Today, and for the next couple days, I will be scrambling to get our last minute adoption garage sale together.  We have been blessed by the generous donations of family and friends and we are praying for a great turnout!  The weather is supposed to be fantastic and we will be running this garage sale as a family.  My accountant husband will be taking the money and making the change, the kids will be selling cookies and lemonade, and I will be overseeing everything :)  We decided to put this together through the encouragement of others to help get the $325 we need to submit our application to our agency and our Letter of Intent to China.

If we get the pre-approval from China, we will be facing a pretty much immediate $2500 fee to our agency to begin our paper chase.  I have had such a struggle with the fact that we need help raising this money.  There are so many opinions out there about fundraising and asking for money for an adoption.  There are those who feel that adoption is a choice you make and if you can't come up with the money on your own, you shouldn't be adopting.  Then there are those who feel that the cost of adoption is not much different than paying to give birth to your child in a hospital, except that insurance covers most of it and then you are able to make small monthly payments on the rest AFTER you bring your child home.  I am part of the second group of people, but it is still hard to ask for money, even if you are offering something in exchange.  I did a little reading on this subject over the weekend, and I came across a great article that reassured me.  The author states that when you are fundraising or asking for donations for an adoption, the money is not for you.  We aren't asking for money so we can go on a vacation or buy a new car.  We are asking for money so that we can give a precious child what he so desperately needs and deserves: a family to love him and take care of him.  God calls us to this in James 1: 27 "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."  I have decided to swallow my pride and boldly step forth in faith, trusting that God will move and provide the funds necessary to bring Asher home to his forever family.

Thank you all who have partnered with us in this, we pray that God would bless you!

I will leave you with the sweet face that started it all.  Try not to smile, I dare you!