Ways to support our adoption (LOTS of them are FREE)

Ways to support our adoption:

FREE ways to help:

• Give us your stinky old shoes! - We are collecting shoes to be reused in developing nations through an entrepreneurship program. Our goal is 10,000 pairs, so it is a God-sized goal and we need your help! This program has BIG potential to pay it forward: our adoption grant receives 40 cents per pound for the shoes, an entrepreneur is set up to sell them and earn a living wage, and low cost shoes are available to people in need. 
• Even better: talk to your work or church and set up a box! If you'll watch it and let us know when it's full, we'll come collect them! We have a HUGE goal to meet, and we need your network too!
• Help us check the current drop offs and bring us shoes when they overflow. Since we do not live in town, this is an especially big help!
• Current drop offs are: Lumbermart and Stage in Guymon, the Methodist Student Center and Church of Christ Student Center in Goodwell, Mills in Hooker, and the Post Office in Adams. Shoes can be any size or style, and need to be in fair condition. And if you really want to be on our good list, tie the laces of the pairs together or bag them with all of your pairs together (plastic grocery bags are awesome - it doesn't take long to pair the few shoes in a bag) 

• Make a craft or donate an item for our upcoming online auction. Do you have an unopened gift from last Christmas, or an unused gift certificate sitting around? Pass it on to us and we'll add it to our auction! If you donate something from your business, we'll make sure to plug your business in the auction. We are open to just about anything - great used clothes, handmade items, items from your business (Avon, DoTerra, Mary Kay, etc), books, gift cards, home decor - whatever you have that will sell! But please hurry - we hope to start the auction right after Thanksgiving! .

• Share our posts! Share, share, share! We cannot successfully raise the funds to bring Antoinette home without reaching outside our immediate circle of friends! Share our GoFundMe, Reece's Rainbow, and Facebook pages. Share our story with friends at church or work and direct them to one of our pages. Tell them how to help, or at least how to pray for us! You never know who will be able to help, or who will be touched by the plight of orphans. A HUGE part of our mission is to touch others so that they might be led to step up for orphans here and abroad, whether by giving, adopting, fostering, or supporting adoptive families in other ways. 

• PRAY: This is seriously the most important! We NEED prayer! This journey is crazy, exhausting, joyful, and costs WAY more money than we have. We NEED God to do mighty things in our lives in order to make this adoption happen. And that is just the very beginning of this journey! When we get her home, we will be navigating attachment and bonding, medical issues, institutional behaviors, educational challenges, emotional challenges, etc. That is just for Antoinette! The rest of the family will be adjusting too! We will be in over our heads for a long time, and we need prayer. I am so excited to see how God will work in our lives during this time.

• Provide post-adoption support. Here is the secret that you don't know unless you are an adoptive parent (particularly of an older &/or traumatized child): Adoptive parenting is HARD. It will take you to the ends of yourself. It really is just hard. And it doesn't get better anytime soon. The behaviors and responses that have been ingrained for years don't just go away. The trauma that the child has endured is carved into their heart and requires lots of intervention to heal. (The science behind the way trauma changes the brain will blow your mind!) Any family who adopts or fosters a traumatized child desperately needs support. And not for a month or two! For YEARS! Ways to provide support: (These apply to almost ALL adoptive and foster parents!)
• Bring a meal post-adoption (the first few months will be chaotic!), or while we are traveling and have caregivers in our place.
• Help with childcare for our kids currently in the home both during our travel and after the adoption. Even taking them to a movie for the afternoon so they have a break from the chaos that a new sibling inevitably brings!
• Tutor one of the oldest 3 in a subject in school.
• Love on the kids, especially the ones currently in our home. They will be experiencing chaos and upheaval. Give them some extra attention.
• Do NOT love on Antoinette unless we give you permission. Don't get me wrong: I am DYING for this little girl to be LOVED ON by ALL of the people who are supporting this adoption. I want her to see and feel that love! But for bonding purposes, her cuddling, hugs, and care needs to be handled by immediate family only. Right now she has no idea what a mommy, daddy, brothers, and sister are. Once that is firmly in her head, THEN, please LOVE ON THAT GIRL! We will let you know when it is safe for her emotionally to be loved on by people outside of immediate family!
• Run an errand for us.
• Come over for an afternoon, a couple of hours, a day, (whatever works for you) and be a "mother's helper." For the first few months, Antoinette will need to be by my side at all times, which means it will be more difficult to do laundry, cook, clean, teach the big boys, etc. Come over and lend a hand - even if it's just playing with the little ones so I can get something done! (As a bonus, this option allows you to hang out with the CUTEST kids ever!) Warning: DO NOT choose this option if you will judge me by how dirty my house is! Hahahaha
• Have little girl clothes and toys? If they will work for Antoinette, send them over! When the adoption is completed, we will have exhausted our savings and be facing a mountain of medical bills at the exact time that we add a new child who will need diapers, a wardrobe, toys, etc. (Most of this we can't prepare in advance because we don't know what size she is!) Maybe your kiddo's old stuff can ease our burden! 
• An adoption shower would be a CRAZY blessing! EVERY family that adopts should have an adoption shower thrown for them! Older kids are even more expensive than babies and deserve to be celebrated too! (I'm not saying this to ask for stuff, I'm listing it because I want to see other adoptive parents get one!!)
• Once she is well-bonded, babysit Antoinette for us. Dealing with difficult behaviors 24/7 is hard. Respite is amazing. And needed.
• Ask what we need. And mean it. And do it. In our case, we hate asking for help, so we'll probably tell you that we don't need anything. We will appreciate the gesture though! And then you can refer to the list above and just do something (because we probably really will need it!)
• If you are going to be in her life consistently (family, friends, Sunday School teacher, teacher in school) research the impacts of trauma on a child's brain so you can understand what we are up against! Dr. Karen Purvis is doing incredible work healing children from trauma, and we will be following her techniques. Look into TBRI! (Or ask us! We'll tell you about it!)
• Don't forget that respite, love, and help is needed for a long time - this is not like having a baby, where you heal and get back to normal after 6 weeks. It will take YEARS to heal Antoinette's heart. We will be in the trenches for YEARS. Don't forget about us in a few weeks. Join the team. Help us change her life.

