We Count the Costs Now, But We Won't Count the Costs Later

Before our other children were born, I could quote you the amount of the expenses that were to be coming out of our pockets for each "delivery". After they each were born, there was no amount of money that would have been too much to make me question whether or not it was worth it. Our children are priceless. Stacey and I have been very fortunate in that we have not struggled with childlessness or fertility issues like other couples have. We have not experienced the dissappointment of not being able to get pregnant or the discouragement of failed treatments. We have been very blessed to have had things turn out for us the way that they have. We know it is not something that we have earned but a gift that He has given to us.

With that being said, anyone that knows me very well knows that I have a bean counter's mentality. Another way to say it would be that "I'm a cheap skate". So when we started to discuss adoption, one of the conversations naturally went to the costs. Truth be told, it is probably cheaper in total costs to adopt a child internationally than it is to deliver a healthy child in the US. It just seems so much more expensive because all of the costs come directly out of our pocket for adoptions instead of the magic and mysterious world of health insurance for healthy deliveries (don't get me started there). Any way you slice it, we would have paid all that we have for either one of the children that we already have, so we didn't count the costs after they were born.

As I prepared for this post and got down to the bottomline and saw the amount of money that we have spent in the last 2 years pursuing this effort, I was overwhelmed. I am literaly blown away by how God has blessed us through this. The yard sale and raffle was an obvious way he blessed us, not to mention all of the friends and family that so freely gave and supported us in that effort, as well as other efforts. As with lots of other things in our lives, there is no way that we could have done this on our own. Our budget didn't just have "extra" money in it.

Presented below is a listing of all of the expenses that we have incurred so far. It is not a complete list (I didn't pull out all of our receipts) but I think I captured all of the big stuff.
Homestudy (Including travel) $1,700
Homestudy Update $ 300
Passports $ 200
I-600A application $ 545
I-600A re-application $ 545
INS fingerprints (first time) $ 140
INS fingerprints (second time) $ 140
Ukraine Translation $ 550
Ukraine Translation $ 200
Various Dr.'s Appointments/Tests $ 60
Travel Clinic $ 400
Additional Shots $ 150
State Police Finger Prints (multiple times) $ 100
Kentucky Apostille $ 100
FedEx/Mailings $ 130
Trips to Indy:4 (assume $0.40 per mile) $ 320
Trips to Frankfort : 2 $ 80
Trips to Southeast Christian: 5 $ 120
Copies of Birt Certificates/Deeds/Marriage License $ 50
Adoption Toolkit/Training Materials $ 150

TOTAL TO DATE: $5,980

From talking to some folks that we know that have recently gone to Ukraine and adopted a child, we are expecting to spend approximately another $11,000 while gone, not including our airplane tickets, which we are expecting to run approximately another $3,500. This would bring our total costs to over $20K. That is a lot of money to us. It is probably a lot of money to a lot of folks. But in the end, we don't plan to count the costs. Whatever we have to spend, I know that that His children are worth it. We have faith in our God that he will provide the things that we need, just like He already has time and time again.