Zoe's four month birthday present: A stone of remembrance

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In Joshua, God's people set up stones to serve as a reminder of what God had done on their behalf.
And those twelve stones, which they took out of the Jordan, Joshua set up at Gilgal. And he said to the people of Israel, “When your children ask their fathers in times to come, ‘What do these stones mean?’ then you shall let your children know, ‘Israel passed over this Jordan on dry ground.’ For the Lord your God dried up the waters of the Jordan for you until you passed over, as the Lord your God did to the Red Sea, which he dried up for us until we passed over, so that all the peoples of the earth may know that the hand of the Lord is mighty, that you may fear the Lord your God forever.” {Joshua 4:20-24}
Skip ahead a couple books in the Bible, and we see Samuel setting up a stone after God acted in a mighty way to give victory to His people. He called the stone Ebenezer, which means "stone of help."
Then Samuel took a stone and set it up between Mizpah and Shen and called its name Ebenezer; for he said, “Till now the Lord has helped us.”{1 Samuel 7:12}
In Joshua, the people remembered God's provision of dry ground and safe passage.
 
In 1 Samuel, the people remembered the great victory God accomplished for them.

In our lives today, we have a new stone of remembrance. 

Or, perhaps I should say, Zoe Amanda has a new stone of remembrance. 

When I initially drafted yesterday's blog post, I shared the deadline of the end of this week for the rest of our first adoption payment to be raised. Then - before the post went live - I thought, That's crazy. It just isn't possible. And even though we needed the money sooner, I changed the deadline in the post from the end of the week to the end of the weekend. I just wasn't sure $1,870 could be raised in two days via this blog.

Two days weren't necessary. We didn't even need 24 hours. It is all raised. The exact amount.

Today Zoe Amanda is four months old. And to be honest, I was dreading today. While I praise God for each milestone and birthday, I know my heart will ache a little every time she is one month older and not here with us.

But I didn't need to dread today. I didn't need to because God's timing provided a stone of remembrance instead.

For me.

For her.

For His glory.

A breakdown of our adoption costs, if you're curious

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I always knew international adoption = $$$, but I don’t think I’ve ever come across a breakdown of that, so I’m going to try to do so in this post. {But first, let me be honest: we need $1,870 $100 by the end of the weekend. See more info about that at the end of this post.}

Before I list the costs, though, consider this: if someone you know bought a vehicle for $20,000, you might say, “hey, nice car!” You probably wouldn’t say, “Geez, that’s a lot of money. How can you even afford that?” (I know some of y'all are impressively frugal, so you might think that, but most of us wouldn’t say it.) However, when someone is adopting and the cost is the same, that censor of "maybe I shouldn't say that" seems to disappear.

I don’t mind. Actually, I expect it. Because we’re having to ask others for financial support, we're opening ourselves up to a little more scrutiny. If I have to ask others to consider supporting our adoption, I want to be as transparent as possible. So feel free to ask away, and I’ll do my best to answer your questions about the cost! 

{And for your reading pleasure, here’s my all-time favorite post about the cost of adoption from Stephanie at Ni Hao Y’all. She uses a vehicle cost analogy too, but hers is much better than mine.}

Before I list our expenses, let me add this disclaimer: these are just our costs. Every adoption is different. Every country is different. Two adoptions in the same country can have different costs depending on the region, the agency, the orphanage, the judge assigned to the case, and a whole host of other factors. That disclaimer given, here's the breakdown for us...

Expenditure
Cost
Home study fees
$1,400
US CIS paperwork fees
$890
Translation fees of documents from English to Chinese and vice versa
$400
Wiring fees
$150
National insurance in Taiwan
$170
Paperwork and agency fees in Taiwan
$6,600
Cost of full-time care in the children’s home for Zoe Amanda from her birth until the time we bring her home
$9,000
Travel for me and Lee (5 day trip, including airfare on short notice)
~$4,000
Re-adoption paperwork in US (required because we won’t meet Zoe Amanda before the adoption is final)
$400
Required post-adoption visits from home study social worker
$500 (2 at $250 each)
TOTAL
~$23,000

Yes, that's a lot of money. Some of it will come from our savings, and some may be recovered via tax savings (though the exact amount won’t be certain for a while because part of it may be on the budget chopping block), but we still need to raise a big chunk. We had planned not to have to raise many funds because our timing would have given us another year or two to save, but God's timing was different from ours. We've had to take several huge steps in faith as we work to bring Zoe Amanda home, but we think she's worth more than a car, don't you think?

Please pray that the exact amounts we need will come in as we need it and that God would increase our faith in His timing and provision throughout this process!

