How Will We Afford Another Adoption?

Let me start off by saying that I believe if God has put it on your heart to adopt, then He will provide. And sometimes, He asks you to take the step of faith before you have the answers of ‘the how’ (you can read more of my thoughts along those lines here).

As I’ve blogged about previously, this summer we had faced some major financial setbacks, and we weren’t sure how we were even going to make it through July both personally and with Jake’s Kingdom Hoops program. At the time we signed up to adopt we were just starting to see the light at the end of the tunnel through that trial, but we weren’t back on our feet yet. However, we trusted that we had heard God speaking to us on behalf of these girls, and we moved forward. As I posted on yesterday, earlier this summer I had opened up an adoption savings account to start putting away extra/unanticipated income to save for a future adoption. Now in case you didn’t catch this, let me highlight that at the point of application, that $319.88 was all we had for an adoption that will cost us somewhere in the range of $25,000-$30,000!!!! About now I can hear the wisdom of the world chanting ~ Fools! Unwise! What are you thinking?!?!?! But, I take delight in remembering that we are not trusting in ourselves to fund this adoption. We are trusting in the One who says that with Him nothing is impossible (Matthew 19:26 ). And we believe it.

So, there we were, signed up to adopt these two sweet ones at the end of August…..just coming out of a financial hurricane from the past months…..and starting in on our homestudy update which was going to be the next chunk of money due. Now let me tell you how God is funding our adoption….

Around the end of September Jake decided to start calling the IRS every week regarding our adoption tax refund that we had yet to receive back from Justice’s adoption. With the first phone call they said they hadn’t even reviewed the stack of paperwork (invoices, copies of payments, receipts, etc.) that we had mailed in back in July (after our first two stacks of paperwork in April & June were rejected as not enough evidence of our adoption). By Jake’s second phone call a week later they said our refund had been APPROVED and would be issued within 2-3 weeks. Less than 2 weeks later we had $13,419.11 in hand and we took a big, huge, deep breath and rejoiced – with Him, nothing is impossible! About half of our refund will be spent on paying off bills that piled up over the last year. But, the rest we will be able to put in our adoption fund.

Another BIG chunk of our adoption fund is coming from the extra income that Jake has picked up through his individual trainings. He is working himself to exhaustion with these, but with his efforts we are able to actually put away money each month into our savings (our savings right now is our adoption fund) - something that has been absolutely FOREIGN to us the past few years.

Other than that, some unexpected things have happened that have brought us unanticipated money. These unexpected things are totally from the hand of God, and it just makes me smile that we had no idea these chunks of money would be coming to us when we signed up to adopt. First off, two different churches in Iowa asked Jake to come speak to their congregations regarding our Ghana projects. Jake has been able to share ‘our story’ of how God has opened up our eyes and hearts to the nations with the accompaniment of many listening ears. He's also been able to bring awareness of God’s heart for each individual Christ-follower to reach out to the 'least of these', care for the child that has no family, and visit orphans in their distress, in bold and courageous ways (for some this is adoption!). One of these churches supported our Asikuma projects earlier this year, and this time after hearing about our two girls they decided to give money towards our personal adoption fund…..$2500 to be exact. WOW! For those of you in the adoption process you know this is a HUGE chunk of money - when we opened their check that arrived in the mail we rejoiced with mouths dropped to the floor – with Him nothing is impossible! About a week after that we received another check in the mail from a person who goes to that same church who also wanted to contribute to our fund personally….that person blessed us with $225! We smiled knowing how God moves in the hearts of people when it comes to adoption – with Him nothing is impossible! A few weeks later at a different church, Jake got to share our story again, this time with a small-town basketball camp in the mix. All proceeds from the camp were to go to….you guessed it…..our personal adoption fund. This church is adding in a donation to the camp proceeds to go to our adoption and a check will be on its way within the next few weeks. Whooop whoop! With Him nothing is impossible! Two Fridays ago at the fundraising event, Jake had a chunk of time to share about our Ghana projects and he also included the announcement of our adoption and told the story of our girls. At the end of the night while we were cleaning up a grandpa of a family in our program walked up to me and said something like, “Keep up the good work.” As he said it he reached out to shake my hand and as nonchalantly as could be he slipped me a $100 bill! I was so surprised but I shouldn’t be - with Him nothing is impossible! Even yesterday, I got a text message from my mom saying: ‘Your brother just told me to cancel his Christmas list and use the money we were going to spend on his presents to give to you for your adoption fund’ !!!!! Are you getting my point? We did not expect ANY of these things to happen, but these little chunks of money here and there just keep adding up all into a whopping exclamation of WITH HIM NOTHING IS IMPOSSIBLE! Do you believe it yet?

