MICAH Fund

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Dear Family and Friends,          

     Over the past several years we have found ourselves approaching a new bend in the road ahead that we had not anticipated.  Our commitment to follow Jesus seems to always lead us to unexpected surprises and blessings when we follow where He leads!  Recently, we have felt strongly that He is calling us to adopt a baby.  We know that God cares deeply about the needs of widows and orphans (James 1:27) and we know that He sets the lonely in families (Psalm 68:6).  There are many minority babies born in our nation with very few families waiting to adopt them.  We believe God has a marvelous blessing awaiting our family, and at the same time, He desires to give our family to a precious little one who needs our love.  Can you believe it?  What will we do next?  We have completed our home study and are now officially waiting for God to orchestrate our adoption.   Our profile will soon be made available to be viewed by birth mothers and we could become parents again at any time!

     This is a huge leap of faith for us and we are writing to ask for the support of our friends and family emotionally, prayerfully, and if God leads, financially.  We ask for your prayers as we go through the sometimes tumultuous road toward adoption.  Please pray for the health and safety of the child God has planned for us and also for the health and safety of the child’s birthmother.  Pray that our relationship with our child’s birthmother will be full of grace and that we will love her well.  She will have made a very courageous decision to carry her baby to birth.  Placing that baby in our arms will take an equal amount of strength and courage. 

     We have already raised about $5000 to cover the cost of our home study and the other services needed to bring us to this point of our journey.  The high COST of adoption is often the main obstacle that stands in the way of hopeful families.  Our adoption will cost between $25,000 and $30,000, possibly even more.  We will most likely spend about $5000 in additional funds for travel and lodging in our baby’s birth state before we can bring our baby home.  There will be legal fees and possible medical fees for the baby’s mother.  We are continuing to explore every avenue we know of to raise this money.  Every penny will be worth it!  We know this is a large sum of money, but we trust God has a plan to help us fund our adoption. 

     The Minority Infant and Child Adoption Help (MICAH) Fund is a registered 501(3)(c) non profit organization incorporated in the state of Minnesota, whose mission is to glorify God by helping to make possible the placement of African American and biracial infants/children into loving, Christian homes. They will match, dollar for dollar, up to $2000, every gift that is received on our behalf! 

     If you feel led to support us financially in our pursuit of this adoption, your gift can be 100% tax deductible when made through the MICAH Fund.  The Fund has asked us to make clear to you that according to IRS regulations, gifts are not eligible to be tax deductible if legally controlled by the donor.  This means that once your gift has been received, you may not recall it or demand it be applied to the grant of your choice.  The MICAH Fund makes every effort to honor the suggestions of these gifts, and would be happy to discuss these issues with you further if you wish.  The MICAH Fund number is 651-636-5255.  They can also be located at www.micahfund.org 

     Because all donations to the fund are paid directly to adoption agencies, and the MICAH Fund will not give grants directly to individuals, gifts must be received before the placement of our child (ASAP).  Any gifts received after this date would be placed into the general adoption grant fund. 

     Gifts in the form of checks may be sent to MICAH Fund, attn: Dave Feldner,  2112 NE Broadway Street, Minneapolis, MN  55413.  Donations may also be made online at www.micahfund.org  The MICAH Fund is unable to accept telephone credit card donations. 

     Thank you so much for taking time to read this letter!  Please PRAY for us in this journey even if you do not feel called to partner with us financially. We are so excited for what God has in store and for the baby He has chosen for us! 

Thank you!! 
Rick, Sylvia, Ben, Olivia, Bethany, Sarah, and Solomon

September 17, 2012 

Dear church, family, and friends of Rick and Sylvia,

The MICAH Fund (www.micahfund.org) is a non profit organization whose mission is to glorify God by helping to make possible the placement of African American and biracial infants and children into loving, Christian homes.  The MICAH Fund is a registered 501(3)(c) organization registered in the state of Minnesota.  The MICAH Fund is dedicated to help meet the financial needs of Christian families seeking to obey God’s call to “visit the fatherless…in their affliction” (James 1:27).

