Two and a half weeks ago we were at 45% of our $30,000 goal to cover the fees portion of our adoption expenses. Today, I am overjoyed to say we are beyond 100% funded!!! This truly can only be explained as a God thing.
In my last post, I was secretly hoping and praying we would reach our goal of $30,000 by the end of 2013. I am truly in awe of the way God has met us throughout this adoption adventure.
After wrapping up 3 days of a massive garage sale I can honestly say I am completely and utterly exhausted BUT am grateful for the experience as well. This garage sale allowed Ben and me the opportunity to get to know our neighborhood, minister to others and spend three solid days together. Having never done a garage sale before in my life I really did not know what I was getting into, but there are so many stories to tell now.
We spent months collecting and organizing donations for the garage sale. Our house was filled to the brim and so much of it sold in the past three days. God took other people's extra clutter and turned it into ways to not only bless us, but bless many of our customers as well. With what remains we are hoping to keep much of the kid items to give to the orphanage we adopt from and give the remaining items to a local charity.
Despite the monetary blessing, there were so many other awesome experiences in it as well. Having only moved into our neighborhood less than a year ago this sale allowed us to get to know many of our neighbors, hear their stories and share ours as well. We had many people ask the who, what, where, and why of our adoption story and we used that as a way to be witnesses and minister to those who stopped by our sale.
Some of the people we met specifically came to our sale because they knew it was an adoption fundraiser. Many of these people either were also adopting, had been adopted, had adopted family members, or were involved in adoption some way or another. It is amazing what a community the adoption community is :)
We also had many complete strangers stop by and give us a financial gift without buying anything at all. Even more people we had never met before told us they were praying for us and wished us well in our journey. God is truly in control of all of this.
Another unexpected element of the garage sale was how helpful it was that I speak Spanish. Early in our first day I began speaking with some families in Spanish and they were pretty surprised by that, but really opened up to me and we had some great conversations. By the afternoon of the first day we started getting people who would walk up to me and ask "¿Habla español?" (Do you speak Spanish?) as if the word had gotten out that I speak Spanish. It was fun for me to use my Spanish and be able to have genuine conversations with many of these families. I even had one family who asked for the number to Shannon's Spanish Immersion school because they also wanted their son to solidify his Spanish.
Overall, our interactions with people who stopped by the sale was positive. The only truly negative interaction we had was with a man who was not happy we were adopting internationally, but I let him know I thought all kinds of adoption were important and God calls different people to each kind of adoption.
I was also somewhat surprised by the amount of people who could not quite understand we weren't planning on adopting babies, and even some who assumed we were adopting animals. We had many people ask us why we would sell so many baby items if we were adopting, and then we explained our kiddos would probably not be babies. I learned to respond with "We've been blessed with the baby experience twice, now it is time to give kids who are a little older a chance to stay together as a sibling group." and "God has told us where our kids are and we know He will make a way to bring them home."
In addition to the garage sale fundraiser we've also been blessed by several large monetary gifts from friends and family allowing us to surpass our adoption fees goal and begin to save towards our living expenses while we go down to the Dominican Republic.
So, tonight I am thanking God for everyone He allowed to be a part of this. Everyone who gave (money, donations, supplies, time), everyone who prayed, everyone who shopped, everyone who spread the word, everyone who helped with the girls - God allowed each and everyone of you to bless us and we are awestruck by it all.
We are truly blessed beyond measure.
"Every good and perfect gift comes from above" James 1:17a
