Fundraising 101

I just need to put this out there. I have some pretty amazing friends and an AWESOME God that is willing to move mountains to get this little boy home to us. Eleshia, my co-worker and friend, approached me last week with the idea that she and her husband could make homemade salsa and sell it as a fundraiser for our adoption. She said that she normally makes about $60 when she sells it at our school and thought she might be able to sell slightly more than that. Of course, I took her up on her kind offer, because quite frankly we need all of the help that we can get. Our donations page has brought in $1,400 in about 2 weeks. This is completely unexpected and we feel so blessed. Well, we sold 50 some salsas by the end of the first day (last Thursday). As of right now, we've sold around 250 salsas!!!!!!!! Even with taking out about $200 or so for supplies, we've made between $700 and $800 just in salsa sales. That's amazing.

The next step is our homestudy. Now that we're within a comfortable amount from the fee for the homestudy, I am going to contact the social worker that helped us with Aidan's adoption. She works for a different agency, but since A Love Beyond Borders is located in Colorado, we need to have a Missouri agency complete our homestudy.  We only need about $300 more before we will have the fees for the homestudy, so I am hopeful that we will be able to begin the process soon.  It usually takes about two months to complete a homestudy as the social worker will need to come to our house twice and interview us.

Our next huge financial hurdle will be the agency/contract fees.  These are about $11,000 and we will need to pay them before we will be considered for K.  If you had asked me two weeks ago if I thought it was possible for us to have that money within the next 6 months to a year, I would have said "NO!!!!".  However, God is proving yet again that He is faithful to those that trust in Him.  We're planning a huge fundraiser now that I hope will be very successful.  This again is just amazing to me.  Can I use the word "amazing" too often?  I feel like, and this is going to sound corny, like we released a prayer into the universe- Lord we want to welcome this boy into our family- and God has put some pretty incredible people in place to help us.  Pretty amazing.  This next fundraiser will take place the first part of May.  The money that we bring in from that, as well as money for grants that we will be applying for, will hopefully give us the necessary fees.  If not, then we'll have another fundraiser.  This adoption is already so different from Aidan's in the fact that we had nearly all of the money for Aidan's adoption when we applied with our agency and we had no idea who God would match us with.  With this adoption, we have a little boy that we desperately want to join our family, but no money to make that happen.  Go figure. :)

So, here's what we need.  First and foremost, please continue to pray for us.  Please pray that our social worker will be thorough, but efficient, so that our family doesn't have unneccessarily long delays.  I keep saying that once we know that this little boy is ours, that I'll be able to relax, but I'm afraid that I'm just fooling myself.  Please pray for K, and for all orphans, that the protective hand of God will be placed on them while they wait for their forever families.  Please pray for us and Aidan.  We're very careful not to show Aidan pictures yet, since we don't want to get his hopes up, but we have begun talking to him in generics, "do you want a brother or a sister", "what should we name him/her", "should he/she be from Ethiopia, Congo, Uganda, etc."  Aidan is very adament (when he's not saying he wants to be an only child *lol*) that he wants a brother from the Congo.  When asked what we should name him, he says, "Camden".  The other night we were looking at a picture of K when Aidan came running up to me, looked at the picture and said, "That's Camden.  That's my brother."  Wreck my heart.  I see God's signs in EVERYTHING, so I'm trying not to read too much into this gesture, but... :)

Oh, one other sweet Aidan moment (Don't get me started, as I could list a ton more).  Liam and I were talking about the donations that I am collecting from my school to send to Ethiopia and he said, "Mel you have a good heart."  Aidan overheard and said, "Mommy, you have a good heart.  I love you."  Love that boy beyond words.  Oh, how you have blessed our lives my sweet little A.