Ages, stages, & statistics

Just the other day, someone asked me how many children are adopted from Ethiopia each year. And I didn't know, but also became intensely curious to find out. Here's what I discovered:


















If you click on the graph, it will open larger in a new window. But what it boils down to is that adoptions from Ethiopia to the US have been increasing steadily, and for 2008 the total number of adoptions was 1724. (Source: US Dept of State).

I've heard estimates on the number of orphans in Ethiopia to be anywhere from 4.8 million to 6 million. With that many zeros, I'm not sure a 1.2 difference makes all that much difference!

If 10% of Ethiopian orphans were adopted (going on a 5 million orphan estimate), then 500,000 orphans would no longer be family-less. I'm sure you can do the math, too (probably faster and better than I can!), but it really hits home for me to break it down. 5% of orphans finding a home would 250,000 fewer orphans. A measly 1% of children being adopted would mean 50,000 new families for these kids! Instead, .04% of all Ethiopian orphans are being adopted. Forgive me if my math is wrong. But wow. And with the estimate of a new orphan being created every 18 seconds...we're not doing very well at keeping up or with helping to prevent them from becoming orphans in the first place.

Statistically, only 9% of the children internationally adopted by Americans
in 2007 were adopted from Africa. 71% of the 9% were adopted from Ethiopia. Looking at the Office of Immigration Statistics over a 12 year period for Ethiopia adoption... On average an equal number of boys and girls are adopted from this country. About 60% of children are 4 years or younger. 40% are 5 years or older. (Quoted from here).

I do occasionally sense an undercurrent of criticism for adopting an infant, when there are so many older kids who simply have no hope of ever being adopted. Older than age 5, and their chances plummet. And even though I know that within our personal family situation of having 3 young children already, we wouldn't have the time or emotional resources to support an older adoptee, I still feel a twinge when I hear "Oh everyone just wants the babies."

I'm thrilled when I hear of an older child getting a chance at a family. It's a beautiful, albeit difficult, process. I am thankful that there are families out there that have the capability of taking on an older adoptee.

But after looking at the statistics of the percentage of orphans from Ethiopia being adopted in the first place, all .04% of them, I feel the guilty twinge unwrinkle. Because if everyone adopted an older child, there would simply be another baby growing older to take its place. By adopting an infant, we are adopting an older child...before they get there.

$4

I cleaned the clutter off the microwave last night. I found $4.

(Thanks though, Eric, for the thought to check Mark's jean pockets...) :)

Rummage Sale results!

The rummage sale yesterday was incredible in a lot of ways. Before I go into details, first here's some pics, neither very good nor plentiful, of the team that came to help us on the 15th. The team was from Mississippi, and had willing hearts and hands! What a blessing to have so much help getting set up, not to mention those from our church who stuck around to help, too.















We were equally blessed by the outpouring of love and support from our family and friends for this endeavor. Family and friends from town and church donated rummage. My mom and Rebecca came down for the day to stay with the kids, which freed Mark and I up to do whatever was needed...thank you, thank you!

Mona and Rose spent the entire day at the church, helping with customers and doing more sorting and such, and Grandma Lee (pictured below) stayed at the checkout table for us. Mark stayed in the basement of our house handling furniture sales (clever man that he is, he thought to offer delivery for a $10 fee...and it was a great thought for us and for the folks that came in small cars to buy beds)!















I said that the sale was incredible in a lot of ways...one of which is how very few customers we seemed to have. To all of us, it just seemed like a 'slow day' at the sale. Which is surprising, because we did a lot of advertising and the weather was gorgeous...a perfect day to have spring fever and go garage sale-ing. The pic below is of us packing up all the stuff to go into the church attic to have another sale later this year, during the summer. There was a lot of stuff left, and we were so grateful to have a lot of help packing it all out! So many helpers from our church family joined Mona, Rose and I at the church...Chad and Kindra, their friend Tad (who pitched right in despite never meeting us before), Dakota, Asian, Tommy, and even Andrew was a little worker bee.
There's still some more sale money floating in from church members and family that bought items but didn't have the money yesterday, but that's part of what makes the results even more miraculous. This coming week, to file our I-600A, we need a total of $830 (the $670 filing fee plus the $160 for fingerprints). Next week we'll need $175 to start our required online adoption class and as soon as we finish our home study packet we'll need another $800, etc, etc, etc.

But for just this week, we need $830. For being such a 'slow sale day', our total was $826. Our God is faithful...

Rummage Prayers, please!

Today is the day of our first fundraiser, and I have a certain amount of nervous anticipation about it. Seems kind of silly to be excited about a bunch of rummage, but what can I say?

I will post pics later this weekend of the set-up crew that came this past weekend. Wow-what a blessing! Our friend Scott is a missions coordinator, and he had contacted us a while back to see if we had any work for a team on Mar. 15th.

What a huge help! They had the our basement unloaded and the church filled with all manner of stuff, all organized on shelves...and all in about 3 hours. We ended up with so much stuff that we're actually keeping the furniture in the basement, and advertised that there was so much stuff, we need two locations. Praise the Lord!

So I just wanted to ask all of you to please pray that we get lots of traffic today, that tons of people turn out, that the rummage gets gone, and that hearts are generous in their offers! Thanks!

Paperwork Begins!

We've started this paper chase rather slowly...not quite sure why or how it's worked out that way. But I started prepping our I-600A (Application for Advance Processing of Orphan Petition). Filing the application, along with copies of our birth certificates and our marriage certifcate, $670, an appt. at the immigration office in Anchorage for our fingerprintsfro both of us and $160, and we can cross that one off the list! Am I forgetting anything for that one piece of paper? :}

And we've started the home study process! Our information packet is in the mail, and when we return our portion (more fingerprints...they can't share), FBI clearance, a health report on each of us (also will be needed for our dossier...they can share), and a written autobiography from each of us, and we'll be ready for visits from a home study preparer! (That, and $1450 plus travel from Anchorage to be ready).

We're starting to get just a glimpse of why adoptions are purely miraculous workings of God!

Mustard Seed Growing

Last week, Mark and I were really struggling in prayer on how to best handle the first installment of the program fee. Basically, the entire process hinges on getting in that first payment of $1125.

We are hoping to apply for and receive grants from more than one source, but you can't apply till you at least have your home study complete or even your dossier, neither of which can be completed, let alone started, without your first program fee.

So, we were praying on it. We have a *small* emergency fund. A little more than enough to keep Murphy away (you'll know what I mean if you listen to Dave Ramsey), but not enough to hold us for long should Mark lose his employment. So we were really torn...we had the $1125 in the bank, but what good was it to start this whole process and not be able to finish because we had a medical emergency or a car accident, etc, with no way to handle it financially? I hope you can see both our dilemma and our hearts in this whole thing...it's not easy being totally transparent!

We are just earnestly striving to be good stewards of all we have and are given. So we were in dilemma and earnest prayer about what to do. Last Monday night, we finally came to the decision to go ahead and just pay the $1125 out of our emergency fund instead of waiting for the rummage sale fundraiser that will be this coming weekend...because the expenses are just going to keep on coming anyway!

On Tuesday morning I opened my email, and saw a new email that sent me to tears. Some friends of ours recently received an unexpected bonus, and they wanted to share it with us as a show of support for this adoption. And exactly a week later, a $500 check arrived from them.

Isn't that so like God? He gives us just enough light for the step we're on. Step out in faith on Monday night, by Tuesday morning He reveals just how He's carrying you up to the next step. Praise Him with us today, would you? He's more than worth it!

Did you know?

The Bible talks about orphans and adoption over 40 times. Why don't we talk about them more often?