A Community Effort

I love my church, nlcf, and the community we have here. The last few weeks I have been blown away by friends offering to organize and execute fundraisers for us:

1. April is organizing a benefit yard sale. More details to come. We'll need donations, volunteers, and help spreading the word. The goal of this yard sale is to get more of the Blacksburg community aware of and involved in Riley's adoption. This adoption goes beyond our church family!
2. Dianne has set up a "sale of services" website. You can donate a service (e.g: babysitting for a night) or buy a service being offered. All proceeds benefit our adoption. Again, we hope to get the larger community involved in this!
3. My Lifegroup gals are organizing an all-you-can-eat pancake dinner for $5! More details to come on that, too.
4. Our church has generously offered a $500 matching grant during the month of March. This should bring in another $1000!

I strongly believe that adoption is a community effort. We cannot do this alone. We are not the only ones affected by this. We need help, and it's ok to ask for it. We'll need help after Riley gets home, too! I'll be a first-time, stay-at-home-mom to a child who's never had a family before and will probably have some trauma from being institutionalized. Any other SAHMs out there in Blacksburg/Christiansburg?! I'm going to need you!!

And since we have ZILCH in the way of supplies (not a single item of clothing, toy, diaper, furniture, etc) I finally went ahead and registered at Target for some stuff that I know we will we need, if you feel like helping us out in that way! Most of the stuff is only available online, but it can be shipped directly to us.

Thank you, everyone. From the bottom of our hearts.