We are Brent and Lori of Illinois, and we have been married for twenty-two years now. We have been blessed by God in many ways, two of which are our biological children that are 21 and 18 years old. We first felt called to adoption in 2010. It took us several months to commit due to the costs that seemed overwhelming. On Feb 13, 2011, we made the firm decision to adopt. Little did we know, but our daughter had just been born two days earlier in China. Over the next seventeen months, God revealed to us the miracle of adoption. Then on July 23, 2012, we completed the adoption for our beautiful little Mia, now a 3 year old.
Once again, Brent and I both feel that we have been called to adopt from China, and we would love to give Mia a sibling from her birth country. We are requesting a boy or a girl waiting child between the ages of 3-5. If anyone had told us when we were younger that we would be adopting not only one, but two children in our mid to late forties, we wouldn’t have believed them. But here we are on this journey together, with God leading the way.
For Mia’s adoption we did one big fundraiser (a dinner at our church) that was coupled with a matching grant of $2,500 from Hand in Hand. That was very successful. We had generous donations from our families as well, and a grant for $2,000 from A Child Waits right before our travel. Unfortunately, we did take on debt (an interest free loan) to complete Mia’s adoption. This time around, we are determined to adopt completely debt free. As Dave Ramsey says, “There is not one example in the Bible of God calling someone to do something and then using debt as a tool to accomplish it.”
We are in the early stages of fundraising for this adoption. So far we have had a Christmas giveaway through our blog. We gave away a Keurig K75 coffee maker and a LeapFrog LeapPad Ultra. Entries were one for a $10 donation or three for a $25 donation. This brought in $1,000 in donations ($723 after the purchase of the giveaway items.)
At the same time as the giveaway, we set up a Pure Charity account where we hoped people would do their online Christmas shopping. While some families have great success with Pure Charity, we did not. We are not promoting Pure Charity for donations because they take a 5% fee. Donations are better made in person, through our church, directly to our placing agency or through Paypal; whose fee is much less.
A current fundraiser we have going is through Funding Factory. We are collecting used cell phones, other used electronics, and certain ink and toner cartridges. These are then mailed in batches of at least twenty items or 20lb. to Funding Factory with the pre-paid shipping labels they provide. Funding Factory then pays a set amount for each item. We are getting close to having our first twenty items to send.
We will be doing more fundraisers over the upcoming months, and we will apply for grants as well. I am passionate about the Both Hands projects, and hope that we will be approved to do one to help fund our adoption. However, at the end of the day, we have to trust that God will provide for what He has called us to do. For God nothing is impossible.
The Lance family
Each Friday I’ll feature a different fundraising adoptive family. My hope is that we can support each other and also learn from each other. For submission guidelines, go here.