Jake and I are also blessed to be members of a church that ROCKS and is committed to supporting adoptive families financially. Our church gives out GENEROUS adoption grants to families who make an effort to take up fundraising on their own. I don't know if I can fully put into words how awesome these grants are. Our church truly sees adoption for the gospel-mission that it is, and to be able to rely on them so heavily with our funding relieves such a huge burden in our hearts.

Other than that I am also working on a few more traditional fundraising efforts…..I am currently giving out hand-beaded Ghanaian necklaces/earring sets for anyone who gives a donation of $50 or more to our adoption fund.

(Us girls are also wearing these in our family picture on our blog header)

If you would like to do this, you can mail us a check (or give cash in person) made out to us personally to: 315 Ridgewood Drive, Huxley, IA 50124. If you mail a check I will need your address to know where to mail the necklace to. Somewhere on the check note if you have a preferred color. Most of them are multi-colored in options like dark blue, turquoise, brown, red, orange, green, black/white, yellow, etc. I can’t absolutely guarantee what color you will get because it will depend on my current stock, but I’ll try my best. :) Or if you can catch me in person then you can just pick one out!

Also, for the past few months I’ve been working on starting up a sale of adoption themed t-shirts and hoping that eventually I can grow sales into an online store. This has been quite the process, and I’m facing some obstacles…not exactly sure if it will pan out, but we’ll see!

So, that’s the plan stan. Right now, if we include the anticipated grant coming from our church, we have 3/4 of the funds that we will need to pay for our adoption! For the rest we will continue to trust that God is BIG, and that with Him nothing is impossible!!!!

More ideas/resources on financing/fundraising for an adoption tomorrow!

Here We Go Again!

Earlier this summer we felt adoption coming up again for our family. We didn’t know who we would be adopting, or where from, but we knew something was coming. Much of that was inspired by this sweet thang who wandered into our family for a few months……
Our whole family became attached to this little girl quite easily. Justice wanted to get her unbuckled from her car seat and carry her into stores, if Jayla saw her crying she would say, “Mommy, get her!” and she also loved the day-to-day taking care of ‘C’ like changing her diapers, filling up her sippy cup, and giving her baths. JJ LOVED to play with ‘C’ and hand her toys, chase her around the house, or jump on the couch with her. My heart would skip a beat as I watched my kids interact with ‘C’ and care for her so naturally. When Sam came to live with us over a year ago, I realized then that you just never know what could be around the corner and who God might choose to add to your family. Because of that experience there were times when I wondered if ‘C’ would be coming into our life more permanently. I had some very touching conversations with C’s dad that reminded me that people are hurting, and we talked often about the hows and whys of adoption. I came to love it when ‘C’ would come to our house, and each time she had to leave my kids would ask me every day when she would be back again. Eventually though, ‘C’ wandered out of our life, and I found myself left with a little spot carved out deeper for helping families in crisis through adoption.

