A very kind friend has offered to do a fundraiser for us through her Scentsy business.  She is actually a friend of a friend I met through a facebook adoption group, and she is preparing to leave for Uganda in less than a week to pick up her own little girl!  It’s so sweet that she’s doing this for us with everything else she has going on right now.

From now until Thursday, January 26th, Mary Harriman Thew will donate a portion of all her Scentsy sales to our adoption.  Follow this link to purchase Scentsy on our behalf!  You’ll help us raise funds for our adoption and fill your home with the fabulous Scentsy aromas and decor!!

Click this link to go to Mary’s Scentsy page:  https://starfish.scentsy.us/Home

Scroll through the names on her list of open parties under the “My Open Parties” tab below her picture.

Find our name and click “buy from party”

Now you should be on our party home page.  Shop to your hearts content and PLEASE, by all means, tell ALL YOUR FRIENDS!

Adoption Tax Refund Petition

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Is adoption risky?
“You have taken a big risk. I am so glad it has worked out for you.”

“You have been very lucky.”

“You are fortunate that things are going so well.”

My wife and I can almost hear the collective sigh of relief from friends and family that care for us so much. This long exhale comes now that it seems like all is well with our family after our recent Ethiopian adoption. After all, we did take a big risk.

Or did we?

My wife and I don’t feel like we bet the farm. Did we really jeopardize our family? Did we jeopardize our relationship with our birth children? Did we really jeopardize our sanity? (OK, yes, I will give you that one. But our sanity was nearly gone anyway.)

Is adoption risky?

I think that adoption carries no more inherent risk than having a birth child. There is a great cloud of uncertainty surrounding a potential birth child. All of the possible birth defects, complications, the child’s personality, even gender can’t be known prior to conception when you are debating on whether or not to have a child. With an adopted child, certainly more is known about such things. Of course there are other unknowns. Were they loved by their parents? What experiences have they had? Have they been traumatized? Are they well adjusted? These unknowns feel more foreign to us than the more familiar unknowns of a birth child.

Even if one concludes that adoption is more risky, the next question is this:

For what are we willing to risk?

In American society, we are willing to take all sorts of risks. We sell short, buy stocks on margin, use home equity lines of credit for vacations, drive fast on interstates while talking on cell phones, develop tan lines, go bungee jumping, and eat fast food more often than we should.

If we are willing to take these risks — to risk for self gain and self pleasure — then let us also be willing to risk for others. And what better risk to take than for a child in need of a family.

John Piper says, “Risk is right.” And so it is.

(Crazy D, adoptive dad)

Josh and I have just started our first adoption fundraiser with an organization called Just Love Coffee.  This wonderful company sells organic, fair-trade coffees from all over the world and at the same time empowers adoptive families to raise the money they need to bring their children home. And the best part — its super simple.  All you need to do is follow this link to our personal JustLoveCoffee page, click on “shop & support” and purchase coffee.  It’s all done online and your coffee is shipped right to your door!  For every bag of coffee sold, Josh and I receive $5 towards our adoption expenses.  You’re going to buy coffee anyway, so why not help support our adoption at the same time?  ;o)

This fundraiser does not have an end date.  We will just keep it going until we bring our babies home.  You can also click on the “coffee fundraiser” icon on the right sidebar to go to our JustLoveCoffee page at any time.

Thanks for your support!

1. It is very hard to adopt a baby under 1 year old with no major health concerns.  This is for a variety of reasons.  Ug*nda has a budding domestic adoption program, which is awesome.  More and more Ug*ndan families are stepping up to provide homes for their orphans.  However, it is most common for Ug*ndans to adopt babies, leaving many toddlers and older children that need homes.  In addition, a significant number of adoptive families (domestic and international) want to adopt a baby 0-2 yrs old.  Josh and I are definitely open to adopting a toddler or older child in the future, but being first time parents we don’t feel ready for that right now.  Most of the children being adopted through our agency right now are between the ages 2-3 yrs old, the youngest they’ve placed recently being 15 months.

2. It is very tricky to bring home two unrelated children at the same time.  The best way to ensure the adoption of two children at one time is to wait for twins or siblings to become available.  Twin and sibling sets are both rare, especially those under 2 or 3 years old.  Adopting twins would be our best option, but we could be waiting a very long time if we were only willing to adopt twins.  We can adopt two unrelated children, but this is where things get tricky.  The Ug*ndan court system treats unrelated children as totally separate cases, even if they are being adopted by the same family.  This means there are two separate court dates because the children’s cases are completely separate.  There is also an issue with getting two referrals at one time.  Most likely, we’ll get a referral for one baby (if there are no twins available).  Upon accepting the referral, we could be in Ug*nda a month or two later for the court date to pick up our child.  So when we get our first referral, we’d have a decision to make.  Do we go ahead and get our baby home as soon as possible (which is what this mama’s heart is going to want very badly!) or do we wait until we get a 2nd referral, not knowing how many weeks or months it could take for a 2nd referral to come? And how long are we willing to wait for that 2nd referral when we know we already have one child in Ug*nda waiting for us to bring him/her home??

You can see why this will be a tough decision.  All that said, we are NOT giving up on adopting two children right now.  We believe that God is in control and He has the best plan for building our family.  He has made it SO CLEAR that He is in control of this adoption.  At this point, we’ve done whatever we can to open the doors for the adoption of two children, but only GOD can make that happen.  Each step we take on this journey makes me realize what an absolute miracle it is to even be able to adopt one child.    All we can do is take one step at a time and trust that God knows the desires of our hearts and His plan is better than any plan we could ever dream up!

annaktimmer(at)gmail(dot)com

It is such a long story, and I can’t share a lot on here quite yet because this is so public.  We have felt like we’re stuck in limbo, or stuck between a rock and a hard place.  I will say that we could use your prayers and in a week or so when some things pan out, I will give a more thorough update!

And by the way, our dossier arrived in Uganda on October 14th.  Yay!

We appreciate you prayers.  Keep ‘em coming!

Friday, October 7th — a day to remember forever!

Hi Anna,

I hope you are having a great Friday.  I wanted to let you know that your dossier will be sent to Uganda today!!!  Congratulations to you and Joshua for all of your hard work.

The next step for you is to wait for the referral.  We hope to have a referral for your family as quickly as possible.  After our staff has recieved your dossier, they will present it to the orphanage.  The orphanage will review the dossier and then approve your family to adopt.  Following this approval you will be “in line” to be matched with your children based on your request.  Our first dossier was sent to Uganda this summer and we are still waiting for a referral.  I will keep you posted on when referrals come so we can gauge what to expect for the wait time until referral.

Make sure you guys celebrate this weekend!

Regards,
Claire

YIPPEE SKIPPY!!!!!!!!!!