2018 End of Year Mortgage Payoff Report

Whew, last year did not go as planned in the financial realm. Does it ever?

Our Mortgage Payoff plan got majorly derailed in July when medical emergencies began with a broken leg and continued every couple of months for the rest of the year. Insurance got way messed up and we ended up owing more than we were originally told. We did not get off to a great start in paying down our loan, but God blessed us with the money we needed to get through the year and even a good bit extra for the mortgage these last two months.

Paying off our house as quickly as possible is a big deal to us because it largely impacts our ability to stay in this area long term. The sooner we can cut our expenses, the less secular work my husband will have to do to support our ministry here, and the more time he will have to do the work of an evangelist. The final payment is a distant dream right now, but we believe it will be worth the years of penny pinching to be able to focus more on full-time work for the Church.

Here’s our End of Year Report, for my own records and accountability.

Starting Loan Amount in May 2018: $126,300

Ending Loan Amount in December 2018: $120,120.79

Originally Payoff Date: May 6, 2048 (30 Year Loan)

Current Payoff Date: February 6, 2046 (If all we did was regular payments from here on out)

Goal Payoff Date: May 6, 2025 (7 Year Loan)

Extra payments in 2018 totaled $4,735.90, shortening our loan by 27 months and reducing our interest by $13,110.57.

That’s the part I want to encourage you with. By paying less than $5,000 extra on our loan this year, we saved over $13k in interest! Our income is around $50,000, and we don’t live like paupers. A good chunk of that came from our tax return, but a lot of it was just money we kept ourselves from spending on whims and wishes.

As we all get ready for tax season, I want to challenge you to play with your numbers and see how much of your refund you might be able to put toward your house this year. Plug the numbers into the Payoff Track app and see how much even just one extra house payment will save you. It really is incredible!

While we’re not as far ahead as we had hoped to be, we’re chugging along. There were four months this year when we had zero extra to pay. In fact, in June we got ourselves into credit card debt for the first time. After we got back on top of that, we didn’t have quite as much to put toward the house as we had wanted each month, but seeing that we’ve already knocked two years off our loan is great motivation to get back on track this year.

This Is Adoption, Too

I'm ready to talk about adoption.

I haven't shared much about our journey since bringing Little Miss home a year and a half ago. We've been too deep in the trenches. Too mentally exhausted. Too afraid of sharing too much.

I haven't shared what it's like because, other than fellow adoptive parents, there are few people who understand. The times when I've tried to explain I've been met with blank stares or a lot of, "You're making too big a deal out of this." So, I talk to my small circle of support, and I get advice from counselors, and I pray without ceasing, and I eat a lot of chocolate.

But I'm ready to more openly share what adoption looks like in real life. Not to scare you, but to give you an honest look at both the good and the bad.

Adoption is beautiful, and terrifying, and exciting, and depressing. It is fighting to bring home a baby you've never met but whom you already love like your own. And it's getting her home only to realize that while you DO love her just as much as you love your bio kids, you also love her... differently.

Adoption is a joyful journey. There is so much to celebrate in the little victories of each day. So much love to go around. So much happiness to go along with adding another child to the home. But it's also living in a state of high alert 24/7 waiting for the next shoe to drop. That is your new normal and you learn to thrive within the catastrophes. 

Adoption is waiting out the storms. It's seeing the stress in your bio kids' eyes from listening to the screams and watching the rebellion. It's seeing behavior in your youngest that you know with 100% certainty he would never have attempted had it not been for his adopted sibling, and it's fighting resentment that she has, to an extent, stolen the innocence of her baby brother.

Adoption is spending six hours engaged in a battle over a "simple" thing like your child refusing to pick up the spoon she dropped on the floor just because you told her to. It's knowing that at times your little girl would literally rather die than submit to your authority. It's dealing with compulsive lying on an hourly basis. And it's finally, after months of struggling, finding strength in the tiniest little breakthrough.

Adoption is constantly being questioned about your parenting tactics. It's being told that she doesn't understand what you're telling her to do by people she has so thoroughly convinced that "she's still learning English" and that you are being too hard on her. It's being told that she is so sweet, so compliant, and so friendly that she can't possibly have any degree of RAD. Because they don't understand that the triangulation and manipulation are so subtle that most of the time her parents are the only ones who can see it, even when it happens right in front of other people (which, by the way, makes you as a mom feel crazy and mean and full of self-doubt). But no, she's too sweet to have RAD. They would know.

Adoption is being judged by other people for insisting that she obey fully and completely and exactly, because they don't see how she tries to maintain control by only obeying to a certain degree. To them it is "close enough." They don't understand that if you don't insist on "exactly" rather than "close" when you know what she's capable of, then she will see her parents as weak and untrustworthy and incapable of taking care of her.

Adoption is having to teach a child that it's not okay to pinch herself. It's holding a raging little girl while she hits and growls at you. It's being asked if she always smiles so much and answering honestly that she does, but being inwardly heartbroken because you know that half of the smiles are fake.

Adoption is knowing that everything you researched, all the training you received, and all the advice other adoptive parents gave you pre-adoption is true. It's also accepting that knowing it and living it are two very different things. You were prepared as much as possible for how hard it was going to be. But that doesn't make it any less hard.

Adoption is always being asked how she's doing, how she's adjusting, how she's succeeding, but rarely being asked how you're feeling, how you're adapting, or what you need.

Adoption is such a perfect picture of God's love for us, in more ways than I could possibly understand before we began this adventure. Parenting a child who fights you tooth and nail, who resists your love, and who wants to go back to what she knows as safe even if it was miserable... It gives you such a clear picture of how God must feel when we pull away from Him and long to go back into the darkness from which He drew us. Adoption is redemption, and it is so worth it. But it isn't Anne of Green Gables.

