Pure Charity gives “power shopping” new meaning. By creating a Pure Charity account and installing a simple browser plug-in, you can earn “Rewards” each time you shop at a Pure Charity partner. Partners include companies like Walmart, Old Navy, Target, Apple, Expedia…the list goes on and on.

It’s fun to see my little Pure Charity icon pop up when I’m shopping. A quick click and I’m earning money to go into my own Rewards Network. Then I can browse the hundreds of projects registered with Pure Charity and choose where that money goes.

Some of my favorite charities like Mercy House Kenya & Help One Now have used Pure Charity to raise funds for projects.

Last fall at Together for Adoption I asked one of the Pure Charity staff, “What about adoptions?” I knew there was huge potential!

I was ecstatic when I heard from Mike Rusch, COO of Pure Charity, that they were indeed rolling out a platform for adoption fundraisers. I even got a sneak peak before they launched it at CAFO Summit 9

Their first adoptive family (their beta testers) has already met their $8,000 funding goal!!

I walked through the process myself, setting up a fundraiser for my brother’s family. It was super simple and only took me about 15-20 minutes. Pure Charity has tons of videos to walk you through the process but the instructions are pretty clear. You can upload pictures, videos – whatever helps you tell your story.

When you’re done, embed their widget on your blog and use their social media sharing tools to spread the word. Invite ALL your friends to join Pure Charity. They make it super simple with Facebook integration and a personalized link. When someone joins your “Advocate Network” you also earn rewards off their purchases. This goes 10 levels down. So ask your friends to invite their friends, etc. It all adds up!

Your friends and family can also make straight tax-deductible donations into your fund!

Couple things you should know:

• Money from your Pure Charity fundraiser gets paid directly to your agency so set your fundraiser goal for your agency expenses only. (Not travel, etc.)
• Pure Charity charges a 5% fee on fundraisers to cover the cost of credit card fees and administration. They recommend adding that percentage to your overall fundraising goal.

Of course when your adoption is complete, you’ll still be earning Pure Charity rewards you can give generously to one of the 600+ projects on the site.

JOIN PURE CHARITY

Also, Pure Charity’s Mike Rusch and successful Adoption Fundraiser, Jenny Marrs are conducting a webinar to share tips on how to best use the Pure Charity platform to make your fundraiser successful!

Date: June 4th, 2013
Time: 12:00-1:00 CST

Reserve your Webinar seat now at: 
https://www4.gotomeeting.com/register/296800303

At the Christian Alliance for Orphans Summit 9 I did a breakout titled “Creative Fundraising for Your Adoption & Ministry.” During the Q & A time Victoria from New Beginnings shared about their “Freezer Pleaser” fundraiser. They did it as a fundraiser for their Junior Auxiliary but I’m sure it would translate well to a local adoption fundraiser.

First, they had a former member that worked for Sears and arranged to donate a small chest freezer (value of about $125). If you know someone who works for Sears, Best Buy, Home Depot, etc. talk with them and see if they can connect you with a store manager. If they can’t donate, perhaps you could get it at cost?

Next, recruit 30 of your friends to prepare one freezer meal. There are hundreds of blogs devoted solely to freezer cooking, so if they’re not sure what to prepare it’s not hard to find the answer. Make sure they label their meal well and include directions. During the JA fundraiser each member prepared a main dish, bread and dessert as part of their meal.

Then they raffled off the freezer with a month’s worth of meals!

The sold raffle tickets for $5 each or 5 for $20. Most people just chose to buy 5 tickets. Each member of the JA (30 of them) sold tickets face-to-face and collected funds. Living in a small town they also set up a table in front of the football and softball games. The raffle drawing was held during the homecoming football game. (If you have kids, maybe their school would allow you to do the same thing? Or your church?)

They raised $7,000!!!!

Of course your mileage may vary and I think they definitely had an advantage being an organization and living in a small town. But could you raise $4,000? If you sold 200  of the 5 for $20 tickets, you’d make $4,000.

P.S. One tip from Victoria – don’t put the meals IN the freezer. Let the winner pick up the freezer from Sears and then coordinate delivery of the meals. In their case they had a local food factory that let them store all the meals in their commercial freezer and the winner came and picked them up. You don’t want to have to try and move a freezer full of meals

Today, I’m announcing my “Vintage Word Art”. I posted a test case to Facebook a couple weeks ago and had a great response, so we’re rolling them out.

I have some adoption themed and some not. I can also do custom work.

Go HERE to purchase or order custom work.

Have you seen how cute my niece is? My brother and his wife only have about 8 weeks until travel so we’re in high-gear fundraising mode!

