Trash & Treasures

Honestly?  We hate garage sales.  With the fiery passion of a thousand hot burning suns.  We get offended when people don't want to own our stuff (what do you mean you don't want a souvenir glass from our trip to the Rain Forest Cafe in Atlantic City?), and neither of us is very good at haggling.

Justin:  What do you mean you won't pay $10 for this slightly chipped and very stained serving dish?  

Tara:  Here let me pay YOU to take this all of this clutter away from me! 

We find ourselves falling into these two extremes with very little consideration for a middle ground.

So when our friend suggested that we hold a garage sale fundraiser as a way to raise money for our massive and ever-growing adoption fees, we balked at the idea.  But after we gave it some thought, we realized that holding a garage sale fundraiser would allow Jenny's life to touch entirely new demographics of people.

And ultimately, that's what this journey is all about.

First there were our friends who wanted to be a blessing to us, but perhaps couldn't necessarily make a monetary donation toward our Family Sponsorship Page.  By hosting a sale where they could donate their gently loved items, it allowed them to contribute in a very meaningful way to our fundraising efforts.

An overflowing garage = overflowing hearts.

We can't express our thanks enough to those who donated to the sale.  Our garage was overflowing with the outpouring of donations.  Each and every item that was dropped off held meaning to us.  It had been loved once and would hopefully be loved again.  These things, used and loved and ultimately discarded, would mean life and hope for someone new.  Perhaps for the person who bought it at our garage sale, but mostly for Jenny, who sits, herself discarded, in an eastern European group home for sick children.  

Then there were the complete strangers who came to the sale.  Those from our community whom we had never met before, many of them asking for details on the adoption, on Jenny, and giving their own words of encouragement.  One shopper told stories of how she had once been a foster parent, and another recalled early memories of having lived in an orphanage himself until he was 3.

My favorite was an older lady who was rummaging through the boys' clothes and said she was going to be sending them to a young man in [Jenny's country].  My jaw dropped and I pointed to the picture of Jenny and explained the fundraiser.  We exchanged a few words in Jenny's native language, excited to get a chance to practice with an expert!

Another life touched by Jenny.

They say one man's trash is another man's treasure.   This was true for the items donated to our garage sale, but how much more true is it of our hearts when it comes to what God treasures?  Isn't Jenny treasured by God?  While we cannot fathom the difficult decision her parents made when they signed away their parental rights, we do know that she is loved and she is precious to God and to us.

1 Peter 2:4 says that Jesus was "rejected by men, but chosen by God and precious to him."  He is our true treasure, chosen and precious, and all too often, we treat him as less than so.   The perfect Savior of the world, despised and rejected by us as if he were broken, worthless and ready for the rubbish bin.

What is your treasure?  "For where your treasure is, there will your heart be also."  (Luke 12:34)  Right now, as parents, of course our hearts are with Vivien and Jenny.  We treasure them, but (and this might come as a shock to you just as it did to us) even our children shouldn't hold the highest place in our hearts.  No, that place should belong to God and Jesus himself.  I'm not saying it always does for us.  On the contrary, it's something we need to constantly remind ourselves, every hour of every day.  But if there's one thing we're learning on this parenting and adoption journey, it's that HE should become greater, and everything else should become less.  For HE is our TREASURE.

Defying the Etter Family Motto

The Etter family motto is "Nothing's Ever Easy."  In fact, we use our motto so frequently, I just had to have this family crest custom made for Justin's last birthday:

The Etter family defined.

The screws you have are never the right size, the pan you need is always at the bottom of the stack in the cupboard, and the printer is always out of ink when you need to print something right away.

And the government agency fails to tell you which documents you need to bring to your appointment resulting in multiple trips and a wasted day.

And then sometimes things seem way too easy and you wonder if you overlooked some major component of the process that would have made it ten times more tedious than it actually was.  This was the case when we took our notarized documents to the state of New Jersey to be authenticated. We braced ourselves for the worst.  But you know what?  It was way too easy.  So what did we do wrong?

Our USCIS approval came in the mail on Thursday, August 31.  Thanks to modern technology and an efficient postal service (did I really just write that?) that morning, I woke up and read an email from USPS alerting me to the fact that it would be delivered later that day!  (Side note:  if you haven't signed up for the "Informed Delivery" option from the USPS, I highly recommend it!)

Our next step was to get the approval notarized and then take it, along with 11 other notarized documents, to the city of Trenton to be apostilled, or authenticated (meaning they verify that the notary is legit).  Because we admittedly lack patience, and because Jenny has been waiting for a family since she was born 4.5 years ago, we paid an extra $15 per document for expedited processing.  We drove into Trenton on Friday, Sept 8 to drop everything off, and drove back on Monday, Sept 11 to pick everything up.  

And it worked like clockwork.  Maybe we were expecting the worst from the state of New Jersey? After all, government employees have a stereotype for a reason. (I can say that because I happen to be a government employee.) We got onto the elevator to exit the building and looked at each other. "That was too easy!" we both said in unison.  

We now had a 2-inch thick packet of our most important documents:  birth certificates, marriage certificate, health records, employment verifications, adoption applications, powers of attorney and a 20-page deeply personal Home Study.  This was our "dossier".  This was the packet of credentials that someone from the Ministry in Jenny's country was going to use to determine our suitability to adopt.   This was everything.

And now it's on its way to Jenny's country.

Vivien loves seeing where her big sister lives!

We have no idea how long it will take the authorities in Jenny's country to review and approve our dossier, but we aren't resting on our laurels while we wait.  We have registered to take a 9-week course for adoptive parents called "Empowered to Connect" and we are busy gearing up for our next fundraising effort:  a multi-family yardsale coming up on Sept 22 & 23.  

Our friends and family continue to support us beyond our wildest dreams.  And God continues to show Himself to us in amazing ways.  Each day we are one step closer to officially adding Jenny to our family.  And each day we are growing in faith and love.  We can't wait to see what tomorrow brings!