I feel like we received some of the best training an adoptive parent can get. We had three years of gathering resources, and hearing stories, and being taught by the experts. But still, nothing prepares you for that moment when you look at the child you brought into your home and you think, what have we done?

I've shared the milestones and happy moments. The shiny new wheelchair, the first steps, the funny sayings, and the heart-melting pictures. But now I'm ready to share the rest of the story. Not because I want anyone to feel sorry for us or in any way think less of my daughter. I'm not sharing to scare people away from adoption but because I want MORE people to adopt - with their eyes wide open.

This is adoption. This is real life. And this is where we need more people willing to step in. We need more people willing to adopt kids from hard places and love them through their darkest, scariest moments. And we need more people to come alongside adoptive families with understanding, supporting them without question. Without judgment. Without doubt.

So many people want to love on our little girl, and we are so grateful and blessed by that. But if you can hear this in the way it is intended: She doesn't need you, because she has us. 

But we need you.

Oh, so desperately, we need your love and your understanding, and your help. We need you to let us share what the last year has really been like. We need you to tell us that you know it's hard even if you don't know exactly what it's like, and that it's okay that we don't always get it right. And we need you to send us lots and lots of chocolate.

"But you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for his own possession, that you may proclaim the excellencies of him who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light" (1 Peter 2:9).

Praise be to the Father who adopted us out of darkness and into His light. He has carried us through, and we will continue to hold to His promises.

Mortgage Payoff Tracker: DIY Roof

Time for a Mortgage Payoff Update!

In May we sent in our first mortgage payment. We were able to bump that payment up to $4,225.30 due to some unexpected Blessing Money that month. (Yes, all of our income is "blessing money," that's just how we refer to the extra, unexpected cash that shows up). Some of it came from the washer and dryer money the seller gave us at closing. $1000 of it came from our rental deposit that we received that month. Some of it was money we’d saved by bargaining for a used lawn mower off of Craigslist. And $500 of it came out of nowhere when the State of Wisconsin randomly decided to give everyone a $100 tax rebate PER CHILD! Sometimes life is random and you get to reap the blessings. That first payment shortened our mortgage by 21 months and saved us $10,109.36 in interest!

In June we didn’t have any unexpected money to add to the loan. We wrote our second principle check for $1358.07 – our usual payment of $649.36 plus the $708.71 we’ve budgeted to pay toward the house every month (a somewhat random number we came up with and forced our budget to accept, ha). This second payment reduced our interest by $1,866.83 and shortened our loan by 4 months. Yay!

This month will be the first check to go in as a minimum payment. We decided to use the extra money we would normally put toward the loan to enjoy a three day getaway to celebrate our 7^th anniversary instead. It was WELL worth it! This was our first time to go anywhere overnight without any of the children (except for the wee one we’re expecting in February!), and really our first time to do much of anything to celebrate our anniversary. 

My mom and sister came up to watch the Five Little Monkeys, and they all did great! Joshua and I stayed at a Bed and Breakfast, went kayaking, enjoyed a little hiking, ate great food, listened to the orchestra in the park, and tried our hand at painting for the first time. We went to one of those “paint your own canvas” places where you try to copy what a real artist has painted, with a tiny bit of instruction from the staff. We did a canvas of the Stillwater Bridge together. It was hilarious, as neither of us has ever painted before, and we were both trying to tell the other how it’s done. The end result won’t make is famous, but it is a fun memento of an awesome trip! We’re going to have to make child-free vacations more of a habit, now that I know my babies can survive without me for a few days ;) 

While we don’t have any extra money going toward the loan this month, we do have a “Buy Smart” win to report. Early mortgage payoff doesn’t always mean paying extra on the loan. Sometimes it just means staying out of other debt so that you’re free to pay on the loan with any Blessing Money you have in the future.

We knew when we bought the house that it needed a new roof. We decided we wanted metal roofing because, while it costs about twice the price of shingles, it can last up to three times as long. Since we plan on being here a long time, we decided it was worth the extra money to (hopefully) not have to replace our roof again for at least 30 years.

We got two estimates on the roof in May. Both came out to roughly $10,500 for a new metal roof over a single layer of existing shingles. Ouch! It so happened that Joshua’s parents were visiting at the time. Joshua’s dad can do pretty well any project he sets out to accomplish, so when he suggested that he could get us started doing the roof ourselves for half the price, we took him up on the offer. Our roof is very basic, with only one gable. It doesn’t have a very steep grade, and didn’t need the shingles removed before installing the metal, so we were fairly confident in their ability to get the job done. As long as David could get Joshua passed the gable before he had to head home, Joshua could figure out how to finish the rest.

Odds seemed stacked against them (lots of rain, errors in orders, and an unexpected hospital stay delayed things considerably), but with lots of help from several friends they got ALMOST to the point they wanted to be at before David left. Thankfully, Joshua has inherited quite a bit of his dad’s “can do anything” spirit, and he’s been able to figure things out as he goes along. It’s not quite finished, but one more full day of work should have it completed. And don’t you love that shiny blue?!

A huge thank-you to David and the many dear friends who have loaned us tools, advice, and free labor. We definitely could not have done this without you! It’s been a great learning experience and, all in all, has gone pretty smoothly. I even got up there a couple times and did some work (I slowed the process more than helped but hey, it was fun). And only one person has fallen off the roof so far. Turns out you really shouldn't work on top of a metal roof in the rain.... Go figure... (Don’t worry, David is just a little sore. Still wish I’d gotten his impressive landing on video ;)).

Estimate for a new metal roof: $10,476

Total cost of our DIY metal roof: $4,817 (this included the cost of several basic tools like a

second drill and a ladder)

Total savings: $5,659

Paying the difference into the loan wasn’t possible this time, but we sure are thankful for the savings!

