1 Thessalonians 5:24

As the weeks have been marked off on the calendar and our expected travel to China gets closer, Brian and I have been talking about ways to finish funding this adoption.  We always knew God would provide for the adoption, but began to wonder if maybe part of His provision was going to come in the form of greater sacrifice on our part.  You see, over the last year we have lived without cable, ended our gym membership, eaten out less often as a family and said no to many “extras”.  And really, we have been OK with this—we have survived. :)  As of our last post, we were still about $18k short though and really started thinking about what else we could give up or go without to make a bigger dent in the shortfall.  After lots of thinking and praying about it, we decided that we are willing to sell my car before we leave for China to help make up the difference.  It was a hard decision to come to, but once we made that decision I have really been at peace with it and am ready to sell it if it comes to that.

We just wrapped up the cookie cutter fundraiser and t-shirt fundraiser and in the last month we have narrowed the gap to about $12k short.

Now fast forward to this week, I have really been praying that we would get some news on the grant front because we still have a few grants out there that we are waiting for a response from.  Yesterday as I was sitting in carpool in the afternoon I checked my email to kill some time and came across an email from the JSC Foundation. This particular grant was kinda our “hail Mary” at the end of the football game in that it was the last big grant we applied for knowing that we were running out of time.  When we were approved to apply for the grant, we had less than 2 weeks to get all our paperwork together for it including several reference forms and a face-to-face interview with our pastor.  Thanks to some of our friends and our church elder, we made the deadline back in August and received word yesterday that we have been awarded a grant from this organization!

I was still excited after reading that email and when Olivia got in the car I told her we got another grant for the adoption.  She asked how much we still needed and I told her that I think if we got about $6k more and emptied out our emergency fund we would be fully funded.

We get home from carpool and Olivia wants to play on her scooter in the front driveway so I sat outside with her while she was playing.  My phone did that little “ding” letting me know I had another email and when I checked it was from LifeSong.  They were letting us know that we had been set up with a matching grant of $3,000.  Our local church, Brook Hills, is going to match dollar for dollar what we can raise in the next few weeks up to $3,000!  I had just told Olivia no more than 30 minutes earlier that we would be fully funded with about $6,000 more and here it is!

In church, we talk a lot about putting a blank check on the table with God—letting Him lead us where He wants us to go and be willing to give it all up for the sake of the call.  The idea of selling my car was hardly “giving it all up” but for us it was a huge thing and a big decision that we came to in the last month.  Sometimes He will require our great sacrifices, and other times I think He just wants us to be open and willing to give.

Doesn’t God write the BEST stories?

"Faithful is He who calls you, and He also will bring it to pass."   1 Thessalonians 5:24