Remembrance of His Faithfulness

On Monday we sent back all our notarized contracts and paper work to AGCI along with our first, of many, BIG checks! When I went to the credit union to get our check I was filled with a bitter sweet emotion as the gal behind the counter asked how much to have the check made out for.  With my heart in my throat I said, "seven thousand three hundred and ninety dollars"... I kept having to remind myself, scratch that, KEEP having to remind myself, that this is exactly what this money is saved up for! So many stories are attached with every dollar of that $7,390! Each dollar represents a generous person, a creative fundraising event, a random blessing, a hard earned dollar, and truthfully it flat out represents God's faithfulness! So like in 1 Samuel 7:12, where God's people stacked stones as a remembrance of His faithfulness to them, we are looking back over the past couple months as stacking stones in our lives!

So what now you ask?! Well, it's time to get our hands dirty and bust bootie in the savings department for the next BIG check and expenses in between! We have a choice to look at it two ways... #1. A daunting task full of anxiety OR #2. A chance for God to once again prove Himself to be faithful and unfold more amazing stories attached to each dollar raised and saved! I chose choice number TWO! (That is until I have my random freak out moments while laying in bed wide awake at night imagining all the worst case scenarios, while my hubby lays right next to me peacefully sleeping AND snoring the night away... just being honest!). In all seriousness though, I truly think REMEMBERING God's faithfulness is key! He funds His callings. Without a shadow of a doubt I know that He has lead the way so far and told us to trust Him, and so we continue! 

This evening we got a call from AGCI letting us know they received all our notarized paperwork and it's complete and looks great! That means we didn't mess up our first "test" of signing and initialing a stack of papers a mile high! Yipee! Our adoption planner (a.k.a. "the big hefty") is on the way including everything we'll need to gather for our dossier (fancy french word for adoption papers), and our required education courses. 

While we are working on collecting everything for our dossier we will also be doing our home study simultaneously. In order to begin our home study we will need to pay half the home study fee upfront of $425 to the social worker and a one time fee of $200 to the home study agency. So $625 to get that ball rolling.  Our savings is currently at $577, so we're getting there! (A BIG prayer request that our adoption agency and home study agency are able to finalize all the paper work needed this week to officially have the HS agency listed as a cooperating agency with AGCI!).

We will be on a paper chase for both the HS and dossier collecting things like birth certificates, marriage license, passports, medical forms, criminal checks, employment verification, letters of recommendation, financial statements, power of attorney and the list goes on and on! My prayer is that I can be like Jude and just enjoy digging in to the overwhelming mess of paperwork/dirt and have fun!

This whole process of the HS and dossier typically takes families 3-4 months to complete. During that timeframe some significant fees that we'll encounter are:

Adoptive Parent Education (online courses): $170

US CIS Fee $670

US CIS Fingerprinting Fee $80 per adult

Finally, once everything is complete and ready to be turned into AGCI and sent over to Ethiopia is when our next BIG check is due. First off, the remaining $450 will be due to our social worker upon completion of our home study. Then with the completed dossier we owe, big breath:

$4,500 International Service Fee

Well there you have it! We're doing our best to lay pride aside and be as open and honest about this whole process as possible, including all the financial mumbo jumbo that goes with it. More then anything our prayer is that God would receive the glory because we know that financial hurdles like these can only be accomplished by someone far bigger than us! We also pray this is read with hearts that know that in us sharing all these dollar amounts, there is absolutely NO obligation to give what so ever! We are truly humbled, and gracious, and amazed at the generosity that's been shown to us so far and we know that it's been God using other's to write His story in our lives! So thank you for being used by God!