Payment Summary:

First Principle Payment: $4,225.30

Interest Saved: $10,109.36

Loan Shortened By: 21 Months!

Second Principle Payment: $1358.07

Interest Saved: $1866.83

Loan Shortened By: 4 Months

Third Principle Payment: $649.36

Interest Saved: $0

Loan Shortened By: 0 Months

Our Top 3 Reasons to Get Out of Debt

In my last post I talked about our goal of paying off our house in 7 years. That seems like a crazy, unrealistic idea to some people. To us it sounds hard, but not impossible. But why? Why do we so badly want to get out from under our loan? Here are our top 3 reasons for wanting to pay off our house as quickly as possible.

1.      Debt is serious

The Bible doesn’t say it’s a sin to borrow money. It also doesn’t say that it’s a wonderfully awesome thing, either. Scripture does, however, give some pretty heavy warnings about where debt can lead and how to properly handle money owed. Proverbs 22:7 says that the borrower is slave to the lender. I don’t know about you, but I’m not a huge fan of making myself a slave to anyone but God. Debt, in a very real way, enslaves you as you are bound to repay that money with compounding interest. This ties you up and has brought many people to more than just financial ruin. Psalm 37:21 says that the wicked borrow and do not repay, so we know that once we get into debt we are obligated to repay our loan. Along that note, Ecclesiastes 5:4 tells us that it is better not to make a vow than to make one and not fulfill it (such as getting into debt and then having to foreclose). God never says you cannot get into debt, but He does warn that it is a heavy burden and that, as Christians, we are obligated to repay our debts honestly. When we get in over our heads with debts too large to repay, we bring ourselves financial ruin and a poor name to the Body of Christ.

2.      Good stewardship means not wasting money

We should all be good stewards of our money. To us, that means not spending more than necessary so that we can put our finances to the best possible use. Instead of supporting a corporation with interest dollars, we’d rather put that extra money toward helping others adopt, supporting missionaries, and assisting people in crisis.

With interest, our $126,300 loan would explode into paying the bank $233,768.96 over the course of a 30 year term. That’s $98,768.96 more than we “bought” the house for. In other words, if we pay on schedule we will pay 73.16% more than what the house is currently worth. That’s quite a markup.

To put things in perspective I downloaded a free app called “Payoff Track” which allows you to customize the numbers and see how much you can save by making extra payments on your loan. You can even track multiple loans at once if you want.  

I inserted the data: A loan of $126,300 at an interest rate of 4.625% on a 30 year term, with the first payment being due June 1, 2018. Our monthly payment, as you can see from the screen shot below, is $649.36 (insurance and taxes brings our monthly house bill to $974.51).

Did you know that just by making double payments you can pay off your 30 year loan in about 10 years? That doesn’t quite meet our dream of a 7 year payoff, though, so we had to create some bigger goals. If I click on “Payments” in the blue box I can adjust each month’s payment by what we expect to actually pay on the loan. We are aiming to pay an extra $708.71 each month, which is simply what we worked into our budget to be able to afford. That’s our goal, of course, based on a “good month” and barring any national emergencies.

The app makes it easy to calculate extra payments. I clicked on “Batch” in the upper right hand corner and set it up to automatically add that extra money into the monthly payment. This brings our monthly batch payment on the principle and interest to $1358.07.

If I remember correctly, that brought our payoff date to somewhere around 9 years from now. Great! But still not good enough to meet our goal. We went in and added an extra $5,000 to every April payment. Where is that extra $5,000 coming from? Hopefully a chunk of it will come from our tax return and we’ll be able to make up the rest of it with savings along the way. Hopes and dreams. Not necessarily reality, but this is our Grownup Dream, remember? These are pretend numbers we’re playing with.

If I go back to the home screen and click on “Summary” in the blue box, I can get a quick rundown of how we’re doing, and our scheduled payoff date. We are hoping to put an extra $2,926.58 toward our first payment due in June (in the next post I’ll tell you how part of that money came about). In addition to that large first payment of $4,225.30, by making an extra payment of $708.71 each month, and theoretically being able to pay an extra $5,000 on top of that every April for the next 7 years, we can have our house paid off by April 1, 2025. Woohooo!!! See, that dream is not so unrealistic after all, right??! Yeah, yeah, I hear your eyes rolling. It’s a stretch, and we know we won’t be able to meet that goal every single month. But it doesn’t seem so very far out of reach after all.

Let’s take a closer look at that “Summary” page. If we really can reach our monthly and yearly goals, then we will have shortened our payoff date by 23 years. Right. Duh. Okay, but let’s look at the financial numbers. Under “Current Status” it tells me that we will have made $94,159.19 worth of extra payments. This means we will have made only 82 payments, shortening our loan by 278 payments. And here’s the kicker. We will have paid only $21,106.57 in interest, rather than the $107,468.96 we are scheduled to pay. That means, in the long run, our loan will cost a total of $147,406.57 instead of $233,768.96. That’s a savings of $86,362.39. What can YOU do with an extra eighty-six-thousand-three-hundred-sixty-two-dollars-and-thirty-nine-cents?

If we don’t have to pay that much more, isn’t it a waste to do so? For us, good stewardship means *if possible* putting that $86,362.39 into something far more meaningful than financially supporting a bank. Which brings us to our third and most exciting point.

3.      The sooner we get out of debt, the more we can help others

If we can get out of debt, we will have more resources to help more people. We are all responsible for helping others no matter what our personal finances look like, but if we do not owe a huge amount to the bank every month, we will have that much more to offer others in need. After receiving so much help from others, we’re pretty excited about paying it forward!

Secondly, we can get off support and thereby support more preachers. Don’t get me wrong, we are incredibly grateful to our supporters who make it possible to minister in Wisconsin. It’s thanks to them that Joshua only has to work a part-time secular job and is able to focus so much of his attention on preaching and evangelism. But we don’t feel like we should plan to rely on this support forever.

