Because you've asked....

Around here we get a lot of eye-rolls, or wide-eyed stares, or shakes of the head, or "I could never do it"s when we say that we're adopting again. Few and far between are the ones that get so excited and eagerly cheer us on through the process.

The most common question this time around is, "How are you affording it?" Well, no doubt about it, adoption can be an expensive under-taking, and we don't exactly have the money sitting in a bank account, but we are excited to say that the Lord is providing and providing abundantly in so many ways, we can't even count.

A few days ago, before we heard that we could go forward with the paperwork, we were told that perhaps a visit to Uganda to meet Aida and put her heart at rest about our family might be a good thing. Well, we just did not have the ability to do that - the money wasn't there, tickets were over $2,000, and it just didn't seem possible. But when I shared the need with a friend, and asked her to pray, she was at our house with a check for...well, enough for one airline ticket... just a couple hours later. "The money isn't ours," she explained. "It's the Lord's and this is how He has directed us to use it." And when we told her a few days later that it appeared that this trip to Uganda wasn't needed, we were instructed to keep it and use it for the rest of the adoption. A few days later, another friend who works in Uganda and has adopted from a village south of Aida's told me that she had quite a bit of Ugandan crafts and paper-bead jewelry to sell if I would like to use it to fundraise. Well, I did, but wasn't quite sure how to go about it as I am not a jewelry person by any stretch of the imagination. I barely get my hair and teeth brushed every day! Well, within 5 days of receiving 3 huge boxes of jewelry from her, about 3/4 was sold, and we had raised more than $1500 more for the adoption.

The Lord continues to move us forward and it's been exciting watching it this time! I think maybe the past three adoptions have taken so long (over a year, each one) that we had it in our heads that if we worked hard enough, saved enough, were frugal enough, we could do it on our own. This time there is absolutely no doubt that we cannot do this on our own! 45 days to come up with $14,000 (approx)...well, that's a bit nerve-wracking, right? But, we are significantly farther along than when we started, and it's all just sort of happened.