A fabulous yard sale and an even more fabulous community

A wonderful group of women from the Bible study in which I participate have graciously offered to host a multi-family Yard Sale for us this coming weekend! A bunch of families are donating items and all the proceeds are going to help with 2 things: 1) adoption costs for us and 2) gifts for the orphanage from which we're adopting. One of the hardest things for me to imagine right now is only taking one child home, knowing most of the children there will remain orphans. I want to try to find ways to bless the orphanage for the remaining children-- and we'll use some of the money raised this weekend to figure out ways to do that.

I'm super excited about the yard sale and so thankful for the generous offer, mostly because I feel so loved by the community of folks surrounding us. We always need to depend on people, that's how we're made, but I think sometimes we resist it until we throw ourselves or are plunged into a situation where we just can't do it on our own. I'm thankful our family is surrounded by wonderful people who will love and support us through this next season, whatever joys and sorrows it may bring.

Here are the details:
Where: 1627 Monument Ave (Grace Covenant Presbyterian Church)
When: Saturday, May 2, 8 am- 12 pm
What: Multi Family yard sale featuring: furniture, books, children's clothes, adult sized clothes, toys, games, and much more! There's also a bake sale and I know at least one person is making homemade sauces (vodka cream sauce, etc.)

I hope you'll be able to stop by for some of it. Please invite your friends!!!

Status Update

Here's the latest from DC: our documents have been certified by the US. Department of State and they are currently at the Rwandan embassy. From what we've heard, they've indicated that they'll have their letter of non-objection ready to be picked up one week from today (May 3rd)! With that said, there's probably some chance that they'll have questions in reviewing our file between now and then (all of which will be abely fielded by our agency/caseworker, I'm sure). Assuming that all goes well, the dossier will be on the road to Africa sometime early next week.

Still a long way to go, but every piece of forward movement is encouraging at this point.

Why adopt an international kiddo?

One of the most interesting parts of going through this adoption process has been getting the chance to have conversations with people about it - especially when they first learn about what we're planning to do. Some people ask timelines, some about the cost, others about the age/gender of the kid, etc. One interesting question that I've gotten a couple of times recently that I've been thinking more about is "why would you go all the way to Rwanda to adopt?"

Basically, it comes down to the fact that we think there are kids in Rwanda that need families and we want to be a family for them (correction: one of them...don't give Adrianne any ideas about multiple kid adoptions). For some reason, in a marriage where how we fold t-shirts can be a point of contention, the decision to adopt was an easy one. We were completely on the same page that this would be a good thing for our family. We've both been able to see the poverty of the developing world several times and this is one way that we feel like our family can respond.

Others follow up, "but aren't there kids in the US who need homes?". To that, I answer "absolutely". There are way, way too many kids in this country and in the world who have to grow up outside of loving families. We feel like, as Christians, God has called us to care for orphans. For us, that care currently looks like international adoption, but there are SO many ways for people to engage (financial support for orphan care organizations, foster care, domestic adoption, volunteering at a domestic/international facility, etc.) . International adoption isn't a better or worse response than any of those, it's just the one that we felt like we were supposed to do.  

Status Update

No big news, but here’s the latest – we sent our dossier to our adoption agency, only to have them notice that one of the dates on the forms provided by immigration was a typo.  So, we ended up waiting about a week and a half to get our new form (not all that long, in the grand scheme of things) and our documents were back on their way to DC.  

Last we heard (tonight), they are going to the US Department of State for Certification tomorrow morning and we expect that they’ll be at the Rwandan Embassy in DC by the end of the week.  Hopefully, the embassy will provide us with a letter of recommendation at some point in the next couple of weeks and the documents will be on their way to Kigali (so, for those of you following at home, that would mean that we're covering Step 12 from the process that Adrianne described here).   

Born on third base

After college, an influential person in my life shared a non-spiritual thought that has had a significant impact in my life. They said, there are two kinds of fortunate people: ones who are on third base and think they hit a triple and ones who are on third base and know that they were born there. I won't belabor the point, but one of the reasons we're pursuing adoption is that we know that we did nothing to deserve having two sets of parents who love us. We did nothing to be born in the US into comfortable/privileged circumstances. We did nothing to have parents who did whatever they could to give us a great chance at success in life. Lucy didn't do any of these things either (although some may say she didn't luck out on the parent front :)) Conversely, our child in Rwanda has done nothing to deserve spending their childhood in an orphanage. They did nothing to have parents who, for many reasons, can't take care of them.

We're pursuing adoption because we were both born on third base and we hope to use the privileges and responsibilities that come with that for the sake of others.