regarding God providing for them in the area of adoption finances. Click here to read.

I should also recognize too that there are some individuals who are just not at all in a position in which they can personally adopt a child at this point, but still would like to obey Jesus’ command to care for the orphans. If that is you, then I urge you to consider donating monetarily to a family who is adopting, just like what happened to my friend above. You have no idea how $100, $200, $300….$1000 etc. etc. could be a COMPLETE answer to prayer for an adoptive family in process. Remember, keep the mindset of the amount due in chunks of money. Maybe their next chunk due is $2000 for a court fee. Imagine you donating $500 of that to them! WOW, that would be a HUGE blessing that God could use you for!!!!! If you would like to donate to an adoption and don’t know of any families adopting then email me, and I can hook you up with some. You can also consider donating to the James 1:27 Foundation (www.james127foundationadopt.org) which I just learned about at the event on Sunday. This is a non-profit organization that gives adoption grants to Christian families residing in the state of Iowa. The grants given are anywhere from $1000 to $3000.

And just one last thought to mention….an inspiring little tidbit along the lines of what I’ve been talking about:

On the despairing shores of the Red Sea, the Israelites couldn’t see what was in the distance. They had no binoculars that could view Canaan or even the opposite shore. But the Lord gave them a simple plan: tell the children of Israel to go forward (Exodus 14:15). The nineteenth-century expositor C.H. Mackintosh believed the Red Sea did not divide throughout all at once, but opened progressively as Israel moved forward, so that they needed to trust God for each fresh step. Mackintosh wrote, “God never gives guidance for two steps at a time. I must take one step, and then I get light for the next. This keeps the heart in abiding dependence upon God.” ~The Red Sea Rules by Robert J. Morgan~

Sierra Leone and My Bucket List

Well, you can probably guess what item on my bucket list I will be checking off just by reading the name of this post! Coming up in March 2011 over spring break, I will get to take my first ever trip to Sierra Leone, West Africa!!! I couldn’t find a good map showing both SL and Ghana so here are two images showing each so that you can see where they are in comparison to one another….pretty close:

All of the trip planning/details are still in the works, but an exciting opportunity has come up for Jake and I to spend about 1 week’s time serving at an orphanage in Sierra Leone called The Covering. The Covering is part of an organization called The Raining Season, which I have blogged about before. You can read about the Raining Season by clicking here. The Covering has an awesome blog which you can check out here: http://savetheorphan.blogspot.com/

There are many purposes for this trip, and let me start by saying, no, we are not leaving Ghana in the dust!!!!! In fact, the main reason for this trip to Sierra Leone is to get our feet wet in an orphanage setting which will ultimately benefit the project we have started in Ghana. You may remember me saying that Ghana has very few orphanages because many have been shut down due to ill and corrupt practices. In fact, one of Ghana’s most celebrated orphanages, The Osu Children’s Home in Accra, was recently the target of a 7 month undercover investigation in which there were horrifying findings of the treatment of the orphans residing there. You can find the article about the investigation by clicking here. The title of the article is ‘Undercover in the Orphan’s Home of Hell’ if that gives you any idea of the details you will be choking down as you read.

Anyways, you know from my previous posts that it has been on the radar within our Ghana project to start a home for orphans in Ghana. Our initial vision was to have the orphanage alongside the academy/school which we bought the land for on one of our previous trips. However, God completely guided us in a different direction for the orphanage home following our visa disaster trip in June. In the months following that trip it became clear that the idea for the orphan home was not to be a long term vision….instead it could be started now. I am going to be detailing this more in some upcoming posts. God’s guidance for the orphan home has really been spurred by the events surrounding the initial visa disaster with Justice. If it weren’t for our unfortunate visa delay in June, none of this orphanage stuff would even be rolling yet…..but it is…..and I can’t wait to tell you more about it!

Jake is also gearing up for his next trip to Ghana coming up at the end of December this year. I decided to sit this one out since I will be accompanying him on the trip to Sierra Leone. Jake has wanted to do this trip in December as an outreach opportunity for any of the kids/coaches in his Kingdom Hoops program. To date there is 1 other coach going, 2 girls from his 8th grade girls team, the Vanderweide family (they were going to be the host family for Prince) and my mom is also going! There are a few others pending. My mom has already been blogging about some cool and personal things that God has done to reveal to her that He has a clear purpose for her to go! I believe she is also going to be blogging some more this week about the trip details. You can find her blog here: http://odlemountain.blogspot.com/ I’ll also be blogging some more about the trip hopefully later this week. :)

Meaning Behind the Bracelet

Last Sunday at church JJ and Justice each made salvation bracelets in their classrooms. They were SO EXCITED to tell us all about them so I videotaped them each giving their descriptions of the meaning of the colors in the bracelet. First up is JJ’s description. You’ll notice a major difference between the length of his description and Justice’s! JJ had to search for the words to describe each color fully. :) You’ll also notice Justice squirming and shaking his head as JJ explains. :) I think he thought JJ was sort of getting off topic (and JJ's version isn't necessarily full of sound doctrine) but it was still fun listening to JJ explain what he learned as best as he could. :)



And here is Justice's description:


And in case you didn’t catch that, here are the meanings of each of the colors:

Black – represents our sin, which separates us from God.
Red – represents Jesus’ blood when he died on the cross for our sins.
White – represents cleansing/washing away of sin and gaining purity through forgiveness.
Green - represents the growth of our relationship with God.
Gold – represents the promise of eternal life in Heaven….streets of gold!