Around the beginning of July I heard a whisper in my heart that we should start an adoption savings account. It felt a little crazy to do this since we were not anticipating any extra money to come in and since we were also struggling financially at the time, but we did it anyway. My birthday rolled around and I received some cash gifts, so I threw the money in the savings account which I had labeled as our ‘future adoption fund’. I had some items sell on my grandma’s garage sale, and pretty soon our adoption fund was a little richer. We got a random/unexpected refund back on our utility bill, and decided to send that into the account too.

August rolled around and we were off to Ghana to complete the medical clinic and library projects. What we didn’t know, was that God was going to use this trip to introduce us to our daughters. :)

Like I said above, you just never know what could be around the corner (literally), and who God might choose to add to your family. Many of you read this post after our August trip and got a first-hand glimpse into what my heart was feeling when I met these little orphans. But, there was something I didn’t tell you in that post, which I’ll get to in a minute. Now, it’s no secret that the plight of orphans is absolutely piercing to my heart. But, it’s also not feasible for Jake and I to personally adopt every orphan we come into contact with. That is why I keep this blog up, because I hope to moblilize other families to adopt! And some orphans can be helped in ways other than adoption too. All this to say, when I felt adoption coming up for our family again over the summer I had been praying that God would make it crystal clear to me when we were supposed to adopt again, and who. I remember often saying in my prayers "How will we know Lord? Please make it clear."

So, back to the scene in Ghana when I walked around the corner of that shack, looked into the eyes of those girls, heard their story, and held them. On the outside it probably looked to be quite the emotional set up. But, what I didn’t tell you in that post, was that the Holy Spirit was speaking to me in those moments as I was confronted with the reality that there was no mother to hand crying baby ‘A’ to….I heard 2 words that still echo in my mind…“You’re it.” Now, if you don’t have a relationship with God, then you are going to think all that a bit looney. But if you do have a relationship with God then you will understand what I mean when I say the Holy Spirit was speaking.

After we headed home from Ghana, I did start questioning what I had heard. Why do I always do that?!?! My fears started flying in and I started doubting! We can’t afford another adoption yet! What if I let these girls into my heart only to find out that adoption isn’t the plan chosen for them? And two girls – I had only been preparing for one! Thankfully, God is so gracious and patient, even in our doubting. In His grace, He spoke again through another series of events once we got home, and Jake and I knew without a doubt that we were to pursue the adoption of these girls, should social welfare choose adoption to be the long-term plan for them. And they did. On August 26th we sent in our application to our agency to get the process underway. We are using a different adoption agency this time, so I had not yet taken a detailed look at the breakdown of the fee schedule. But what a surprise to find that their application fee was $300….and that sitting in our ‘future adoption fund’ we had scrapped together $319.88. Do I think that was a ‘God-thing’? OF COURSE!

Now, we all know that it takes more than $300 to fund an international adoption. So, by now the next logical question would be, “How on earth are we going to afford another adoption?!?!?!” Well, you know my slogan ~ GOD FUNDS WHAT HE FAVORS! And He is! I will hopefully be able to share on that tomorrow!

Now, a few quick sidenotes: I have SO MUCH to blog about right now, but I am finding it really hard to make the time to get my lengthier posts put together. My blogging might be kind of sporadic for awhile as I try to fit in some other things into my day like conquering our adoption education training!!! Also, for the protection of our girls, it is an agency rule that I am not able to show their photos online until after we pass court…..and to be honest I will probably wait until our adoption is completed to post any pictures of them up online. Oh boy, that’s going to be SO HARD! But, if you want to see their sweet faces, I can show you their pictures in person. :)

So, I now sit here nervous, excited, and curious about how this adoption will play out! Honestly I am feeling much more laid back this time around compared to our first ride on the adoption roller coaster. We are so, so, so excited to be able to give these little girls a family. When we told our kids that we were adopting again Justice just about shot through the roof in excitement. The first thing he said was, “Now Jayla will finally have the sister that she’s always wanted!” And then immediately after that he asked if we were going to change their names and what their new names would be. :) JJ’s first question was “Where will they sleep?” He’s definitely the practical one. Jayla can somehow say the girl’s African names with perfect pronunciation (and their names are hard to say). She’s been running around telling everyone that she is getting two new sisters and then she rolls their names off her tongue like it ain’t no thang! Most people have no idea what or who she is talking about so it’s kind of funny.

