Jehovah Jira!

As some of you know Jehovah Jira means God is our provider……… in the next few paragraphs is the story of how a school teacher and stay at home mom with 5 kids comes up with $30,000.00 in 4 months- in the worst economy in decades.

This adoption was God’s from the start. He planted it in our hearts and just at the right time brought it together. The coolest thing is God is alive. He is the God who moves on each one of our hearts. We saw this over, and over, and over again as God moved on so many hearts to step out in compassion to bring these girls home from the orphanage. Our family put in our seed money back in March. I spent a month, and feverishly applied for 12 grants all over the US. Eventually, we started hearing back from those organizations. I would go to the mailbox time after time and open the mail and it was no, after no, after no. By the end of August our family had put on a few fundraisers, but we were no were near our goal. We needed $21,000.00. The economy by that time was spiraling down, but we hit our knees and asked God to be Who He is and bring our girls home. Then boom it all started falling from the sky. We were humbled. I would go to the mailbox and find a check. I would write that person a note and would be absolutely crying as I wrote each note. Because I knew it was Jehovah Jira- the God of the universe quietly moving on individual’s hearts. And we were in absolute awe that so many people’s hearts were soft and their ears were open, and they acted.

It was amazing people I barely knew, people I had never met- a friend of a friend, our family, our friends, our wonderful church, our neighbors, parents on Hannah’s Basketball team and eventually two grant organizations gave. Little kids cleaned out their piggy banks, one whole family and extended family decided to forgo exchanging gifts and collected the money and gave it. One of my friends took our little cards and gave it to 10 of her friends- out of that. A handful of people I had never met gave.

One of those people had a great idea. She planned, and used her own resources to make awesome canvass bags. This is what she did- she brought the idea to her child’s school, and had each child choose a word like compassion, family, or love and draw a picture. Once a picture was chosen she printed it on to funky color bags. These bags can be seen all over Bellingham with a little tag on them that says “Every penny from these bags goes to the Carlson family to support their adoption of 3 girls from Ethiopia.” I met this gal for the first time the day before I left for Ethiopia, and was so floored by all the work she had put in. She gave me a bag, and I brought it to the orphanage. You can see a group of kids holding it here on the post!

Our smallest gift was $14.78 and our biggest was $5000.00- all were amazing, and all of them humbled us. So thank you for being a part. At this moment at 5:00 in the morning I can hear our girls little pitter patter of their feet upstairs in their room. They have been up for a few hours –dealing with the time change thing. But guess what….. because of all this I just shared –as the snow falls softly outside – these girls are HOME FOR CHRISTMAS! THANK YOU!