Dear Family and Friends,

As you know if you're visiting our site, we're in the process of adopting Ellie Kay from China.  We feel that God has called us to adopt one of the "fatherless".  If you want to read more of our story, and why we chose to adopt, it can be found here: http://thompsonsandadaughter.blogspot.com/2013/03/no-place-to-start-like-beginning.html.

As most of you probably know, adoption is super expensive and we've already paid most of our expenses.  We have already paid thousands of dollars worth of agency fees, immigration fees, home study fees, the enormous child rearing fee to China, and many more.  The biggest expense left for us to be reunited with Ellie Kay is travel for the oldest 4 of us to travel to China to get her.  We are also required to stay there for a little over 2 weeks to complete the official adoption/immigration process.  This is actually a blessing as many countries require multiple trips and we only have to travel once, so airline fees will be less for us in that sense.  We will be traveling to the port city of Beijing -----> then to Nanchung (the capital of her province) ---->  then to Guangzhou where the US consulate is located, which is where Ellie will officially become a US citizen ---> and last we'll probably take the train to Hong Kong on the way out to leave (the closest port city)  ----> and then home to Memphis.

If you feel led to help with the finances of our adoption, we have some instructions below that will make this a tax deductible donation for you.  FIRST let us say that we expect no particular family or friend to donate.  We are not "entitled" to anything and we are fully aware that adoption was our decision and therefore our financial responsibility.  Also, I want to mention that if you are deeply in debt to others, your financial obligations are to your creditors first. We would never want someone deeply in debt to take funds owed to their creditors to give to us. However, if you feel that God has led you to help financially toward the cause of our adoption, we wanted to make the tax deductible information available to you.

If you are interested in doing this, you can make a check to LifeSong for Orphans, and 100% of the donation goes to us, but is considered a charitable donation for you (they will send you a receipt for taxes upon request or will automatically send you a receipt per IRS guidelines if your donation is $250 or more).   If you choose to donate through LifeSong by check, write "Thompson family" and account # "3637" on the memo line.  You can mail your check to Lifesong For Orphans, PO Box 40, Gridley, Illinois 61744.  Or you can pay via paypal (they would take 2.9% paypal fee out of it if you decide to use this route) at lifesongforphans.org/give/donate.  From there, you would select, "Give to an adoptive family" and complete the online form with our account number and name.

Again, this is not our friends' and families' financial obligation - it is ours alone - but we wanted to provide this information just in case God was leading someone in this direction, it would actually be a tax deduction for you.  Thanks for reading!!