This past weekend, I attended Created for Care, which is a Christian weekend retreat north of Atlanta for foster and adoptive moms. It was good for me. I have really struggled the past few months with all the discouraging news coming out of Ethiopia regarding international adoption. There have been no referrals in months and we are so far down on the list, even if there were regular referrals occurring currently, we would likely be looking at years of waiting. Even though we've only been on the waiting list for Ethiopia since November, this month makes a year since we started the process. Combined with the time spent trying to adopt through foster care care first, we are approaching three years since we first got the call to adopt.
I chose a word as a theme for this year and it is: HOPE. I've been seeing that word a lot in my life, and I need it as a reminder when I start to doubt that adoption will ever happen for us. I see the word in scripture, hear it in songs, see it on T-shirts (including in Amharic-the official Ethiopian language). I had hoped to hear God speak to me this weekend about our adoption journey, and He did. He told me to "WAIT" and I was reassured that we are right where we should be. So for now I will continue to wait in hope.
One thing that has helped me is to stay busy. This has been easy really since we got on the waiting list with the holiday season, Brandon's birthday, my half marathon, our marriage conference, Micah's birthday, a trip to Disney World, and then my Created for Care (C4C) conference. Now that my schedule has cleared a little, I was wondering what I would do next. I quickly found my next "project" when I got home from C4C and had a flier about a neighborhood yard sale the end of this month. We have not participated in these in the past simply because I didn't have the motivation to go through all our stuff to get things together to sell. Now with unused items piling up and a need to save some serious cash, we will be having a yard sale March 29 starting at 7 am. The great thing is many others in our neighborhood are having yard sales that day, so it will hopefully attract a lot of people!
The fact is, we need to save approximately $20,000 more for our adoption (in addition to what we have already paid and have saved). The referral fee alone for 2 children which is due immediately upon accepting a referral is $15,200. There are other expenses, such as $2000 for foster care fees (care after referral before they can come home). We also need money for 2 trips to Ethiopia, which could be $10,000 or more depending on the price of airline tickets.
If anyone has anything they would like to donate for us to sell, please let me know! We really appreciate it! Mostly, please keep praying for our family and our adoption journey.
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