Adoption Costs

Friends of friends are adopting 3 little girls from Africa.  In their efforts to raise the money it will take to bring them home, they detailed the fees involved as follows: 

$250 Application Fee
$500 Dossier preparation, review, and processing fee
$4,750 Agency Services Fee
$1,000 Community Development for the DR Congo
$6,500 Foreign Services Fee (Part One)
$5,500 Foreign Services Fee (Part Two)
$15,000 Adopting two biological siblings of child #1
$1500 Three Congolese passports for our girls
$1750 In-country travel and administration fee for escort of our children to the capital.
$1500 Kinshasa emigration assistance
$600 Medical exams for all three girls required for Visa by US Embassy in Kinshasa
$500 DRC Consulate Legalization Fee
$250 Dossier Translation Fee
$720 USCIS I600A Filing fee
$170 USCIS Fingerprinting for both parents
$1200 US Visa fee for adoptive children
$300 Accomodations in Kinshasa per night
$50 Mandatory Airport Exit tax per passenger. Paid at airport in Kinshasa
$4000 Two round-trip tickets to DRC; one per parent
$4500+ Three one-way tickets to US for our girls!
Total: $50,540

Over fifty-thousand dollars!!  Following Jesus is costing them.  And that's just the *beginning* of their parenting journey with their future daughters. 

I studied the list.  While I understand medical exams, plane tickets, and legal fees (to some extent), I have no idea what the $12,000 of Foreign Service Fees are.  Who gets this money?  The officials in the country?  For what?  Their own gain?  So that they will be empowered to live in luxury while they let their citizens literally rot away in cardboard shanties without food, water, or medical care? 

It hurts my heart to think that greedy men somewhere could profit from the sale of the impovrished children to wealthy Americans.  If that's the case, what makes these precious babes any different than slaves? 

Immediately my heart felt hard.  I wondered if this is something we should even be apart of.  Empowering wicked men to continue in their wickedness?  At what price will these three girls be rescued from loneliness?  How many children will be left behind to reap the harshness that $12,000 brings to the hands of thugs?  Is supporting that the Christian thing to do?

But isn't that was Jesus did? 

My heart hurts just thinking about it.  Ultimately, I know our job is to love as Christ loves, no matter the cost, no matter the consequences.  No matter who seems to reap the rewards of evil in the meantime.  God will tip the scales in the end.  It's so hard to remember sometimes.  And at others, it's plain ole difficult to wrap my my around -- how to have enough faith to keep believing, press on and do good for the *one* you can save, in spite of it the rest of it.