So you can see the excitement is building around here! We have a long ways to go, but already we are really enjoying that our kids understand adoption and what will be coming! So, I guess I can now say it’s official….here we go again!

He Brought Us Out

I don’t blog much about our finances, but since Jake and I blogged this and this over the summer, perhaps you are wondering what has happened since!

First off, our board of directors raised close to $30,000 in a little over a week (!) to cover the costs for our scholarship player’s travel and tournaments through the rest of the month of July.

We (unfortunately) had to cut our amount of full-time staff members.

Then, come August Jake sat down with his board of directors, which includes two members who do financial advising as well as one member who is an accountant, and they worked through numbers and budgets for the upcoming 2011-2012 year. The goal was to examine the fee structure of the Kingdom Hoops program in order to come out on top of the books instead of losing money - what a concept, right?!. As with any business, we do have real bills such as facility expenses, tournament entry fees, travel expenses, staff, uniform fees, etc. Added to that we also have the financial assistance budget in which we give out scholarships to allow families who do not have the finances to be able to participate and take advantage of the program. Each year, we need to raise roughly $200,000 to cover those fees for athletes that are part of our financial assistance program, and each year we fall drastically short. So, numbers were tried, crunched, rejected and accepted until it all worked on paper. The board of directors has also been key in setting out to raise the money needed to cover the financial assistance budget for the upcoming year. Numerous donations have come our way in the past few months, all due to the relationships that our board members have with giving people. We also have gotten the players involved in raising money which was the basis for the Kingdom Hoops Kick-Off & Fundraising event that I blogged about earlier this week.

At the same time that all this financial restructuring was going on it also was placed on Jake’s heart that his program had gotten too big, too fast. He felt that the size of the program was spreading him too thin. He was ultimately losing the intimate relationships that he desired to create with every player and parent within the program. It was not an easy decision, but he felt that in the long-term best interest of the program he needed to reduce the size of his organization. In doing this, he felt that he would be able to do a better job of maximizing opportunities for the kids that were in the program. Jake also wanted to become more ‘Kingdom’ minded. At the end of the gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John Jesus clearly calls us to go into the world and make disciples. Moving forward Jake desired that his program become more about creating disciples who know Jesus and that would use the platform of basketball to glorify Him!

We’ve been under this new system of a smaller program size (literally cut in half) for about 2 months now, and it is SO MUCH BETTER!!! Like loads better. Jake can spend more time on relationships and discipling and less time on office work and organizing. There are a ton of other youth basketball programs popping up in Iowa right now, so many of the kids cut from Jake’s program still have viable options to continue their pursuit of their goals on and off the basketball court.

On a personal note…..

We had been trying to sell our house for the past year because too much of our income is going to our mortgage payment. A few years ago we were ok with how much our house costs us. But as God has opened up our eyes to the needs around us, we really desired that more of our income could be spent on helping PEOPLE! Then on top of that, over the past year it got really hard to make our mortgage payment every month! In September, after a little over one year of our house being on the market, we finally got an offer on our house. But the banks who do our mortgages would not agree to the sell because the buyer was offering below what we had paid for our house. Obviously we are not going to get the purchase price on our home in this economy right now. So, we’ve decided to take our house off the market. We still would desire that less of our income would go towards our house, but we know that if God would have that happen then He would make a sale possible….it just doesn’t feel like His hand is in the sale right now.