If we didn’t have to make a monthly house payment of $649.26 we would have an extra $7,792.32 a year. With the financial support we receive from the congregation Joshua preaches for, plus his job as a bus driver, we would not have to rely on outside support to continue preaching here.

There is absolutely nothing wrong with living on support from Christians in other areas. There are biblical examples of doing so (see such passages as Philippians 4:10-20). However, if we can work toward getting off support, the finances we currently receive will be freed up for our supporters to help other Christians. Missionaries and preachers in other areas can receive help from the Christians who currently support us, and the Gospel can be spread further. And that is a motivating reason to get out of debt.

The Death of a Dream: Getting Into Debt

On April 6, 2018, a childhood dream died.

We took out our first loan. 

Ever since I was a preteen girl sitting in on my parents’ Dave Ramsey class, I had this wild dream of paying cash for a house and never. Ever. going into debt.

....I'll pause here for you to laugh....

As we all know, life happens and saving that kind of money takes gazelle intensity, and probably fewer kids with fewer major medical emergencies. 

I hate debt. I really, really do. It can quickly drown you and gets out of your hands faster than a terrified lizard drenched in oil. (Is that a saying? It should be.) However, I also recognize that going into debt is not necessarily a sin, and it is sometimes necessary.

With the end of our lease looming and the cost of rentals rising, we simply couldn’t afford to keep renting in this area. We have five monkeys, and no one would rent us less than a 4 bedroom house, at about $1800 a month. Yikes.

By the grace of God and the generosity of our brothers and sisters, we’ve been able to avoid debt up till now, but we’ve built up very little savings. So, we came to terms with the fact that buying a house with cash was out of the question. Sigh. Good-bye, Childhood Dream! You kept me out of a lot of trouble, but you’re just no longer practical.

I then entered that bargaining stage of grieving my broken dreams. Like, what if we bought a really, really cheap house and paid it off really, really fast? That would still kinda-sorta be the same, right? Um, no, not really. Nonetheless, our hopes high, we began our house hunting search only looking at properties under $50,000. It didn’t take long to tour all two of those dilapidated, uninhabitable homes.

Mmmk. We bumped it up to $100k. While we found more properties that were technically livable, we didn’t find any that didn't require pretty immediate repairs costing at least $25k. And most of those had mold problems. I’m allergic to mold. So, yeah. No.

With spring fast approaching (a.k.a. the end of our lease) we bit the bullet and got preapproved with our bank in order to find out just how much we would be allowed to borrow. You know, just out of curiosity.

Do you know something? Banks are crazy! I’m not one of those people who is all hush-hush about finances. I don’t care if you know how much we make, so I’m going to go ahead and tell you that with Joshua’s preaching salary and his part-time job driving a school bus, we make about $48,000 a year. He hasn’t been with his part-time job for 2 years yet, so the bank doesn’t count that income. And they STILL would let us borrow $135,000. 

Let’s just think about that for a second. They are willing to let a family of 7 (who, for their purposes, makes less than $30,000 a year) borrow one hundred and thirty-five THOUSAND dollars; which, over the course of 30 years, is going to actually cost $240,992.39. And we’re supposed to actually be able to pay that off. On $30k a year. With 5 kids. Does this strike anyone else as COMPLETELY INSANE? Or is it just me? No wonder people are foreclosing right and left. Who can seriously, actually, raise a family and keep up a mortgage on $30k these days??? 

Sorry. I’m probably overreacting. But, guys, debt! It’s CRAZY! In reality, we make more than $30k, so yes, we can afford that kind of mortgage. But the fact that they are willing to let us borrow over 4 times our countable income… It’s a conspiracy. They don’t WANT you to pay off your debt…

Anyway. End rant.

So, what did we do? We bought a house for $135,000 of course…

I know. You’re never supposed to buy as much as you qualify for. But… We did. And we truly believe that this house is a blessing from God. It’s already completely handicap accessible, and in an area with mostly two-level homes, that is a huge deal. Little Miss is loving how easily she can get around in her wheelchair!

But, I can’t completely forget Dave Ramsey. He’s still influencing my financial dreams.

Enter, More-Practical-But-Still-Kinda-Sketchy Grownup Dream: Pay off our mortgage in less than 7 years. 

Why 7? Because 7 years is the length of indentured servanthood. And I don’t want to be a servant of the bank for longer than that (see Proverbs 22:7).

Can we do that on an income of less than $50,000? Who knows. Want to find out? I’m inviting you along as a spectator. To hold ourselves accountable and stay motivated, we’re going to keep track of how much extra we’re able to put toward the mortgage. I plan on posting updates here so that you can follow the journey.

A couple things before we begin, though. I always hesitate to post financial articles. People are weird about money. They just are. It’s one of those taboo topics that you’re not supposed to talk about in polite society. It’s never made me uncomfortable to talk finances, but I know it can make some people a little uneasy, and I hate to do that. I don’t want you to feel like I’m being judgy about how you spend your money, or like I’m bragging about how we spend ours. That’s totally not why I am doing this. I just think it’s fun, interesting, and a good way for me to stay focused. That’s all. If it inspires you to slash some of your own debt, cool. If it makes you uncomfortable, I will NOT be offended if you choose to skip these posts.

Secondly, putting all this out there makes me a little uncomfortable. I know, I know, I know. I just said I don’t mind talking personal finances. And that’s mostly true. But, there is a part of me that says, Don’t do it. Somehow, someway, someone will use this against you. Maybe that fear comes from the fact that we’re on support. A preacher’s family on support has to be very careful about revealing personal details. (Or, so I’m told.) Maybe it’s because I don’t like failing and I recognize that paying off that much money in 7 years is doomed to failure really hard. At any rate, I was very hesitant to do this. After some prayer, consideration, and discussion with my husband, I came to the conclusion that those are partly valid and partly unnecessary concerns, and that ultimately the benefits outweigh the risks.

