We are so happy to say that our first matching grant from the Hand in Hand organization has been met! We are so thankful for all of the donations we have received. This grant will give us $5000 towards our adoption. I don't have all of the misc. fees that crop up. For example, this was really depressing, it cost $911 to have all of our paperwork authenticated. ahhh! Since we had to send it to 3 different Consulates, that was 3 different fed ex fees, really 6 different, since I had to fed ex there and back to us. Then add to that 3 different courier fees and the consulate fees, and then they add fees for each page they authenticate it really gets ridiculous.
Last week, our paperwork finally headed to China! We are so excited that it passed inspection for 2 of our agency workers, so hopefully things will go smoothly being translated in China. I did have to go ahead and pay our $6950 agency fee for the adoption to move forward. We had not wanted to borrow money for this adoption, but sometimes this doesn't seem to be avoidable... However, now I have tweaked my goal, that by the time we get our daughter home, I am praying that we will be debt free again except for our house.
Most grants that we receive will be paid directly to our agency, not directly to us. So since we have paid many of the agency fees already, anything over what we owe the agency, will be refunded to us by our agency. So it may be a while before we get paid back. But that is ok, I am just so thankful that the Lord is providing.
We still have the Lifesong matching grant that we will be working on now! You can click on the donate button on the right if you want to donate through them. This is a $4000 matching grant!
Thank you for all of your prayers.