We believe adoption at its core is evangelism – a vital part of bringing the mission field home.  God desires children to be adopted into Christ-honoring families so they may be ultimately adopted into His eternal family through Jesus Christ.  God calls us to fulfill James 1:27.

Rick and Sylvia have sensed God’s call and have joyfully stepped out in faith and obedience to walk the journey of adoption.  As you may already know, adoption is expensive, can cost up to $25,000 (or more), and this prevents many families from adopting.  The MICAH Fund believes God has raised up Rick and Sylvia “for such a time as this,” and we have committed to an adoption matching grant of $2,000 to help raise the funds necessary for this adoption.  This means the MICAH Fund will match dollar for dollar what Rick and Sylvia raise from their church, family, and friends between now and the placement of this child up to $2,000.  Gifts can be raised over and above this amount but will not be matched.  We invite you to support them financially to make this adoption possible.  Your gift is tax deductible and you will receive a tax deductible receipt. 

Will you invest financially in the life of the child God has for this family?  It will be an investment with eternal return.

Sincerely,

Maridel Sandberg

President of the MICAH Fund

P.S.  Receipts for your gift are sent out quarterly and then again at the end of year.  We appreciate your support.

Adoption Kills Trees

This is how I spend my free time these days. :-)

We’reNOTcrazy.

We’re not crazy.  Really.   We started out as a pretty typical family. (Okay, maybe not THAT typical).  We met in college, got married, bought a cute house, and had two kids.   Actually, it was a little more complicated than that, with a story full of amazing things that God did to make it happen, but we’ll spare you the details for the sake of time and blog space.  You get the picture though.  We got married and had two kids.  No one even blinked an eye.  Not a single person asked us, “Are you crazy?”  We even got a puppy.   Pretty darn American.  So far, so good.

Then the fun began.  When our second baby was four years old, the rumblings of our hearts finally overtook us and we decided to have one more baby.  Just one more.  Both of us grew up with two siblings, so having three kids in our family seemed like the right thing for us to do.  But when baby #3 turned one, she stood at the door crying as her older brother and sister ran outside to play.  “The poor little thing needs a buddy,” we said.  We promptly added baby #4.  Uh oh.  Now we’d done it!  Suddenly we had gone too far and had crossed an unseen line.  We had unknowingly stretched ourselves beyond the invisible American limit.  We had leapt across some great divide that we did not even know existed!  We heard stories about this reality from our friends with large families, but us?  We actually FELT the gap widen as we exited the realm of normal.  We got a minivan. 

We never officially joined the subculture of homeschooling, minivan driving, large families.  We just woke up one day and found ourselves in a different place than everyone else.  And in that place we met other families who were more like us than the ones who had taken a step back once we brought home baby #4.  There is a comradery in being with those who understand.

As the story goes, we then added a fifth baby to the mix.  Boys on each end with three girls in the middle.  It’s an amazing saga of how a couple with two kids and dog became card carrying members of the “over the limit” bunch.  “Throw that one back!” Well, no one has ever actually said THAT about any of our kids.  But the story is amazing.  While some people looked on with sideways glances on their faces, we were caught in the wonder of the journey God had so clearly set before us.  Some people lay down their lives for Jesus and He calls them to China.  We laid our lives at Jesus’ feet and among other things, He led these two self-proclaimed introverts into parenting a small herd of kids.  We never signed up to have 5 kids and we never officially decided to homeschool them this long either.  We never really WANTED a minivan, we just needed more seatbelts.  God has a way of ever-so-gently stretching us, drawing our lines farther and farther out just a little at a time.  “Enlarge your tent!  Lengthen your cords!  Strengthen your pegs!  You will spread out to the right and the left!”  Isaiah was surely speaking to us and we didn’t know it.

