He Provides: The Shores Family

Today's featured family is the Shores. 

I hope you enjoy the story of how God is providing for their adoption!

The question nagged me too often:  "How on earth, Lord, are we going to pay for an international adoption?"  When the furnace broke, when we experienced costly car repairs, when our roof began to leak (and shingles slid off onto the yard!) after a hailstorm, the question persisted.  "How could we, a public school teacher and stay-at-home-mom already raising a five and a three-year-old, ever afford $30,000 in adoption fees?" 

We stepped forward, though, attempting to be faithful, clinging to Scripture (particularly Josh. 1:9 and Phil. 4:6), and sometimes only continuing on by the sheer grace of God.

Along our journey, we have been amazed as we have watched God provide for our financial needs in a variety of ways:  the sale of our second car, tax returns, yard sales, extra babysitting jobs, t-shirt sales, making and selling jewelry, receiving grants, and generous donations from friends and strangers alike. 

The money has always been there at the very moment we needed to make the next large payment.  Over the past year, we have even seen God provide miraculously for our adoption (like when we were notified about a mutual fund we didn’t even know existed, worth around $5000, and the amazing $7300 matching grant we received through Lifesong for Orphans, in conjunction with the Orphan Care Alliance and Antioch Church).  

We no longer have any doubt that God will provide.  It’s actually become sort of fun to see how he’ll come through.  

Since we initially set out to adopt one child, we have accepted the referral for three sisters, who are waiting in Ethiopia.  In order to accept the referrals, we had to raise $10,000 more than we had originally planned.  About $6,000 of that came in over the course of around five days, as we leveraged social networking to meet our goal. At this point, all that we have left to raise is the cost of travel.  Our God is so faithful to provide!  

May his monetary provision serve as a reminder to me that he will continue to generously give an abundance of wisdom and grace as we parent our children in the future!

My prayer is that you were encouraged by the Shores story! If you'd like to follow their adoption journey you can do so on their blog Life Safari.

Come back tomorrow to hear JT Henderson from 5 million minus 1 share his story!