Treasure

Last Sunday (the 30th) I was invited to share our adoption story at all three worship services at church. Let me back up a bit...on January 9 our church gave out a grand total of $14,000 to the members and gave us all the challenge of using that money outside the church walls to help people in any way we liked. We were to report back over the following 3 Sundays by dropping a note describing what we did with the money in the collection basket. I decided to try to grow our money (I got $10 and Jim got $3) by donating a bunch of our unused and unneeded "stuff" to charity and working out the value of our donation and pooling it with the church money. I also returned a bunch of "stuff" to Target and added that to our fund. My plan was to use the money to buy medical supplies for the orphanage in Kazakhstan.

We were overwhelmed by the generosity of our church! After speaking, people we had never seen before were pressing money into our hands so that we could buy more supplies for the orphanage. We started with $13 and we now have $1500 to use! I have been in touch with a Christian aid organization in Taraz. They work with the orphanages and are going to send me a list of things that they need. There is also the possibility that we could underwrite corrective cleft palate or eye surgery for a child. We are so excited to see this project come to fruition and are amazed by God's perfect timing--in our adoption, our church's new missionary focus on Kazakhstan and the outreach challenge we received from church, all coinciding in bringing supplies to the orphanage!