When we had our fifth child the questions began to pop up.  “Are they ALL yours?”  Wow.  We have friends with 8 kids, friends with 10 kids.  We had heard about those questions.  When we moved from the southern part of the Midwest north to another state where a “large family” is one with more than two kids, we had to redefine the word LARGE.  We now have a LARGE family.  Once while shopping with all 5 kids in tow, someone actually asked, “Do they all have the same father?”  Like that is even your business!  And the most frequent question of all:  “Are you CRAZY?”  Well, we have not been officially tested, but the men in white jackets have not come yet to take us away.  Last we checked we were simply CRAZY in our love for Jesus and for the things that He loves.   I don’t think we’ve lost our minds just yet.   Do you remember the song we used to sing in Sunday School?  “Jesus LOVES the little children….all the children of the world!”  He is not driven by the American dream, nor does He operate out of the NORM of western culture.  Instead He says that, “children are a gift from of Lord; The fruit of the womb is a reward.”  Until we had them, we didn’t realize how MUCH He was rewarding us and how wonderful His gifts really are.

The next chapter in our story will definitely not diminish the questions that come our way.  That’s okay.  Feel free to ask them.  We did not see this coming.  We did not sit back ten years ago and write out our future to look like this.  This is a bend in the road that we did not anticipate.   Sometimes in following you end up going places you never imagined you would go.  When Jesus said, “Come, follow me….”  He didn’t really say where He was going.  He simply said, “Follow.”   He told us that we would hear a VOICE behind us and before us, and on either side of us, saying, “This is the way, walk in it….”  And here we are.  We have said yes to His way, and yes to where He is leading.  In the past, we’ve walked into corners and had to readjust our perspective in order to find our way back to where He is leading.  We actually tried to avoid this bend in the road but at some point we looked up and saw that we were cornered.  It took us awhile, but we changed our perspective and said YES to this path He prepared beforehand for us to walk in.  Now we are beginning to see things a bit more clearly and the road ahead is exciting!  The horizon is breathtakingly beautiful!  The gift He has for us is going to be amazing!  He rewards those who diligently seek Him, and for us, one of the rewards He has for us is another member of our family!   Are we CRAZY??  No….I am not pregnant.  But YES, we are in the process of making our home and our family ready to adopt a baby.  Wow.  Did I just say that?  I did!  And the more I say it, the more excited I get.   We just completed our home study this week and next week our applications for agencies and grants start going in the mail! 

Last February, in our wonderings and prayers about this journey, the name “Traice Loux” kept coming up again and again.  She is an adoption consultant with Christian Adoption Consultants.  With much trembling (oh yes) we contacted Tracie and she helped us with get the adoption ball rolling.  Our ball has rolled at a snail pace, but it has rolled along and now we are ready to begin applying to agencies.  There is no greater joy than to join our hearts with what is on God’s heart.  He did not leave us as orphans, He adopted us into His very own family and made us joint heirs with Christ.  No wonder He likes adoption so much.  It is a declaration of Who He Is.

At this point, we are pursuing a domestic adoption of an infant.  That would be “baby” as in “newborn.”  (So why did we keep the crib, stroller, packnplay, highchair, and carseats until last summer and THEN give them away?  Hmm.) We are hoping to adopt an African American baby.  That would be “chocolate,” not “vanilla.”  I read once that there are supposedly 24 people in line to adopt Caucasian babies who are in need of a family, but the need is much greater with children of color.    Who would have thought there are so many children in America without families??  Many of them end up in foster care.  This year, there are 463,000 children in foster care, and of those, 65% will age out before ever finding a family to love and support them. For the precious birthmoms who make the courageous choice to carry their babies to LIFE, adoption is an amazing display of redemption.   We are eager to see what happens as we follow Jesus on this journey.  For starters, we have constructed this blog so that you can join in and walk with us along the way.  Here we go! 

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