So many of you are continuing to ask how you can best support us on this last leg of our journey to bring Baby E home --
THANK YOU!
THANK YOU!
Of course, the most important things that you can share with us are your positive energy, excitement, and prayer. We are over-the-moon excited about our first little Nelson and we are so thankful for those of you who are sharing in our joy, celebrating with us, and praying over our final steps to bring Baby E home.
With that being said, I need to get real for a minute here. Money is tight. As many of you know, our back-to-back trips to Ghana were pretty unexpected and traveling so quickly and close together - especially over Thanksgiving and Christmas - really made a large dent in our bank account. We have never doubted God's faithfulness in this entire process, including the timing, so we are holding tightly to the belief that he won't abandon us now.
We are really working hard to rebuild our "E Fund" before we get the highly anticipated email that tells us that we can move forward to the next step -- and write the next big check. We are selling, saving, and pinching pennies whenever and wherever we can and we are, once again, walking by faith and not by sight. In the times when things have seemed the bleakest (like the day that our bank account literally read $0.12), we have seen the greatest miracles. God has never left us hanging.
We are continuing to learn what it means to give sacrificially and we are so incredibly thankful for those of you who have felt led to come alongside us, teach us, and learn with us as well. We have come so, so far but we still have a few steps left before Baby E is home and in our arms for good.
Once we receive the email that US Citizenship and Immigration has approved all of our paperwork, we will need to pay the remainder of the fees for Baby E to get a passport and a US Visa (around $200). He will also need one final round of medical checkups and immunizations (around $100) and then we will be able to travel to Ghana again. We will need 2 round-trip plane tickets to Ghana (around $3,000), one week in a hotel (around $250), and 1 additional plane ticket home from Ghana (around $1,500). In total, we will need around $5,000 to complete this adoption and bring Baby E home. These figures are still enough to make me cringe, but they're no longer enough to make me panic.
I've said it before and I'll say it again: adopting Baby E has completely changed the way that Tim and I view giving, saving, and spending money. These paper bills are one of the least important things on our minds right now. Yes, the money needs to come from somewhere; our son will not come home if it doesn't. But no, we are not going to spend the days, weeks, and months until it's time stressing, doubting, and backpedaling on God's promises. He's brought us too far to start looking back now.
We are going to continue to be realistic, practical, and purposeful with the way that we use our money. It has been said that "God funds what He favors;" while I find that overly simplistic and theologically misleading, I do believe that that is how we should live. What we fund should absolutely demonstrate what we favor, and our prayers and our pocketbooks should reflect our priorities.
So, that's where we're at. We're staring into the face of another mountain - a $5,000 mountain - and we're confident that the best place to start climbing it is from our knees.
With that being said, I need to get real for a minute here. Money is tight. As many of you know, our back-to-back trips to Ghana were pretty unexpected and traveling so quickly and close together - especially over Thanksgiving and Christmas - really made a large dent in our bank account. We have never doubted God's faithfulness in this entire process, including the timing, so we are holding tightly to the belief that he won't abandon us now.
We are really working hard to rebuild our "E Fund" before we get the highly anticipated email that tells us that we can move forward to the next step -- and write the next big check. We are selling, saving, and pinching pennies whenever and wherever we can and we are, once again, walking by faith and not by sight. In the times when things have seemed the bleakest (like the day that our bank account literally read $0.12), we have seen the greatest miracles. God has never left us hanging.
We are continuing to learn what it means to give sacrificially and we are so incredibly thankful for those of you who have felt led to come alongside us, teach us, and learn with us as well. We have come so, so far but we still have a few steps left before Baby E is home and in our arms for good.
Once we receive the email that US Citizenship and Immigration has approved all of our paperwork, we will need to pay the remainder of the fees for Baby E to get a passport and a US Visa (around $200). He will also need one final round of medical checkups and immunizations (around $100) and then we will be able to travel to Ghana again. We will need 2 round-trip plane tickets to Ghana (around $3,000), one week in a hotel (around $250), and 1 additional plane ticket home from Ghana (around $1,500). In total, we will need around $5,000 to complete this adoption and bring Baby E home. These figures are still enough to make me cringe, but they're no longer enough to make me panic.
I've said it before and I'll say it again: adopting Baby E has completely changed the way that Tim and I view giving, saving, and spending money. These paper bills are one of the least important things on our minds right now. Yes, the money needs to come from somewhere; our son will not come home if it doesn't. But no, we are not going to spend the days, weeks, and months until it's time stressing, doubting, and backpedaling on God's promises. He's brought us too far to start looking back now.
We are going to continue to be realistic, practical, and purposeful with the way that we use our money. It has been said that "God funds what He favors;" while I find that overly simplistic and theologically misleading, I do believe that that is how we should live. What we fund should absolutely demonstrate what we favor, and our prayers and our pocketbooks should reflect our priorities.
So, that's where we're at. We're staring into the face of another mountain - a $5,000 mountain - and we're confident that the best place to start climbing it is from our knees.