So. If you’ll agree not to maniacally use this information against my family and promise not to make too much fun of me when we don’t pay off our loan in 7 years ecstatically celebrate with us when we succeed, you’re welcome to follow our progress!

Purchase Price: $135,000

Interest Rate: 4.625%

Down Payment: $8,700 (this included a $6,000 grant)

Loan Amount: $126,300

Monthly Payment (including insurance and taxes): $974.51

 Expected Payoff Date: April 6, 2025

A Merry Little Christmas

Another Christmas is in the books, and oh what a Christmas it was!

We always try to keep Christmas simple, but we decided to make this year even more minimalistic. Last year the kids got SO much love from our extended family that once we included our gifts, Christmas Day was a bit overwhelming. We want them to enjoy each gift they receive instead of drowning in wrapping paper, so this year we allowed them each to open some gifts leading up to Christmas to cut down on the number of presents they open at one time. Joshua and I both come from largish families who like to dote on our kids, so even with this strategy each child still had one or two gifts to open on Christmas Day.

We’re what I would call “comfortable minimalists.” We do have more than two sets of clothes each, but we try not to have more than what we actually like and use. We try not to buy things just for the sake of having “stuff” for the kids to open on Christmas. I can’t stand clutter, and they don’t need a bunch of toys they are going to forget about in two weeks. With that in mind, we decided to do very little in the way of gifts this year.

We bought Baby’s first Bible, as we always do on our babies’ first Christmases. I bought two things from the dollar store that the other kids needed, and we bought a tool for our oldest who is learning how to build birdhouses. That was about the extent of the items we actually bought. The kids and I made salt dough ornaments for Papa who (until now) didn’t have any ornaments of his own to put on the tree. I re-gifted one of the gifts that the kids received multiples of last year (and they were still just as excited to get it again haha). Their big gift was a play kitchen and an easel that Joshua found by the side of the road. They were missing a couple pieces, but otherwise just needed a bit of cleaning up to be good as new.

The best part of the gifts was their stockings. We have a tradition born of a bit of last minute fun a few years ago. One year my family came to visit a couple of weeks before Christmas and we celebrated with them early. On Christmas Eve Joshua and I decided we wanted to put a little something in the kids’ stockings even though they weren’t expecting anything the next morning. We went around the house stuffing in random items – old cell phones, toys from our childhood, tea bags, fruit. Joshua and I had a blast adding funny little things that we already owned, and the kids were thrilled to find their full stockings on Christmas Day.

This has become one of our family’s favorite Christmas traditions. Joshua and I always look forward to Christmas Eve when we have fun together filling stockings with weird things without spending any money. And the kids always look forward to seeing what strange things Mama and Papa came up with this time. There are always lots of giggles and lots of squeals of excitement as they open their stockings to find treasures new and old.

This year’s stash included:  flash cards, a puzzle, finger puppets, chapstick, a purse, and leaping frogs, all of which the kids had forgotten we had. Each stocking also contained: a piece of chocolate, a disposable straw, a peppermint stick, a special cup, a candy cane, and a green apple.

Oh, and they each received a roll of toilet paper. (That brown blob sitting on the toilet paper in the picture is chocolate, by the way. Not poop. Just wanted to clear that up.)

The toilet paper proved to be one of our best ideas. After all the gifts were opened and everyone had eaten Christmas dinner we played games with the toilet paper. We had a contest to see who could roll up their toilet paper the fastest. We had a balancing game to see who could walk the line of toilet paper without stepping off (adapted for Little Miss to see if she could roll her wheelchair down the hall without touching the toilet paper with her wheels). We competed to see who could throw their roll of toilet paper the farthest. We had a “tree decorating” contest where Monkey1 and Monkey2 were the “trees” and Mama and Papa decorated them with toilet paper. And lastly we had a “snowball fight” with wads of toilet paper.

It was So. Much. Fun!

We love giving gifts to our kids. We love that they receive wonderful gifts from others. But we don’t want that to be the main thing about Christmas for our kids. We try to focus most on having fun together as a family. Traditions like making a gingerbread house, going to look at lights on Christmas Eve, playing games on Christmas Day, watching “It’s a Wonderful Life” and eating a simple but scrumptious dinner is what makes the season feel like Christmas to us.

Because this year’s budget was so tight, in the days leading up to Christmas I felt a little sorry for how little we were doing. But it ended up being hands down the best Christmas we’ve ever had! Kids don’t care how much you spend on their gifts. They don’t care if it’s brand new. The little ones don’t even care if it was already theirs before you gave it to them! We were able to focus on relaxing and having fun as a family without the stress of making sure we got the perfect gift for each child.

We laughed. A lot. We snuggled. We enjoyed the gifts we received from others.

And we gave thanks.

For our family.

For life.

For love.

For God bringing us through the hardest year of our lives.

And for the simple joys of Christmas.