If you'd like to contribute toward these expenses to bring Zoe Amanda home, instructions are provided in the upper left-hand side of the blog. You can donate directly to the children's home - which goes toward the Taiwanese costs (childcare, paperwork, translations, etc.) - or to us via the Paypal link - which will go toward the US-based costs (travel, paperwork in the US, etc.). Of those costs, nearly $9000 need to be paid by the end of the weekend; we have a sizeable chunk of it, but
we still need $1,870 $100. Before Monday.
And then - assuming the car being sold by our friends for our adoption funds sells for what we think it will and assuming our fundraising night goes as well as we're hoping - we'll need to raise another $6,000 via donations before we travel to Taiwan.

Would you consider making a donation? If you could help in any way, we'd greatly appreciate it! 

 {And if you can't give but would be willing to add a fundraising button to your blog, you'll find the code you need here.}

an atheist practicing Christianity for Lent, and a fundraising blog button I made for her

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My friend Dy-Anne is an atheist, but she liked the idea of taking a set period of time to give something up, like many Christian do during Lent. So she posted on Facebook,
 So I may not be catholic (or a theist at all) but I see Lent as the opposite of Christmas. So what should I give up this year?
And another friend of ours - who is a Christian and a journalist - suggested
So I am TOTALLY not joking, but I think it would be awesome if you gave up Atheism for lent. I know sounds crazy, and obviously you can't just not be one, but I think it would be interesting if you like went to church and immersed yourself in the culture and blogged about the whole thing. I REALLY think that would be an interesting social experiement. And especially since Lent has a religious background, it owuld be fitting.
After some back and forth throughout comments, Dy decided to give it a go. She's not giving up atheism for Christianity because her belief (or lack thereof) hasn't changed. However, she's giving up the culture of atheism (discussion forums, books, activities that she associates with atheism) and adopting the culture of Christianity (attending church, reading the Bible, praying even though she considers it to be talking to the air, and so on) for the season Lent. And she's blogging about it; check it out at A Temporary Christian.

As her blog started to get a lot of hits, she asked me if I could give her something to put on her blog that would link to our Paypal account, in hopes that her blog could raise money for our adoption.

So I made this button for her.


If you'd like to add one to your page, here's the code:

If you have a Wordpress blog, that code above won't work for you. Here are the instructions you should use instead:


I have another post coming this evening tomorrow, in which I'll be providing a breakdown of our adoption costs, but I wanted to share this now since Dy-Anne's blog started up today!

honest and ugly, but grateful

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Yesterday was a rough day. Basically, we were given hope last week that a large donation toward our adoption expenses would be coming in this week, and the actual amount turned out to be a fraction of what we had been expecting and felt that we had been promised. I went from thinking that most of our expenses were covered to realizing that we still have a long way to go. The "how to donate" post I had taken down last week in anticipation of the donation went back up.

It was hard. Tears were plentiful. 

The hardest part, though, was dealing with the ugliness of my emotions. When I read the Bible and see examples of God doing something huge for His people and then those same people doubting Him the next day or next month... well, it frustrates me. I think in disgust, "Seriously?!? Look at what God did for you, and your hearts shift from grateful to whiny in such a short time anyway? How fickle."

Well, my friends, that was me yesterday. God has been moving in huge ways in our lives in the past few weeks, and I was mad that He didn't move in the one way I wanted and expected. And instead of being thankful for the gift that was given, I was angry it wasn't more.

Yep, an attitude of entitlement is an ugly thing.

I share this because I want to be real and transparent. And because I want you to know that we are not perfect. Yes, we're being faithful in following God's will for our family all the way to Taiwan, but we are unfaithful daily in so many other ways. 

Today, I'm choosing gratitude. I'm choosing trust. I'm choosing faith.

Specifically, I'm thankful that in the last 24 hours:
  • we did have the commitment of that donation
  • we had a friend share with us that they're selling their third vehicle (valued about $7,000), hoping to get $5,000 for it, and planning to donate the entire sale amount to our adoption expenses (I'll be posting the details and pictures of the vehicle later this week!)
  • a popular blogger in the disability community contacted me about donating a $50 Amazon gift card to our silent auction
  • I confirmed March 22 as the night for our adoption fundraiser at Chick-fil-a at Falls Village (mark it on your calendars, Raleigh folks! more details coming soon!)
  • I woke up to two new pictures of Zoe Amanda in my email inbox!
I'll have two posts later this week with info about donations and with practical needs we have, and - to be honest with you - I'm not looking forward to those posts. (I didn't even like asking my parents for money when I was in high school, and I find it even less fun to post about the financial aspect of adoption on this blog.) But I'm grateful that we have the opportunity to be blessed by the addition of Zoe Amanda to our family, so I'll do it. And I'll balance those out with a couple posts full of pictures and stories from our lives (like yesterday's post about Robbie's antics), as a way of making myself feel less guilty about asking for money.

And you know what? I'm looking forward to the day when the pages of this blog can be less about the nitty gritty adoption details and more about random thoughts from yours truly and reviews of books and pictures of our three children.