AdoptWalk 1:27

Most of you know that we are in the midst of another adoption process and back in January Chuck was thinking of ways that we could not only raise more money for our own process, but also encourage others to adopt and help them with the financial aspect of it as well. His idea was a fund raising walk-a-thon at our church where all the money raised would go into a fund to help families within our church who are adopting or encourage people to think about adopting because they know help is available.

He told me about the idea to me one night and I thought it sounded good and we started praying about it. After talking about it for a couple days and getting very excited we decided we needed to write down our ideas. We sat down that night and filled a piece of paper with thoughts and ideas. We talked to some couples in our church that we knew are open to adopting and they got excited about it too. Chuck had a meeting with our pastor and presented the idea to him and he loved it. So we formed a committee and AdoptWalk 1:27 was born.

We have been very busy this spring planning for our first annual AdoptWalk which was on June 18. It was so exciting to see how God smoothed the way before us and everything came together without any problems. The event ran from 8am to 8pm and people could come walk whenever they were able to. When they registered they set a mileage goal and then they went out and got sponsors for the number of miles they wanted to go.

The event turned out to be a huge success. We were a little nervous about the weather forecast, but we didn't have any rain and it was a beautiful sunny day. We had everyone come who had signed up and about 10 people show up that day to register. We had about 100 walkers and overall we walked a total of 408 miles.

And we had lots of fun during the day also...

we had a bouncy castle for the kids

We had prizes and raffles that were donated by local businesses. Companies were so generous that we actually had enough prizes that every participant won something. We did drawings all throughout the day so it was fun to have people show up to walk and we could say "you already won a prize." They were shocked and would say "I haven't even done anything yet."

and we actually did some walking

These 2 boys walked 2 miles...or as Cooper says it "I walked 2 miles away."

these lovely ladies came and sold lunch for us

One of the men's ministries in our church agreed to cook hotdogs for us to sell at lunch and dinner.

sometimes with a lot of activity going on around you it is hard to concentrate on praying and you just have to help your eyes stay closed.

we also had face painting (or leg or arm etc.) for the kids

These are all the companies that donated something to help us put on this event. As I said before they were so generous and we couldn't have done it without them.

And we had a dunk tank. I guess if you are the one to come up with the idea, you are the first one to get wet. Chuck started off the excitement and we had 3 other suckers, um I mean willing volunteers that took a turn as well. Even our senior pastor (you know the one that loved the idea) was willing to take a turn to help raise money. I think it says something that we raised as much money from the dunk tank as we did from selling food.

Someone made a "rule" that if you were related to the person in the tank you could just walk up and hit the button. We liked this rule and used it to our advantage!

We don't know how much money was raised because it is not due yet, but we are so thankful to God for blessing us in such a big way. As I said, the day was a huge success and we hope it grows more each year and that many children find their forever families because of this event.