But today it’s finally time to announce that the “Love Crosses Oceans” t-shirts are available to order. We fixed this failed design.

All proceeds go to the adoption of my niece Olivia. They just got their I-800 back, so they could be traveling in as little as 8 weeks. This adoption has happened super fast for them and so they are working hard to raise funds.

Olivia’s from China but we did Africa shirts too. Both designs area available for women (plum), men (indigo), girls (raspberry) and boys (midnight navy). $20 each. Flat shipping of $4 no matter how many you order.

Below are some pics to show the two designs and all 4 colors.

Go HERE to order!

PLEASE SHARE via your social media. I would really appreciate it!

$24 with free shipping.

I’ll even gift wrap it for you

100% of the cost goes toward my niece’s adoption.

GO HERE

We thought we had our design finalized, so I took a moment to mock it up on the actual t-shirt catalog image.

Always a good idea.

In this case it saved us from catastrophe…

So, morale of the story – always mockup your design on an actual shirt before you send it to the screen printer

Back to the drawing board.

He followed it a moment later with a pic of the a letter that had come from Hertz regarding my rental in Colorado two weeks ago.

Um, yeah, I don’t think so.

Granted, the gas station was a little farther from the airport than I would have liked. It’s always a constant guessing game of whether or not their is a gas station right by the airport. But 9.73 gallons? Not on your life.

Can you say “JOYRIDE?”

Or perhaps a reservation mix-up the customer service rep replied when I promptly called to inform him that I had filled up the tank 17.9 miles from the airport (yes, I Google mapped the distance).

Thankfully, I can send a copy of the receipt and get the matter cleared up – hopefully quickly.

But thank you for the heart attack Hertz – both mine and hubbies.

Plus, can I just say that it’s ridiculous to charge people $10 a gallon for gas. That should be illegal.

Well these days I’m the one going around saying “Jon Acuff says…” He started out as the funny guy who writes the satirical blog “Stuff Christians Like,” but now he’s a dream-encouraging, hope-making, fear-busting author and speaker. Of course he’s still funny too

Outside of close friends, family and God, Acuff has probably been the biggest influence in my life the last two-years. I read “Quitter: Closing the Gap Between Your Dream Job and Your Day Job” two summers ago right after my book came out and I realized that this writing/speaking thing was my dream. It helped shape how I spent the next year.

Now his newest book “Start: Punch Fear in the Face, Escape Average and Do Work that Matters ” is here. The official description:

Over the last 100 years, the road to success for most everyone has been divided into predictable stages. But three things have changed the path to success:

• Boomers are realizing that a lot of the things they were promised aren’t going to materialize, and they have started second and third careers.
• Technology has given access to an unprecedented number of people who are building online empires and changing their lives in ways that would have been impossible years ago.
• The days of “success first, significance later,” have ended.

While none of the stages can be skipped, they can be shortened and accelerated. There are only two paths in life: average and awesome. The average path is easy because all you have to do is nothing. The awesome path is more challenging, because things like fear only bother you when you do work that matters. The good news is Start gives readers practical, actionable insights to be more awesome, more often.

I was excited to get an early copy and I devoured it and highlighted the heck out of it. Now that I’m done I’m going to turn back around and read it again. There is so much wisdom and PRACTICAL application to put in motion.

The “Road to Awesome” that Jon describes involves 5 stages -  Learning, Editing, Mastering, Harvesting and Guiding. These steps are the same no matter what dream you’re working on and want to be awesome at – writing, starting your own business, being a mom, saving the world.

Of course his biggest point is that we all need to do one thing – START! As Jon says “The starting line is the only line you completely control.” Don’t worry about the finish – it’s impossible to predict and may change half a dozen times by the time you get there. If you had told me 15 years ago that I’d get to travel around and speak, I would have checked your forehead for a fever. I never could have predicted this.

The book also includes a whole section at the end titled “What Now? Action Always Beats Intention” that gives very practical, tactical steps you can take. It’s so great and I’ve started working through them already.

“Start” comes out this Monday. But don’t wait til then to order it. If you Pre-Order you get a whole bundle of goodies worth over $250, including the audio of Jon’s Quitter Conference that I got to attend last Sept.

Not sure? You can download the first chapter for free here. It will convince you.

So me? What am I STARTING? I’m going to be more intentional about my writing. Sometimes I feel like if I don’t have a 4-hour block of time to write I might as well not do it. Course that’s ridiculous. So my goal is to just START writing each day – even if I only get 30 minutes, I have to start.

Once you’ve read it, I’d love to hear your thoughts.