The Tree Hunt Before Christmas

Merry Christmas, everyone!

~~~

Just came across a picture my sister took from our tree hunting escapade a couple weeks ago. This photo sums it all up so well. You guys. This was the WORST tree hunting experience I’ve EVER had. It was also our first. So, that was our first mistake. Going tree hunting for the first time as a family of SEVEN. Seven people plus an aunt who all have to agree on the perfect tree. We thought we would go out on a merry adventure, find our little tree, cut it down, cart it home, and all decorate it together like a happy little family, singing Christmas carols all the while. Ha. Hahaha. It went something more like this…

Joshua: “Who needs heavy coats to go tree hunting? It’s only 45° on the PRAIRIE!”

We get to the tree farm and, “Whoa, 45° feels a lot colder here…”

To say that we were a little underdressed would be an interesting way of expressing things. Thankfully we had a couple extra blankets in the car to wrap Baby in. There was no snow, but there was a lot of mud. Oh, so much mud. Monkey4 was so attracted to the mud that he kept face planting into it every couple of steps. This shocked and appalled the little guy. My phone was very attracted to it, too. It flew out of my hand dove into a brown puddle as I tried to snap a quaint picture of the boys walking toward the trees.

We had brought Little Miss’ stroller along instead of the wheelchair. Has anyone tried to push a 33lb child uphill in six inches of mud? How’d that go for ya? Ten steps in and the wheels were so caked with mud that all you could see was blobs of brown.

Anyway, we walked and walked all over that farm looking for the perfect tree. And we finally found a pretty good one. But wait… There on the horizon stood the most beautifulest Christmas tree we had seen all day. It was only a little farther down the hill. We walked (swam?) through the mud to inspect the gorgeous tree. Yes, we all agreed, it was perfect. We took a family picture beside it, as you can see below. We were a happy tree hunting family.

Papa pulled out the saw to start cutting that beauty down and… We hear him groan from under the branches. “What?!” We all shout in concern.

“It’s two trees.”

Come again?

“It’s two trees grown up right beside each other. If we cut one of them down it will look like we have half a tree.”

Of course. Of COURSE it had to be two trees…

But there was still the first tree we’d picked out. We would just go back to our original choice. Sure, it wasn’t quite as pretty as the two-tree-wonder. But it was still a nice tree. As we reached the top of the hill headed back to that first tree we heard a terrible sound. It was the sound of a little boy standing in front of our tree saying, “Yes, Dad, this is the one!” And then the sound of another family’s saw cutting our Christmas tree down. We watched them drag our tree away, along with five other near-perfect trees. Sigh.

The hunt began again. By this time there were tears. Baby was hungry. Two little boys had to go potty. I’m fairly certain Little Miss has never been so cold in her life. She seemed terrified that her hands might never get warm. I tried carrying her to comfort her. We fell in a hole. We put her back in her stroller. She and the stroller tipped over. It was a deesaster.

We decided to put Little Miss, the aunt, and the baby (two of whom were quite grumpy by this point) in the car while the rest of us settled on a tree. And you know what? We ended up stumbling on the most perfect Christmas tree I’ve ever had. More beautifuler even than that two-tree deceiver. We hacked it down, dragged it through the mud, strapped it to the roof, and wearily traipsed home. That blue spruce now graces our living room with enchanting majesty. Just don’t look at the back of the tree. The mud monster wouldn’t completely let go.

The End.

When International Adoption is a Waste of Money

A little over a year ago we took our first trip to Bulgaria. Upon returning home, I wrote the following post. I didn’t end up publishing it at the time because I didn’t feel like I had found the right words. Those “right words” never came. I’m sharing anyway.

 ~~~

“People who say that international adoption is an unwise use of God’s money just don’t know.” 

I listened to my friend, the mother of two internationally adopted children, and I nodded my head in agreement. I thought I knew what she meant. I have been so frustrated throughout our adoption process to hear people say that international adoption is poor stewardship of God’s money. That we really should be adopting through foster care because it’s free. Or that we should be using our money to support Gospel preachers instead. Leave it to the orphanages to care for the kids.

I know these comments are made with the best of intentions, but most of these comments are also made in ignorance. People tell us, “Your money is better spent supporting orphan homes where they can care for many children.” These good-hearted people have no idea of the damage caused by growing up in an institution – even a “Good” one. They can’t possibly know. Surely they don’t understand. If they did, they would never say such a thing. Never.

I thought I understood.

When my adoptive friends relayed to me the things they saw in orphanages overseas, I cried with them. When they told me of little babies who lie in cribs staring up at the ceiling for hours without making a sound, I got chills. When they described how the children are lined up and force-fed a liquid diet no matter their age, and the bruises they acquire simply due to malnutrition, I was angry. How could anyone hear of children living in these conditions and not know that it is worth every penny it takes to get them into a safe, loving home?

But I didn’t understand the half of it. And in truth, I still don’t.

I thought I was prepared to walk into the orphanage where our daughter has lived since she was born. They tried to warn us. They told us that our daughter’s Center is one of the better ones, but that it would still not be “Good.” I had read and researched and talked to other adoptive parents. I thought I was ready. It wasn’t as if I have never been outside the U.S. I’ve been to third world countries, and I didn’t think this could be much worse than what I had previously seen. But I underestimated what it would be like to walk into that building for the first time, knowing this is where my little girl has been raised.

When we first arrived, a nurse unlocked the front door and led us into a dark, musty corridor. There were no lights. Concrete walls and floors surrounded us like a prison cell. We could hear the screams of a baby coming from somewhere on the second floor. The unheeded cries echoed throughout the building; the only sound to break the eerie silence.  

We waited with our translator while the nurse went to get the Doctor who was on call in the Director’s absence. Down the hall, a baby was swinging – the only other person in sight. It was as if the orphanage was nearly abandoned. Yet, we later learned that there were children in every room lining those halls. Children who never made a sound.

The Doctor greeted us warmly and led us into her office where we met with her and the Psychologist. They told us as much as they could about our little girl’s history and personality. They were helpful, caring, and as open as they were permitted to be. Little Miss was obviously a favorite, and they were more than happy to answer most of our questions.

During this conversation we met Little Miss for the first time. She was wheeled into the room, and the next few moments were a mix of joyful tears and nervous giggles. To read more about our first visits with her, click here.

Over the course of the week, we got to see a good bit of our daughter’s environment. She lives on the second floor with the young babies because of her limited mobility. There are eight children in her ward, and she is the oldest by far. This has pros and cons. She rarely interacts with any children, and she doesn’t know what to make of creatures her own size. She also doesn’t know how to play with age appropriate toys, or how to get attention without babbling like a nine month old (though she is perfectly capable of communicating on an older level).