Jake has also turned his individual trainings that he started this summer into a side-business (kind of like having your own personal trainer but regarding basketball). These trainings have absolutely taken off in popularity, and Jake is bringing in a lot of extra income for our family. This has been one of the top ways in which God has helped us to personally recover financially from the hardships this summer. We are now able to crack into paying off bills that piled up, make our mortgage payment and car payments on time without tremendous stress, and keep up with our outrageous grocery bills! And I can’t even believe I am able to write this next part, but we are actually to the point where we can now start saving again!!!! And……we are saving……for something really exciting (to our family anyways) that I will be sharing with you all probably next week. I am so thankful that Jake works so hard to provide for our family. He’s always been the hardest, most dedicated worker I have ever known. He’s making so many sacrifices with his time and energy to provide for us. I know that he values me getting to stay at home with our kids while they are young, and I am thankful that he sees this as important. I feel so blessed that I get to be a part of our kid’s everyday moments. I will never regret this time that I have with them.

And lastly, we finally got our adoption tax credit back. WHEW!!!!!!!!!!!! We will be able to use about half of it to pay off bills, and the other half we are saving for something else……hmmmm….wonder what it is?!?!

So, our finances are recovering. God is providing, and showing us that for now this is where He is asking us to be.

As hard as it was to go through all that, Jake and I both know that we are better for it. Once again God taught us to depend and rely on Him in ways that we never had before. We were literally at the point where everything could have gone right down the drain (house, basketball program, etc) but through God’s grace He showed up when things were looking pretty bleak. I read a blog post over the summer that talked about how God always seems to show up at the exact moment when His glory can be revealed the most. Jake and I found much encouragement from the author's words....the blog post is a MUST READ! You can find it here: Ripe for Glory.

I know that Jake, as the sole provider for our family, was once again ‘refined through the fire’ in the area of our finances. This matured him, deepened his trust in God, and was a teaching point for both of us on God’s incredible power. I can’t even being to tell you how many times God just showed up when we were at the end of our rope….through a grocery gift card in the mail, a shake of a hand with a $100 bill slipped to us, or cards of encouragement from friends who themselves had been in this position before. Not to mention the support from the parents in the Kingdom Hoops program who stuck with us through the valley and encouraged us that God was using this program for great things, and He would sustain it. And the way God provided our board of directors who have been the key piece in helping us come up with a plan to get the program on track financially, set up meetings with giving people to gain donations, and just supporting Jake and I personally and lovingly.

As the page turns to a new chapter we fully realize that at any point God could choose to take everything we have worked so hard for. If He does we will continue to trust in His sovereignty!

God is God. Because He is God, He is worthy of my trust and obedience. I will find rest nowhere but in His holy will that is unspeakably beyond my largest notions of what He is up to. ~Elisabeth Elliot~

Chef Justice

For the past few weeks, every day when Justice gets home from school the first thing he does is make an omelet on the griddle – complete with chopped onions and tomatoes! And he makes it all by himself….I didn’t even show him how to make it the first time! One day I just smelled some cooking after he’d been home for a bit, so I went out into the kitchen and there he was standing at the griddle flipping the eggs! These sorts of omelets are really common in Ghana. In fact, when Justice's 'uncle' hosted us at his home during our first trip to Justice's village, his wife made us these omelets accompanied with bread and bananas. I asked Justice how he acquired his omelet skills yesterday when he started cooking….here is what he said:



After I took the video I realized that I should have asked him a few more questions while I was recording! Later I asked him how they cook the omelet in Ghana since they don’t have an electric griddle. :) He said they use a pan with cooking oil over a fire. I asked him what omelets are called in Ghana and he said they just call them ‘eggs’. He said he thought it cost about 10 cedis to get all the ingredients from street vendors….eggs, tomatoes, onions, and salt. I wish I would have asked him more questions while I was taping, because he was really willing to talk and share during these particular moments! It’s so fun that he can communicate easily in English now because he is starting to recall and be able to put words to a lot of his memories from Ghana!

Love him! ♥

Batman, Hello Kitty, & an Iowa State Football Player

Quite the trio :)

♥