P.S. For  a limited time you can download the audio version of “Quitter” for free here.

Saturday afternoon we had a two hour block of free time at the Embracing Orphans retreat. Instead of hiking or going to downtown Estes Park, I hid away in my room to do some last minute prep for my talk that night. In truth I’d had several moments of panic and thought of changing my talk a half-dozen times.

But sanity prevailed and other than adding a few details, I was ready. It would be the first time that I would stand in front of a crowd and talk about my nine year battle with depression (both “regular” and “post-adoption”). I’ve shared about it on my blog and did a video testimony for church several years ago, but this was my first time “live.”

I was all ready to do a quick run through (wanted to make sure I wasn’t going to go too long), when I clicked over to Twitter for just a second. (Can you say ADD?) There was a tweet from someone about praying for Rick & Kay Warren as they had lost their son.

I quickly found the story on MSNBC. A story many of you have read by now.

“In spite of America’s best doctors, meds, counselors, and prayers for healing, the torture of mental illness never subsided,” Warren wrote to church members. “Today, after a fun evening together with Kay and me, in a momentary wave of despair at his home, he took his life.”

I stood in that hotel room and wept. A dozen years ago my reaction to that story would have been completely different. While I’m sure I would have felt sorry for the Warren’s, I’m also honest enough to admit that at one point the thought “Well that was selfish” would have flickered through my brain.

I had no reference from which to comprehend what would lead a person to suicide, especially a depressed person.

Not until one night in early 2004. I had, most likely, been clinically depressed for at least 6 months. But I had refused to admit I needed help. Had refused to talk about it with anyone, including my spouse or my best friends. Had refused to label it or even try to find a label for what I was feeling.

But that night I reached a breaking point – a full realization and face-to-face moment with the pain I was feeling. The realization that I no longer recognized the person I was. And the person I had become was NOT someone I liked.

In that brief moment I thought to myself, “Jesus, just come take me now please. I don’t think I can do this anymore.”

I want to make sure the distinction is clear – I wanted Jesus to relieve my pain. I was not, nor did I ever get to the point of contemplating suicide. I don’t want to unnecessarily scare my friends & family.

But that brief moment was enough to give me a glimpse into the darkness. Enough to forever change the way I would look at mental illness and suicide.

To look not with judgement, but instead with empathy. To know that logic, even “spiritual logic” is sometimes elusive – not because the person isn’t Christian enough. Not because their faith isn’t strong enough or they didn’t pray enough or they have some unconfessed sin. But because they are ill.

Mental illness is no different from cancer. No one chooses it.

Unfortunately, what is different is how we talk about it. ESPECIALLY in Christian circles. As a pastor’s wife (at the time), I felt as if I needed to hide the weight of my emotions behind a mask of hospitality and faith. I was sure that if I began to bare my soul, even just the tiniest bit, that what poured forth would be met with judgement and disdain. No, not from my husband, family or closest friends, but from the church as a whole.

The fear was, of course, not based in reality. But that’s the problem with depression. It blurs the lines of logic and reality until the person suffering is too afraid to take a step forward.

Can God heal? Absolutely! Does every person need medication to get better? No. Are there a lot of people who need help and aren’t getting it? Yes!

A study by the Shaffer Institute revealed that 70% of pastors battle depression. That’s 7 times the national average (1 in 10). So why aren’t we talking about it?

What if, instead of wondering how the church would react, every person suffering from depression knew they would be met with open arms and loving acceptance. What if they knew because we showed them? What if every Christian who has suffered from depression and mental illness would step forward and say “Me too”?

Matthew’s death is a horrible loss – the worst loss a person can ever encounter. I pray that somehow through the Warren’s story the church will wake up to the realities of mental illness and start talking about it the same way we talk about other illnesses – without judgement and shame.

If you are battling depression, please get help. It just takes reaching out to one person to start – whether that is a spouse, best friend or doctor.

If you have been blessed to be left untouched by this disease then I hope you will stand by, ready to support and love those around you who do suffer. Because I promise that there is someone, if not now, then at some point in your life.

A couple other posts you must read…

Ann Voskamp – “There’s no stigma in saying you’re sick because there’s a wounded Healer who uses nails to buy freedom and crosses to resurrect hope and medicine to make miracles.”

Kristen Howerton – “When we hear about grieving parents it can be so tempting to try to assign blame, because if they aren’t to blame, then we have to grapple with the reality that sometimes, tragedy is senseless. This is an uncomfortable truth: awful things happen to children that parents cannot prevent.  It’s a truth so painful that we would rather throw grieving parents under the bus than face it.”