First Steps in Bringing Home A Child From Ethiopia

We are very excited about starting our process to adopt a child from Ethiopia.  To adopt internationally is about $30,000-$35,000.  Obviously many people do not have that kind of money sitting around, including us.  We will be doing everything we can to earn extra money for the adoption.  I am trying to start watching more children in the daycare to help earn more money and Chris is building up his business of cleaning houses.  We plan on starting the paper work in January.  We would like to have $5000 before we start.  This will help pay for our application fee, part 1 of agency fees and our home study.  I have been doing lots of research online from others who have adopted and they have great fundraising ideas.  We would like to try to pay as much as we can ourselves for our adoption, but we will do a couple of fundraisers too.  One of my favorites that I read is to do a large garage sale (which I love doing) with the help of donated items from friends and family!

On the weekend of July 4,5,& 6, we are going to have a huge garage sale and all the money will go into the adoption fund.  So, if you have anything that you would like to donate that is annoying you in your house that you want gone or would be taking to the goodwill, we would love to pick it up and sell at our garage sale.  It could be anything from baby items, clothes, toys, nick knacks, or whatever.  We would appreciate any help we can receive from our friends.  Please share this with your friends and family.  We would love to get a lot of people involved and share in our adoption journey in bringing home a child from Ethiopia.  Anyway you want to help with the garage sale would be a blessing.  I am here all the time for drop offs or we can arrange a time to come pick up any items that you would like to donate.  If anyone has any tables that we can borrow for the garage sale would be greatly appreciated.  I am working on designing some kind of a card to hand out about our fundraising garage sale to get the word out.
I also read on other blogs, that we should give our friends and family a way of donating money towards our adoption if they so desire.  So, there is a paypal button on the right side where you can donate money towards our adoption if you ever feel like your heart is leading you to.  I have also placed a thermometer to help keep track of have much we have put in the adoption account that we have made and fundraised.  I am opening the account with our first $25 towards our adoption!  Once our home study is complete, we can then apply for adoption grants to help with some of the fees for our adoption.  You can call or text me @ 317-654-0638!
God has blessed us so much by placing us around such amazing believers in Christ.  We feel so blessed by our family and our friends.          
Religion that God our Father accepts as pure and faultless is this: to look after orphans and widows in their distress and to keep oneself from being polluted by the world.- James 1:27