Ways to financially help:

• Give a little bit! SERIOUSLY, $5 or $10 HELPS! 
• Want to make a bigger impact but feel like you can't? Give $5 a couple of times over the course of the adoption. Or issue a challenge to your Facebook friends: you'll give $5 if someone else will match you. Or hey, be crazy... you'll paint your face, shave your head, grow your beard (or something equally crazy) if they will collectively donate a certain amount of money.
• If you are blessed and able to give more, consider making it a matching grant. Many people LOVE to give to matching grants because their money is doubled. Son not only will you be helping by giving, but you'll be doubling your impact! Any amount can be a matching grant, but amounts over $100 are best.

The scoop on financial giving:

• Reece's Rainbow is an organization that helps families raise money for special needs international adoption. 
• They are a 501c3 non-profit, so any money sent via them is tax-deductible to you.
• They do NOT keep a percentage of the donation.
• PayPal DOES take 3% of all donations done online, so consider sending a check (write our name in the memo or include a note). However, if the convenience of paying online is an incentive, by all means, pay online! (Personally, it would be a hassle for me to dig out the checkbook and mail a check. So I understand!)
• They ONLY disperse the money to us for adoption related expenses, and will not disperse anything until we receive travel dates.
• The travel agent that we will be working with can bill them directly for our airfare, so it is our goal to get enough in this account to cover our airfare.
• Donate or share the page at: www.reecesrainbow.org/sponsoroden 
• GoFundMe is a well known giving platform. We created it because a lot of people are comfortable with ig.
• GoFundMe keeps 5% of the donations and PayPal keeps 3%. So that's a chunk. But if you're more comfortable with GoFundMe, go for it!
• We have access to the money from GoFundMe almost immediately, so it can be used for expenses prior to travel.
• You can donate or share the page at: https://www.gofundme.com/nw7czvxc 
• Money given directly to us is placed in a separate bank account that we only use for adoption expenses. If you give me a check and it's not made out to me, I'll send it to Reece's Rainbow to go into our grant account so that it is tax-deductible for you. 
• We only have one more fee to pay prior to travel, and that will be taken care of from our personal savings this week.
• We have paid (or having in savings ready to pay) almost 1/2 of the adoption ourselves (which is a testament to God moving mountains!) We are fundraising to finish it up: the bulk of the adoption expenses will be incurred when we travel for the 1st trip.
• Money is due as we go. If we have not raised enough money for both trips, we can fundraise between trips, but we REALLY don't want to have to do this! We'll have a lot to focus on and prepare without fundraising!

The 2 burning questions (I think) most people want/need to know: 

Why did we wait so late in the process to fundraise heavily? Quite frankly, we have hit every roadblock or delay possible. This adoption has taken twice as long as it should and there were a couple of times in the process we weren't sure if we could complete it. So we chose to wait to fundraise until it was a sure thing. We wanted to be very careful to honor the financial contributions of our supporters. Fortunately, God has done great things in enabling us to pay for almost half of the adoption from personal funds, so we haven't needed to fundraise until the end.

What happens if we can't raise the funds? We will NOT wait to travel. We will take out a loan. But this is a VERY BAD financial option for us. When Antoinette comes home, we will immediately incur thousands of dollars in medical bills. AND, each of those bills will come with the expense of driving almost 300 miles each way to the multiple specialist visits. Don't get me wrong, we are 100% okay with these medical expenses - we signed up for this when we committed to the adoption. But if we come home with a substantial adoption loan and add thousands of dollars in medical bills to that, the outcome will be devastating. We know that bringing home a child who will need life-long care is not a good financial decision, but her life is worth the sacrifice. We will provide for her. But we need help getting her home, so we are more capable of making these sacrifices for her and getting her the best medical care possible.