8:35PM Dan: Did you make it?
8:38PM Jenna: Just in time
8:45PM Jenna: This
is not good.
8:55PM Dan: Yikes! Money?
8:56PM Jenna: Yup 2 to 3 grand
extra fees
8:57PM Dan: Wow
8:57PM Jenna: Yeah
9:18PM Jenna: 1000 due
Feb 1
9:19PM Dan: 4 what? At least we have it
9:21PM Jenna: Just because
they need money. Extra 250 to 500 quarterly
9:22PM Jenna: We are their
bailout.
9:24PM Dan: That’s what I was just about to write.
Over the course of an hour tonight, Jenna let me in on what was happening at the waiting families’ meeting at our adoption agency tonight. As you have read, it wasn’t exactly the news we wanted to hear at this point in our adoption journey.
I’m not sure that I ever thought of the economy affecting something like adoption. Yet it does. In the past several months, adoption agencies all over the country have had to close their doors even with waiting families in the wings. Internationally wait times are longer. There are plenty of children that need a home, but there are also governments that are greedy and corrupt.
In adoption, a lot of the costs are handled up front: application fees, home studies, payments for dossiers, etc. But once you start waiting, you don’t pay anything more until you accept a referral. At this point, you pay the rest.
When families are waiting for two and three years, at some point they reach a milestone at which they pay nothing for a long time, which under normal circumstances isn’t usually an issue because usually agencies are cyclical, a family is finished as a family is waiting as another is coming into the system. However, in our economy, people need to eat and pay for shelter, clothing, much less make major financial commitments like international adoption. I think you see where I’m going with this. Adoption agencies aren’t making any money because people aren’t adopting and those that are have paid everything they will pay for a long time.
The cycle is broken.
Agencies can’t afford to stay open while families wait.
Agencies (perhaps more than people who make stupid billion dollar business decisions) need a bailout.
And now the question becomes, “What do we do?”
The answer is obvious. We continue the journey.
Just because the adoption will cost more, doesn’t mean that God has taken away the calling. Everything up to this point has been so easy, and this will not be hard. This is where real trust comes into play… and prayer. The more we wait, the more we pay. So YOU can help and pray that we move up in line as quickly as possible. Pray that we will receive our referral in the next two months. We know it could happen, and it would save us a decent amount of cash.
It’s crazy. I don’t know his name. I don’t know what he looks like. But he already has a place in my heart and a stocking for the mantle. We’re so close that I can see him sitting on the couch in front of me as I write this. And yeah, he’s not going away. He’s coming home. I don’t care what it takes; I’m bringing him home.
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