It's fundraiser time!!! For our VERY FIRST adoption fundraiser, we are selling t-shirts! Bonfire is a great company, and they take care of everything to make quality t-shirts and ship them to everyone who participates! No shoddy screen printing by yours truly on my kitchen table. If you have professional screen printing or vinyl skills, I commend you, but we. do. not. The Design: We chose the "Love is Action" phrase for our blog and our shirts because that truly embodies the heart behind our adoption and our faith. If you really believe God loves people, and He wants YOU to be a part of His story, go out and do something! Hand out water bottles or wool socks to the homeless in your city. (No homeless? GO FIND THEM.) Volunteer to help with the kids at your church - trust me, this is a tangible way to love on young parents. Learn to crochet, and make beanies for the NICU at your local hospital! Start by SMILING at people. It's easy and rare. Get on your knees in your home, and PRAY for your nation, your neighbors, your first responders, your friends, strangers who don't know Jesus, children who need loving families, children who are separated from their families, anybody that pops into your mind! You better believe prayer is an ACTION. We chose the colors to reflect Chinese culture! Every culture assigns meaning to color, whether we realize it or not! In the U.S. we might associate red & pink with love, yellow roses with friendship OR yellow ribbons with military support, and we associate black with death & mourning. Red is a popular color in Chinese culture, symbolizing luck, joy, and happiness. Yellow is an imperial color in traditional Chinese color symbolism, representing power, royalty, and prosperity. And finally, we threw in maroon as a dark red option, because it is more flattering on some people! ;) I'm practical too you know. I really love the circle behind the words because it is messy, like paint. Loving people, and for goodness sakes, loving CHILDREN is not a task for the faint of heart! It is not a science, we can't do it perfectly. We do our best to show love to others like Jesus loved us, but we aren't perfect. Only He is! The Cost: .𝐂𝐨𝐬𝐭: $24.99 "𝐏𝐫𝐨𝐟𝐢𝐭": $11 of each shirt goes to our adoption fund. If you are not comfortable with this number, you are of course welcome to donate directly to our adoption fund (tax-deductible for you, but keeps 5% for the nonprofit) or venmo/paypal us. (Contact Rebecca for our user names) 𝐒𝐡𝐢𝐩𝐩𝐢𝐧𝐠: $2 to send to me in the Treasure Valley to deliver to YOU. $6.50 to ship anywhere else. . 𝐂𝐨𝐥𝐨𝐫𝐬:Red, Maroon, Gold 𝐒𝐢𝐳𝐞𝐬:Adult XS-4XL When Will I Get My Shirt? Our shirt campaign will run for 3 weeks. We have set a big goal to sell 100 shirts in 21 days. Orders will begin shipping on February 1st, and arrive to your house (or mine if you choose that option) by about Feburary 11th! Just in time to wear on Valentine's Day! SHARE We will not sell 100 shirts unless some of our friends are willing to SHARE the link on social media. (If you are active on platforms OTHER than faebook, that would be even more helpful, since we are not. But sharing on facebook is still helpful!!!) If you would like to help us with your influence, please share the link to our shirt campaign and write a sentence about how you know us so people we be more likely to click the link.
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, Around the adoption community, you will hear a phase -- "Paper Pregnant."
Like a biological pregnancy during the first trimester, you don't know "what" you're having yet, you don't have anything to show for it, you don't have anything fun and new to tell people who are excited for you. But during that first trimester of pregnancy, your body is working hard!! You might be nauseated, exhausted, and look a little chubby, but no one can see evidence of the baby you are growing. The first "trimester" of adoption has some similarities! You have announced the news that you are adopting and what country, but you don't know if it will be a boy or girl, what they will look like, or WHEN ANYTHING WILL HAPPEN. People are excited for you! But you don't have anything new to tell them. All you do is fill out papers papers papers. Thus the term, Paper Pregnant. Because I have friends that tried for so long to get pregnant and grieve that experience, I don't want to be flippant with the term. But other couples who have experienced infertility like the term Paper Pregnant! Either way, something is brewing, paper piles are growing (digitally), but we don't have anything visible to show for it yet. In order to adopt a child domestically or internationally, or be a foster parent, you have to complete a Home Study. Before we ventured on this journey ourselves, I thought a home study was a home inspection and maybe an interview. Ha! Oh, how I have learned! Here's some of what our Home Study has entailed so far:
Whew! So when we say we are "working" on our home study, this is what it means!! Next Steps: We are going to have to start the dreaded FUNDRAISING soon. *wince* Asking for money is never easy. I hope I can put the FUN in fundraising, show people how thankful we are for their help, how much we value them joining in this journey with us, and joining in our "village" of raising a child!
