Now that we have a sibling group that we are intentionally pursuing we are able to start looking at how this will impact the necessary finances should we be approved to be matched.
Thankfully, $34,000 of the $51,000 are fees which remain the same regardless of how many children are being adopted. However, the remaining roughly $17,000 does fluctuate because these are the fees associated with the travel expenses. How were these fees originally calculated?
Airfare (2 adults, 1 child) $ 4,600.00
Hotel Accommodations for two different cities for 6-9 weeks $ 5,500.00
Transportation $ 1,500.00
Guide Fee $ 2,000.00
Representative Travel Expenses $ 2,000.00
Child’s Visa $ 325.00
Embassy Medical Appointment $ 600.00
Authentication of Finalization Documents $ 470.00
This sums to a total of $16,995.
What about this needs to change for our situation?
In the first place, these figures were calculated to be very generic and only consider families who are adopting their first and only child. As a result, the airfare is calculated for two parents to travel and to bring back a single adopted child. Furthermore, these costs were calculated several years ago and do not take into account the recent inflation. In addition, they are based on the presumption that the family is traveling from the United States, not Germany. All of this means that we need to refigure the amount to add in 4 additional plane tickets, consider current costs with inflation, and factor in leaving from Germany using rough estimates (a round trip ticket is currently running between $1,500-$2,000 depending on when the flight is).
The hotel costs also only consider two adults and one child. In our situation, we need to recalculate these for two adults and 5 children. Because there are two cities (a total of 3 stays, because we have to go back and forth twice to one of the cities) and a fairly long period of time (6-8 weeks), we are currently estimating that we will need minimally $6,000 extra for that.
Thankfully the Guide fee and Representative travel expenses are not impacted by the number of children. But we need to multiply the final three lines by 3 to get the additional cost for 3 additional children.
Where does that leave us in terms of minimal necessary support?
We currently are estimating that we will need at least $17,000 more to cover the travel expenses than what was initially estimated. We have asked Lifeline to check our figures and they agreed that this is the minimal amount and likely we would be wise to raise beyond this number, but that we will certainly need at least that amount.
This places our minimal total support goal at $68,000 to complete our adoption.
That is certainly a daunting figure (trust us, it is even more of a heart attack number to us!). However, we serve a God who provides and has no financial limits. We have been blessed so far to see just over $29,000 already be raised which was significantly higher than we thought we would see by this date. Praise the Lord and thank you for your extreme generosity! We will need to continue raising to close the gap and we will be applying for various adoption scholarships in the coming weeks (please be praying for favor as many families apply for very limited funds!).
It will be wonderful to see how God provides for these needs and allows us to bring our family home!
Halfway Around the Globe 