A Lesson on Sacrifice

The other night our door bell rang and there stood a beautiful couple from our church and their two adorable children. The sweet couple told me about a Family Home Evening lesson that their family had just had where they read our blog to their children and discussed sacrifice. Each of these two precious children then proceeded to hand me a Ziploc bag with all of their savings money in it. The bag from the little boy also contained strawberry fruit leather. Apparently, as he was loading his financial gift into the bag he commented that I also needed fruit leather…and he was absolutely correct. I tried very hard to control my emotions but I was completely overcome with their enormous sacrifice and service. I am quite certain that they had been saving their money for a very long time and have probably worked hard to earn much of it.

Words were inadequate at the time and they still are, in attempting to express my enormous gratitude to these beautiful children and their parents. How completely selfless of these children to sacrifice their hard earned money to help bring another little child home to his forever family. I am so grateful for these amazing parents who not only serve and sacrifice themselves, but have taught their children to do the same.

I am grateful that the young boy thought to not only provide for our needs but also our wants. I love those fruit leathers from Costco. As I sit here enjoying it, it represents all of the “extras” that we have had to take out of our budget in order to try and bring Michael home. Not only did this sweet young boy sacrifice to meet our needs, but also thought to care for our wants.

My own children have sacrificed much to bring their siblings to our family. They have had to endure the emotional stress of adoption. Much of my time, and that of my husband, goes to filling out paperwork and meeting all of the adoption requirements. During these times they give up “family time” and attention from their parents. Still, although they have sacrificed very much (including the tightening of the family budget) they have never themselves given financially to the adoption process. However, our children watched carefully as the little children from our church handed me their savings and an interesting thing happened later that night. As I went to bed, I found a little plastic bag of money with a note that said, “for milkl din” (translation: “for Michael Ding”) waiting for me on my pillow. I was again overcome with emotion. This time I was so grateful for the example that these little children from church had set for my own children. I didn’t need to sit down with my children and read them scripture or teach a planned lesson on the importance of serving and sacrificing. They learned it from watching these children give selflessly and it was a far more impacting lesson than I could ever teach them.

I want these precious children to know that their sacrifice gave us the finances needed to get our final dossier paperwork authenticated by our Secretary of State and mailed overnight to our agency who will send it to Beijing. They made a huge impact on helping to bring our Michael home and they made a bigger impact on our family and on teaching our children how to serve and sacrifice. Thank you sweet children. You are very loved and appreciated!