I'ma go hide now. *pulls hoodie strings* Thanks y'all. Rebecca Why are you adopting?
Short version: The Bible says to care for orphans + we want a bigger family = adoption! Long version: The Bible says to care for orphans, widows, and the poor, but it doesn't say HOW. Everyone who believes in God is called to care for these people. NOT everyone is called to personally bring an orphan into their home permanently. I would love it if our adoption journey spurred you to pray about how YOU can care for these children need help so desperately. Maybe you want (or God wants you) to foster children who need homes in the US. Maybe you want to pick a foster or adoptive family and support them with meals, babysitting, or encouragement. Maybe you want to PRAY fervently for us, or another family on this journey. PLEASE hear me say that prayer is the most impactful way you can help us! Money and babysitting are great, don't get me wrong, but our God is so much bigger than those things, so we need Him to be the center of this process! Maybe you want to become a social worker, or support social workers, or support parents who are working toward reunification with their children in the foster care system. Why international and not foster care? Short answer: There are children every where, in every town, in every country that need homes. Different people are called to different paths. Long answer: While we have done our best to support our various friends who have been foster parents, we feel God tugging our heart towards international adoption. Robert lived in Asia from age 1-18, so he feels much more Asian on the "inside" than he looks on the outside! He has personal experience being a different race than almost everyone around him for his entire childhood. (But not his family. We are not pretending his experience is the same as an adopted child, but at least a distant cousin.) I will let him share more later on his experience as a Third Culture Kid. What country? Short answer: Taiwan! Long answer: We actually researched many countries in SE Asia that had a big influence on Robert's childhood culture. We are not eligible to adopt from Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore, or Thailand for various reasons. (Location, religion, current family makeup) We ARE eligible to adopt from China, Hong Kong, Taiwan, India, and the Philippines. China has a big influence on Malaysian culture (where Robert lived from 1998-2005) and Robert took 2 years of Mandarin in high school! So, we chose to apply with the China Program at Holt (our international agency). Within that program, we had to choose between China, Hong Kong, and Taiwan. The program director encouraged us that our desire to adopt 2 siblings would meet a huge need in Taiwan. Taiwanese culture is very Chinese, Japanese, and SE Asian, so Robert instantly fell in love! We are very excited to focus on Taiwan and hopefully bring home TWO siblings to add to our family! Boy or Girl? Short answer: Either one! Both! Long answer: Since we are applying to adopt 2 siblings from Taiwan (surprise!) we are open to either gender! The wait for a child is much longer if you go into adoption wanting 1 healthy girl. We are open to 1-2 children of either gender! How much does it cost? Short answer: $40,000 ...ish Long answer: WHY IS IT SO EXPENSIVE!?!?! Not gonna lie, this is the hard part right at the beginning. This is one of the biggest reasons why people don't adopt internationally! That's about what it costs to have a baby at the hospital and stay for 2 nights before insurance kicks in. But why should it cost money to give a child a home??? This is hard for us too. Part of the reason is because in the past (and still today in some countries) people would kidnap children by lying to impoverished parents and saying they were taking their child to give them medical care, education, food, everything. These parents would gratefully, albeit hesitantly, let their child be taken away in hopes that their needs would be met. They never saw their children again. At worst, these despicable swindlers knowingly put these children up for adoption to get money from foreigners looking to care for orphans. At BEST, children slipped through the cracks, or were found lost in a public place, and due diligence was never done to find if the child had parents waiting for him or her. While there are a lot of other steps that cost money in the adoption process, this is the big "WHY" that makes it worth it for me. I'm willing to pay for a LOT of governmental red tape in the USA and in Taiwan if it cuts down on child trafficking. Can I help? Short answer: HECK YES! Long answer: We are going to need a lot of help!!
Whew. I'm tired of writing. Are you tired of reading?? If you read all of this I'm VERY impressed. It's really ok if you skimmed the bold answers! Thank you thank you thank you for coming along this journey with us! Rebecca |
AuthorAll posts are written by Robert or Rebecca. Maybe you can guess who's who based on the number of emojis and exclamation points!!! CategoriesArchives
February 2023
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