Justice's First Day of School!

Yesterday was Justice’s first day of Kindergarten!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! It was SO EXCITING, and yet one of those ‘scary mom moments’ at the same time. To entrust your child into the hands of others is an interesting experience!

I don’t have any real in-depth thoughts about our decision to have Justice start school now, other than Jake and I both have felt that ‘he is ready’. We had been thinking it in our minds separately, and then one night as we were talking about Justice we both discovered that we were thinking the same thing. I think his school readiness comes from a few things:

First of all, his English speaking and comprehension is AWESOME! This was one thing I really did not expect. He’s really only been learning and speaking English since December 2009….which means it hasn’t even been a year yet. Other than adjusting to our accents and learning American words in place of British-English words, he really has had no problem communicating or understanding what we are saying. It’s kind of amazing. English is the primary language in Ghana, however, it is not spoken in the villages or remote towns. But it is taught in most of the schools in Ghana. We enrolled Justice in school around December of last year in Ghana, which is where he started learning his alphabet and some English. His English progressed much further once we moved him in with Esi and family. They speak English in their home, and made it a priority to only speak English with Justice so that he could learn it. If he did not know English well, we would not be sending him to school this early.

Another thing that has really helped our situation is that Justice has transitioned/adjusted to our family extremely well. I know this can really vary with adoptions, and I feel that this is such a huge blessing from God. We haven’t really experienced any of the heart-breaking issues that I’ve read about regarding bonding/attachment gone bad. I think the time that we got to spend in Ghana on our different trips over the past year really helped to solidfy our commitment to Justice in his mind. I really can’t even describe the way that he has just molded himself right into our lives….perfectly. He was a perfect fit and we all know it. This undoubtedly was also helped by his time spent with Esi and family….as he learned how to function in a family setting.

Another thing that has been flourishing is Justice’s desire to learn. He is just ON FIRE for learning new things right now. He asks at least a million questions a day, and is so determined to learn new skills. If I show him something new, I notice him practicing and practicing until he gets it just right. When we toured Justice’s school for the first time last week, he was so wide-eyed! At first when we walked in he kept asking me where the school was! He didn’t understand that the entire building was the school. He was expecting one little room within the building to be ‘the school’. :) When we toured the art room, music room, classroom, and gym, he then realized that all of the rooms were the school. And he looked at me with a big old smile and said “School is going to be SO fun!” And that it was! Here are a few pieces that he brought home in his ‘take home folder’ yesterday:

And here he is stepping off the school bus with Sam! You could see his smile from a mile away!

At dinner time we do our highs and lows for the day, and his favorite part of the day (his high) was going to school and ‘playing football with his friends.’ JJ asked him how many friends he made and Justice said “Oh JJ, I made too many friends and I can’t count them all!” LOVE IT! :)

From the Mouths of My Loves - Edition #2

JJ: Look at all this hair on my legs.

Justice: If I get an Iron Man suit (for Halloween) will I have his powers?

Jayla: Mr. Vegas (our cat) needs a timeout.

JJ: Mommy, are you coming to my football game at noon today?
Mommy: Yes, who do you play?
JJ: Oklahoma.

Justice: I am freezing! It feels like I am in the freezer. Even being in the freezer would be better than this.

Jayla: I want to wear my princess shirt.
Mommy: You wore it yesterday. It’s dirty.
Jayla: I WANT TO WEAR MY PRINCESS SHIRT!!!!!!!!!!!

Justice: Are pumpkins a fruit?

Jayla: I like my pockwitz (pockets).

JJ: Justice, when you play at the tournament you have to listen to your coach. And if somebody wants to shoot, you have to pass it to them. And you have to run really fast and play defense.
Justice: Oh JJ, I am not thinking about what you are thinking about. I’m thinking about going to school on Monday! Mommy, when you take me to school on Monday, are you going to go in with me?
Mommy: Yes, on the first day I will go in with you, but on the other days I will drop you off at the front door.
Justice: Oh no!
JJ: You don’t need Mommy to go in with you. Mommy doesn’t go into school with Sam, and Mommy doesn’t go into school with Peprah.
Justice: But Peprah and Sam are big!
JJ: You are big!
Justice: No I am not!
JJ: You are 6. You are big.
Justice: No, I am little. You are 4 and you are little and I am 6 and I am little.
This conversation went on for quite some time after this!

JJ: C'mon Mommy, let’s play REAL football.
Mommy: What’s REAL football?
Justice: Tackle football!
Mommy: I’m a mommy, I don’t play tackle football.
JJ: Ok, you can be quarterback.

Sam: Will we have a body in heaven?
JJ: Will there be orange juice in heaven?
Justice: What was God doing before he made the world?

Jayla: I found my homework.

:)