The pros are that, because she does have more communication skills than the babies, the nurses talk to her more frequently and give her more individual attention than she would probably receive in the ward with children her own age. The nurses love the fact that she can sing along with them, and they all get a kick out of her dance moves. As a result, she interacts with adults really well and makes great eye contact. She is particularly attached to one nurse who even our translator commented was one of the best orphanage caregivers she’s ever seen. That is huge!

Children raised in orphanages are often neglected not necessarily from a lack of concern but more often due to a lack of resources and a lack of education on developmental needs. These things were obviously lacking in our daughter’s orphanage, but the staff was doing the best they knew how. The meals at this orphanage are varied in texture and content, the children are fed slowly with bottles or spoons (depending on the age of the child), and the Doctor and nurses pay decently close attention to the nutritional value of the food they provide. Our daughter is definitely in one of the better orphanages. I am extremely grateful that she has been given such advantages and that she ended up in an orphanage with a very special caregiver. The Lord has been mindful of our little girl.

And yet.

It’s hard to describe the haunting realities of what we saw. The orphanage is dark, sterile, and bare. Broken glass covers the playground. But that doesn’t matter because the children rarely go outside. Bedrooms about the size of a small walk-in closet line the halls, two cribs to a room. The babies sit or lie in these cribs until they are taken out, on schedule, to be fed or changed. There is silence in the ward, except for the rare cry of a baby who has not yet learned that his cries gain him nothing. Most of the babies do not respond if you try to engage them. They only stare at you with hollow, expressionless eyes.

One constant thought swirled in my head.

We must get her out of here!

But who will come for the others?

No one who sees a place like that can possibly believe that any amount of money used to get even one child out is a waste. Surely, they cannot.

And what I saw is not the half. I don’t know the half. I only know stories.

The stories of the family who traveled to meet their daughter, held her in their arms, and committed to bringing her home, but never got that chance. Just months before they were due to pick her up, their daughter starved to death under the care of “doctors” who were feeding her a very “special” diet. Their daughter was seven years old. She weighed nine pounds.

The stories of the family who adopted a little boy with almost exactly the same condition as our daughter. Except he was in a much worse orphanage. His body was covered in scars and sores. He was the same age as Little Miss, but he had no language and very little communication skills. He was caged in his crib for days. He was the subject of medical experimentation and abuse.

The stories of the little boy who kicked and screamed in fear when his new parents took him outside because he had never felt the sun on his face.

The stories of malnutrition, sexual abuse, and emotional trauma.

Stories that are more the reality than the rarity.

I’m not sure exactly what this post is about. Mostly, I think I’m still processing. It’s hard to put into words what it was like to visit Little Miss. Some of it doesn’t sound so bad as I go back and read what I’ve written. That’s only because I’m incapable of finding words to accurately describe the living conditions of these kids. It’s unlike anything I’ve ever seen. Sure, I’ve been to third world countries. I’ve seen devastating poverty. But in all those places I’ve been before, I also saw the love of family. Walking into an orphanage where these children have no one to count on but themselves… It was a different level of heartbreak.

Anyone who knows me knows I’m a huge supporter of adoption, whether domestic or international. This is not a post about how everyone ought to adopt internationally. Children in foster care face some of the same harsh realities as do children in orphanages. This has nothing to do with “adopt this way, not that.” This is a plea from my heart to yours. Don’t tell me that international adoption is a waste of God’s money. When you say that, I hear a forgotten baby’s cries echoing down the hall. I see the prison cells that serve as bedrooms. I see the face of a mama whose daughter starved to death.

And I have to believe.

You just don’t know.

How God Provided a Home for Little Miss

Big news, y’all!

Today we hit our fundraising goal! I was doing some calculations this morning and estimated that we needed about $200 more to pay for our travel expenses to pick up Little Miss. About an hour later Joshua came in with the mail and, lo and behold, there was a card from a dear family member with a check for $200! What a marvelous blessing!

Our adoption is now fully funded (assuming costs for lodging and airfare don’t skyrocket in the next couple of weeks) and we will soon book flights to go pick up our daughter! I know there are lots of you out there who are in the process of fundraising, or who are looking at the cost of adoption and wondering how in the world anyone could ever afford it. I want to share some of the ways we raised funds and encourage you that God is able to provide far more abundantly than you can imagine!

At the beginning of our adoption, we estimated that it could cost up to $40,000. We thought at the time that we were way overestimating, but it turns out this figure was pretty accurate. There were several factors that made our adoption more expensive than most, so don’t let that number overwhelm you too much if you’re considering adoption.

1)     We chose to adopt internationally. Private domestic adoption, while also expensive, does not usually cost this much. There is also the option of foster to adopt which, in most states, is low to no cost. Our family chose international adoption. (Click HERE for some of our reasons for choosing this route). If the cost of international adoption is prohibitive, don’t let it stop you from checking out other paths toward adoption!

2)      We are already a family of 5. This means that we had to have medical exams done for all of 5 of us several times throughout the process (which came out of pocket due to our insurance situation – a total of about $3,180). We also made the decision to take all three of our biological children with us on both the bonding and the pickup trip, which meant we had to spend a good chunk of change getting passports, airfare, lodging, and food. Yes, it was expensive, but this was one of the best decisions we made. Hopefully I’ll have a chance to write a post on that in the future. If Joshua and I had traveled without the kids we probably could have done it for half the cost.

