Adoption Stories about God’s Provision
Thank you so much for your willingness to contribute to this project! It’s my desire that our stories of God’s provision will give others the courage and faith they need to choose adoption. I’ve outlined some guidelines for writing and submitting your story. Try to be as descriptive as possible.
*** Submission Deadline is Friday, April 6, 2012 ***
· You must return a signed copy of the Story and Photo Release Form with your submission. Click on the link to download the form: Story and Photo Release Form.
· You must return a signed copy of the Story and Photo Release Form with your submission. Click on the link to download the form: Story and Photo Release Form.
· Use Times New Roman, 12 pt font, black.
· I’d prefer that you use your real names in the stories, but you don’t have to. If you choose not to use your real names, then please write the story using your real names and let me know that you want them to be changed.
· Begin by describing your family and financial circumstances at the time you decided to adopt. What lead you to choose adoption?
· Include personal experiences of how you saw God provide financially for your family and adoption expenses. Include as many instances as you like. Here’s a brief example from my own adoption:
o We had a huge garage sale for our adoption in June, 2009. We received a lot of donations for our garage sale and one of the items donated was a used dishwasher. The dishwasher had been donated to another family’s adoption fundraiser, but it didn’t sell, so they donated it to ours. Long story short, we had no idea where this dishwasher had been or if it even worked. It didn’t sell at our garage sale either, so it sat in our garage for several months; waiting for someone to put it out of its misery.
About a month before we received our referral for Abraham, our dishwasher broke. The motor in it had been replaced twice, so this was the third time it had gone out…but this time, it wasn’t under warranty anymore. We’d been told by one of the repairmen that if we had to replace the motor, we may as well just buy a new dishwasher. We had been saving our money in preparation for when we would need to pay our final adoption expenses, but now we were looking at taking money from our savings.
Then, we remembered the abandoned dishwasher sitting in our garage. What did we have to lose? My husband brought it in, hooked it up, and it worked!! That mysterious dishwasher that didn’t bring in any money at our fundraiser ended up saving us hundreds of dollars. In fact, it continued to work for two years until we had to replace it. But when we did, we had the money and we had our Abraham.
· Give an idea of what your adoption expenses were in each stage and how God provided in each stage. Many adoptions have various fees due at different times. For example, we had to pay over $9000 at the start of our adoption process. We didn’t have time to fundraise, so we opened a 0% interest credit card and put the fee on it. We had decided in advance that we wouldn’t borrow more than what we knew we’d get back in our adoption tax credit. That $9000 turned out to be the only amount we had to finance and we were able to pay it off after we got our adoption tax credit.
· Describe any fundraisers you had and/or how other people contributed to your adoption finances. Did you apply for and/or receive a grant or loan from an organization?
· Feel free to share any other information about how God provided financially during your adoption.
You may also submit pictures of your family and adopted child(ren). Photos will help personalize your story and help the reader connect with REAL people who have experienced God’s provision first-hand. Please submit your stories and photos to me at gr8cate@gmail.com. Documents need to be saved as .doc, .docx. or .pdf. Photos can be mailed to me or attached in an email as a .jpg file. Feel free to contact me at that email address if you have any questions or concerns.
Thank you!
