While the task of raising our entire adoption fee can initially seem overwhelming, we have already gained a better perspective by realizing that little things do add up. We have been looking ahead to grants and interest free loans that we can apply for once our home study is finalized, but we see now that there are small steps that work together to make big ones!

We kicked off one step at Longleaf Church last weekend. Our church has partnered with us to design Eyes on Ethiopia coffee mugs. We are asking for a $20 donation for the mugs. Our hope with these mugs is that they will also serve as a small reminder in your home to pray for our family and our journey. We are excited and grateful to have these mugs as a way to raise funds, and we would love for you to have one! We have not set up a way to ship them, but we will have them available to all of our Middle Georgia friends. We will also have them at Longleaf this Sunday.

We have also set up a storefront on Just Love Coffee. An adoptive family has created this website that both supports other adoptive families and an orphanage in Ethiopia. They have coffees from different parts of the world. We love a couple of their blends from Ethiopia, and we are about to order their new holiday blend! Our specific website is www.justlovecoffee.com/thejarrards. This link takes you directly to our website, and our adoption fund gets a portion of each sale.

Finally, after much prayer, we have decided to add a Paypal donate button to our blog. We did have a few people ask us about making monetary donations, and we decided that this was a simple and convenient way for them to do that.

Just as I mentioned in our last blog post that no sacrifice is too small or too big, the same thing applies to these steps we are taking towards our goal of completely funding this adoption. We are thankful to all of you who are walking alongside of us through all of these steps ... big and small!