3)      We went through several country changes before we were matched with our daughter. We started out adopting from Uganda, but when that program shut down we switched to Ethiopia. Then our agency in Ethiopia was forced to close and we switched to another agency that works in Ethiopia. Shortly after, our agency asked if we were interested in a little girl in their Bulgarian Waiting Child program, and we said YES! All of these changes involved transfer fees and home study updates which drove the cost up. If we had been able to stay in Uganda I’m estimating we probably could have saved at least a couple thousand dollars. But, God had other plans! (Incidentally, most adoptions do not take this long, so don’t let our three year process deter you, either. These closures and country changes made the process take much longer than we anticipated, but it also gave us time to get the needed funds together without going into debt).

4)      We had a couple of major life changes which required several home study updates. We gave birth to our third child in 2015, and we moved states in 2016. Both were great blessings, but they did require updates to both our home study and our immigration approval. Probably around $2,300 worth of update fees.

If we didn’t have three biological kiddos we insisted on keeping with us, if we had been able to stay with our original country of choice, if we had better insurance, and if we had not had two major life changes, we could have saved over $10,000. As it happens, we do have three children we insist on keeping with us, we were blessed with two wonderful life changes, our insurance stinks, and (as international adoption often goes) we did go through several difficult changes in the adoption process. Waste of money? Bad stewardship? God’s Providence? Another topic for another time.

The current question is: “How did you come up with that amount of money??!!”

The only answer is, God provided.

We are not wealthy by the world’s standard. We are a normal family of 5 living on a single income. We make $40,820 which, according to USCIS immigration guidelines, puts us barely at that 125% above poverty level that they require for international adoption (their definition of poverty level is really not even CLOSE to true poverty, but again, another topic for another time). We have a commitment to doing whatever we can to live completely debt-free, so we’ve gone to God in prayer constantly about this and asked that He provide ways of helping us complete our adoption without getting a loan. And He has answered that prayer in big ways.

God provided every little bit of money we needed at every little step of the way. At times it looked like it would be impossible. We started over basically from scratch a couple times, and it was frustrating and all kinds of discouraging. But He never failed us. He gave us exactly what we needed for exactly the step we were on, sometimes (like today) right down to the dollar. And He usually did it through the love and compassion of His people. Here’s a brief breakdown of the ways He provided for our adoption…

·         God blessed us with opportunities to save money. We started our adoption in 2014 with $9,700 in savings. To be honest, I’m not really sure where that money came from. We had been living for the first two and a half years of our marriage on anywhere from $1600-$1800 a month. We were pretty broke and didn’t have any extra to save month to month. During that time, however, we were blessed with two babies 11 months apart, so the Child Credit really helped our tax return for a couple of years. We put that money into a separate bank account and kind of forgot about it. Then in December 2013 we changed jobs and our income increased significantly, but we still lived like we were making $1800 a month for awhile so that we were able to put the extra almost completely into our adoption fund. Our savings funded our original home study and initial program fees.

·         God provided through adoption grants. We applied to every grant for which we were qualified. We received grants from Show Hope, The JSC Foundation, The Rollstone Foundation, Global Orphan Foundation, and our placement agency. We were blessed with a total of $16,300 in grants.

·         God put exceptionally generous people in our lives. We started a YouCaring site, wrote a support raising letter, posted about our funding goal on Facebook, and talked to friends and family in person about our adoption. Money poured in from good friends, family, long lost friends, distant relatives, friends of friends, strangers, and our church families. We met some extremely generous people during this journey, including people who barely knew us – or didn’t know us – but who heard that we were trying to bring a little girl home and wanted to help (like the little boy who told me to "Keep the change"). We were blessed with over $5,600 in straight cash donations.

·         God put compassionate people in our lives. There were times when people found out that we were adopting and cut us great deals on things. A Christian acquaintance sold us a van for $1,000 when he heard that we needed to upgrade to a bigger vehicle because we were adopting. One particular doctor was very generous in cutting her usual fee for physicals to help us out. A friend who is a notary went all kinds of places with us to sign paperwork and didn’t charge a dime. People have donated meals, clothes, beds, items for our fundraisers, and much more to help us prepare for the adoption. These have been huge blessings that made the adoption much more affordable!

·         God gave us friends who got involved. Over the last three years we have been blessed with a ton of friends who helped make these fundraisers happen:

-          Spaghetti Dinner and Auction 2014 - $878

-          Bake Sale - $128

-          Bowling Night - $202

-          31 Bags Fundraiser - $72

-          Craft Sale - $215 (This was an ongoing effort. Sometimes I set up tables at events, sometimes I sold on Facebook, and sometimes I had a bit of luck on Etsy)

-          Aluminum Can Drive - $5 (Can’t wait to tell you more about this funny adventure!)

-          “Always Room for More” - $100 (Joshua’s cousin painted a gorgeous painting and donated it to help us raise funds)

-          Just Love Coffee - $0 (A company that donates a portion of the proceeds from the coffee you sell. We didn’t have any luck with this one, but you might!)

-          Krispy Kreme Doughnuts - $55 (Hahaaaa! Click Here for the tale of that unforgettable day!)

-          Spaghetti Dinner and Auction 2015 - $771

-          Garage Sale - $265

-          T-Shirt Sales - $150

-          Usborne Cards for a Cause - $208

-          Steel Artwork donated by a friend - $106

-          Ebay Sales - $172

Through fundraisers we raised a total of about $3,353

In three years God has blessed us with over $25,245 in funds raised, not including all of the discounts and extras that people have provided. The rest of the $40,000 came from the original $9,700 of savings, frugal living, and the draining of our small retirement, stocks, and mutual funds.

And that’s the story of how God provided the funds needed to give Little Miss a home!

Thank you to everyone who gave from their hearts and put love into action to help us get our little girl home. Without your generosity, I don’t know what we would have done! One little girl has a safe forever family because of YOUR willingness to show the heart of God and GIVE. Your prayers and support have been invaluable. Thank you for your love and for your heart for the fatherless.

*For tips on ways to save money to help with your adoption, click HERE