A Mistake, a Matching Grant, and A Special Giveaway.

A Mistake

As an accountant I am usually on top of the numbers.  I do it for a living, in fact I usually make systems that double check that my numbers are correct.  So imagine my frustration when I mess up!! And of course it's never in the favorable direction!

If you look back at our last blog post I thought we were $10,000 short of where we needed to be to fund our adoption.  The new math put us closer to $17,500.  As you can imagine it was a punch in the gut, and the groin.

And as you can imagine I went into full on panic mode.

A Matching Grant

This however came as no surprise to our God.  He knew I was wrong all along.  I didn't tell Amanda right away, I was ashamed of my mistake and felt lost.  But God was working.  After confessing to her I started praying out load each morning confident that this was all part of God's plan and he was going to show up.  I also started to write down in black ink the specific concerns we were facing along with a countdown until we left. The intention is to then write in red ink the praises as the Lord starts to work.  And He has been working.

In His timing, He put together a couple people in my life that I shared the problem with and together they offered some financial assistance.  Wanting to maximize their generosity I discussed the idea of making it a matching grant  and they agreed.  The donations will be made to Project Hopeful, these same company listed in our last blog.  Further all the donations made in the last campaign will count towards the matching grant.  Unfortunately, there weren't too many.

This is a $3,000 Matching Grant that will double to $6,000 when we raise $3,000.  Donations can be made here:

DONATE HERE

We understand we have been doing a lot of fundraising and that some of our usual supporters are tapped out.  Please understand that we are extremely grateful for every single dollar that has been donated.  We know that we could not have gotten this far without a great community of people getting behind us.  We understand and have accepted the fact that we will likely be paying for this adoption for years to come, but we know these two kiddos are worth it.  We also know that the Lord will bless us for continuing to step out in faith, and he will bless those who help bring our kiddos home too.

A Special Giveaway

To make this fundraiser a little more FUN we are doing a special giveaway.  We leave for China in six days.  While we are gone we plan on looking for a special giveaway or two for those who support this last fundraiser.  We are hopefully going to find some one of a kind Chinese piece that you can display as a memento of your generosity.  We will be posting from China and you can follow along on our Facebook page at this link: https://www.facebook.com/groups/1554245971485047/.

(You will need to request permission to join if you haven't yet).

Every $10 donated between now and when we bring our kiddos home will be an entry into the drawing to win a gift.  Lastly, because we know many people have given already in our immediate circle we are looking for Ambassadors.   Ambassadors are people willing to advocate on our behalf, sharing our posts each day and asking others to join us on our journey to bring our kids home and urging others to lift us up both prayerfully and financially.

100 Times 100 Challenge

Hi Friends,

If you are reading this you have likely been personally invited to take part in our 100 Times 100 Challenge.  As many of you know we are in the process of adopting two children from China and we are leaving very soon to go get them, likely by the end of June.  What you may not know is that we are currently about $10,000 short of funds needed to bring them home.  Honestly it may be a little more or less, but until we get home we won't know how much the travel costs were.

So thinking through the numbers we thought, if we can find 100 people that would be willing to donate $100, that would equal the $10,000 we need.  Now we know that for some of you $100 will be a stretch and we don't want you to put yourself in a place where you can't care for your own family.  So if you are not able to help, no big deal because we know in the end the Lord has this.  But we also know that for some of you $100 is not a big request and you can likely donate larger amounts.  So we ask that you consider this as well.

If you haven't been following our journey on Facebook (or maybe you aren't on Facebook), let me share our children with you.

Madilyn Grace VanderMeer

Madilyn Grace is 6 years old.  Her Birthday was in April.  She currently lives in Guangxi Province, in Nanning.  We will be getting Maddy first on our travels and spending between 3-5 days in her province.  She is supposedly an extroverted little girl that loves to read, we are really looking forward to meeting her and bringing her home.

Micah Samuel VanderMeer

Micah Samuel will be turning 5 in November, He lives in Guangzhou, which is in Guangdong Province.  When we finalize all our adoption paperwork it will be in Guangzhou, which makes it convenient for us to be able to not have to travel to a separate province to pick up our second child.  Micah is also an extroverted child, and is supposedly energetic.



We don't know if this fundraiser will work.  It may just fall on its face like many other fundraisers we have tried, but we need to try.  We know either way we will be leaving in late June or early July to go get our kids.  If we need to find a way to front the balance of the funds we will, we know that somehow or other the Lord will provide even thought at times it seems a bit scary.

If you are willing to join us with our 100 Times 100 Challenge, donations can be made at the following link.  http://www.projecthopeful.org/matched-families/vandermeer-family.  We are grateful to be partnered with Project Hopeful in order to allow our supporters to receive a tax deduction for their gift.

If you decide to join us, we ask that after you make your donation you write a note to Micah and Maddy.  This could come in the form of an email, a letter, or a Facebook message.  We intend to collect all of these and read them with our kids when they get a little older.  Thank you so much for helping us get to the finish line, we know many of you have given already and sacrificed a lot to get us to this point and we are SO appreciative.

Thank you and God Bless,

Matthew and Amanda