Dear Friends and Family,

We believe the church is called to do some crazy things: sell all you have, turn the other cheek, and love your neighbor. The church, though imperfect, has been trying to do these crazy, inconvenient things for thousands of years. God is faithful to redeem our feeble efforts into something beautiful. Caleb and I want to do something crazy and inconvenient, and we are trusting that God will redeem our paltry efforts into something beautiful.

We believe that adoption is a spectacular picture of the gospel. God lovingly calls us out of our great need and makes us His own. Christians are called to imitate God in many ways, and Caleb and I are called to imitate Him in this way. We have been thinking about the 40 million orphans in Africa. And we really want to adopt a few.

Christian World Adoption has an Ethiopia program and we are trying to adopt twin boys. These babies have been orphaned by poverty or disease and just need homes with food and families. We learned that this agency has a much higher demand for African girls than boys, so right now there are many more orphaned boys than families who want them. We want them! We want to raise African boys to love the Lord and serve Him and share with them the Christian legacy we have inherited.

We have begun this process on faith. We have no idea how God will provide the money for us to do this. The total cost to adopt two children is $30,000. If we have the money to progress rapidly, and get our paperwork done, we could be a family of five as soon as Christmastime.

Please be a part of this journey through your prayers and financial support. We have already paid about $3000 and we also are applying for grants to help fund our adoption. Caleb and I know that we sometimes limp along in our calling, and we know this sounds like more than we could ever manage, but we truly believe that God is redeeming even our stumbling efforts.

Please limp alongside us.

Please help us with creative ideas of how to raise the money. You could involve your kids and teach them about adoption as they help raise money. One of Caleb's students is hosting a big garage sale for us. Let us know what you come up with.

The easiest way to help us with money is to donate online through CWA, and they will immediately send you a tax-deductible receipt. Our fees through the agency will be around $14,000 and if we donate more than that they will send us the rest of the money to help us pay for the other half of the expenses. Go to cwa.org and click on the bottom left hand link that says "Donate now to CWA online". Under the "Optional" section there is a pull down menu that lets you "Choose a Person". Choose "CWA Family" and enter Caleb's name and that will be enough.

Blessings and love,

Caleb, Rebecca and Beatrice