money lessons, faith, and the first send off

And my God will supply all your needs according to His riches in glory in Christ Jesus.
Philippians 4:19

Do any of you remember Blue's Clues? It was this cute kid's cartoon featuring a blue dog named, what else, Blue, and his oh-so-jolly owner Steve. Blue and Steve would go on a little mission each episode, finding Blue's clues that would lead them to the final prize. The show was after my time, but I used to watch it while baby-sitting. Anyway, there was a mailbox song they would sing every show in celebration of the fan mail coming in.
Here's the mail, it never fails! It makes me want to wag my tail. When it comes I wanna wail MAAAAIL!
I should confess now that I often sing that song in my head as I check the mail. Getting mail is a delightful thing and I really do look forward to it every day. Even the bills. Just kidding.

We have been getting some cool mail in recently, along with bills. Two of our sweet friends, Sarah and Mrs. Laura (and hubby Mr. Bruce) graciously sent us surprise donations. These are people that Kevin has gotten to know while traveling the country. So they were able to catch him on the road a week or so ago and offered some adoption money they felt led to give us. Kevin, being the sweet husband he is, requested that they send their gift to us via snail mail because I love getting mail. Truly, that was his reason. My wife loves getting mail, can you send it to us that way? And they did! It was fun! I am so grateful to the people who have felt called to help us and donate to this cause. I will never ever be able to repay the kindness.
I mentioned bills too. Yep, those have been coming in with the fun mail. Contamination! Villa Hope and Holt have both sent bills to us in the last week. The good part of adoption bills, at least at this stage, is you don't have to pay them right away. Villa Hope will proceed with our home study whenever we decide to pay them. Simple as that. Well, you know me, we're doing this as quickly as possible! I'm like Monica on Friends. When a bill comes in, I do not wait to pay it. If the money is there, send it. In this case the money was very much NOT there. The Villa Hope bill was rocking out at $1150. Not $11.50. Good news is that we do have a savings account set aside for adoption so any donations we get go straight into that. Bad news is that it isn't a big account. Definitely not $1150 big.
But the Lord is big and I'm having to remind myself of that daily. I paced the kitchen for two days (not the whole two days, I'm not crazy) after that bill came in.
How in the world are we gonna pay this?
What else can I do to fundraise? Should I take a second job this summer?
Are we saving enough out of our paychecks each month?
This bill is small compared to what we'll be facing in about 9-12 months. How will we ever pay that?

I'm a money fretter, ask Kevin. If you asked me to budget $20 I'd find a way to stress about it. So you can imagine what this was doing to me. During those two days of me pacing and questioning I kept being reminded that this journey we are on is not ours. It's the LORD's path. I cannot control how fast it moves or how it gets paid for. I can be responsible and plan and do my part, but I can only do so much. My prayer life needed a spark, apparently, so God is starting to show me how huge this adoption thing is, financially. All I can do is pray about how to be a good steward through it all.

Now on to the fun updates!

With all that mail coming in, it was time for me to send some back.



We are finally getting things checked off our list. Did you notice on the list that Belle will need to send her updated records? She's so lazy, who knows when that will happen! Ha! :) I'm taking her to the vet next week to get her all caught up.


I checked the status of our fingerprints and they have safely made it to Virginia. Now the long wait begins to get the background check completed.


The first of many mailbox send-offs. :)