Supporting Tian and Travis' Adoption

A couple of months ago, I had posted about my struggle with asking for financial support.  If you haven't read that, doing so will help make more sense out of this post. I had planned to follow up with this post the day after posting that, but God had other plans for us.

Recently, my mom was talking about her study of Elijah and the widow in I Kings 17.  That prompted me to go re-read the account.

God provided for both Elijah and the widow by directing them to help each other.  The widow provided food to Elijah, but only through her obedience to the difficult thing God asked her to do and by her own sacrifice.  God asked her to first make bread for Elijah, even through she and her son were on their last handful of flour.  The widow obeyed and made bread for him by faith.  If her faith was an error, she and her son would starve.  Of course, her faith wasn't an error.  God is faithful always.  God provided an endless supply of flour and oil for as long as it was needed.  But the widow first had to trust, then had to sacrifice.  Elijah had to also trust God and ask the widow to meet his needs, even through she was someone who had almost nothing to give him.  If Elijah had ignored God's instruction to ask the widow for food, SHE would have suffered by not receiving the blessing of abundant flour and oil.

What this teaches me is that 1: I must trust God.  2:  God is worthy of my trust.  3. It isn't wrong to let our needs be known.  4. God will direct others to help for a reason beyond our own needs.  My not asking as God directs could hinder someone else's blessing.  5. I must step out in faith and listen to how God wants me to bless someone else, even in my own time of struggle or suffering, just like the widow did.  It's sometimes easy to feel like Ken and I have a "pass" from being financially generous to others during this lean time when so much of what we have is going toward the adoption.  This account of the widow and Elijah convicts me otherwise.

So here it is.  I'm officially letting you, our friends and family and anonymous readers know that we could use financial help to complete the adoption.

What do we need?

$45,000  Approximate Adoption Total

$10,000 Approximate Paid So Far

This total does not reflect post-adoption cost or medical costs when we get home.

Lest that number scare your pants off (like it so easily did us), there is a current tax refund of about $13,000 per child.  

So to recalculate:

$45.000 approx. total

-$10,000 already paid

-$26,000 tax refund

--------------------------

$9,000

That tax refund removes much of the burden, for which we are grateful.  However, we won't see a penny of that until the summer of 2012.  We need $1500 this week to complete ours and the boys' visa and immigration paperwork.  By the end of May, we will need to book our flights, pre-pay for in-China costs, and have cash in hand, ready to take with us to China.
Some of the $10,000 we have already paid is on credit cards.  If you know us, you know we had paid off our debt except for the house.  We prayed over this before deciding to use credit cards and feel strongly, that for us, putting adoption expenses on a credit card is different than buying "stuff".  We're talking about two human lives and we know we will be able to pay if off within 2012.

We are fervently praying that the sale of our house goes through without any problems so that we have the cash we need to purchase our plane tickets, buy the items we need for China, and have the $18,000 cash we will need to take with us for the various fees we will pay there.  Since we had to drop the price of our house substantially, we will not have as much as we had first anticipated.

Ken and I are letting our needs be known and we trust that God will direct anyone He wishes to help.  Would you pray about it? Please also be in prayer for us, that Ken and I will be quiet to hear from God as He directs us, even if it seems counter-intuitive.  It may sound cliche, but it's true: We value your prayers for us above everything else.

If you would like to help us financially, you may use the PayPal link in the right column.  You may also send us an email if you have questions or need our address.  Thanks for even considering it and for praying for us and the kids during this process.
mail@thebrownfamily.us

With Much Love,
Sarah and Ken