Adoption Money Doesn’t Grow in Your Garden

So from my blog post the other day, I talked about adoption again. Pete and I have been mulling over the idea of adding an older child (or children) from Bulgaria to our family. It depends on the moment, really.

Sometimes we are at a strong, “No!”.
Other days we are at an indecisive, “Maybe.”
And still others, we are at a hesitant, “Yes.”

There are a set of brothers (13 and 10) that seem like really sweet boys, but I’ m just not sure what God wants us to do. I can picture them living with us. They even popped in my dream the other night. But the hill to and after the adoption seems huge.

I know that adoption is hard. I also know that some older child adoption works well, and there are other times, not so much. But I do know those older children long for parents too. And few people are willing to even look at those older children. Part of me feels like we are CRAZY for even considering it. The other part of me has my heart pulling towards these kids. But no matter how I feel, there are hurdles, besides our feelings and uncertainties, that stand in our way.

We just don’t have the money for it. We don’t. Not at all.

At least not now while we are supporting a child through college. And not with the general cost of living, etc. We know that it would have to be a God thing. And I don’t doubt that God would provide if that is what he wants us to do.

BTW… did you know it costs $30,000 – $40,000 to adopt internationally?

And when you choose a waiting child(ren), the time it takes for the adoption to finalize speeds up considerably. So basically, we’d need that money all in a speedy 8-12 months? No years of saving, and even then, we couldn’t save that much money at this time in our lives.

To even START the process, it would be $11,000 all right in the first couple of months. And to be able to apply for grants, you need an approved home study that takes $2,000 to complete. Our previous home study agency said they could get our home study done in a month, which is great! BUT, we don’t have $2,000 laying around. (Plus, the other $9,000 for agency fees to get the ball rolling)

Did I mention that Pete and I stink at fundraising?

We tried to do a little our last adoption, but none of it really did much of anything, so we ended up with some God money falling into our laps and quite a bit of debt. We just can’t do debt right now. And unfortunately, you can’t plant money and grow it in your garden.

So my question is this: IF–and I’m stressing IF–we did decide to proceed with this idea of adoption again, would anyone be willing to partner with us to help us fundraise? Would any of our friends join us to form a fundraising team?

Just getting some feelers out to see if that is even an option and ask for prayers for God to give us peace about our decision.

And even if we don’t adopt, I may consider doing fundraising for families who are.