As 2011 is winding down, we want to let you all know of the things that were done this year to care for orphans, as well as give you a glance of things we have planned for 2012.
First of all, thank you to all the people who have helped the KNOWN Ministry care for the orphans around us, to those of you who are praying for orphans, and those who have spent time and money to care for the fatherless. And a special thank you to NP Women's Ministry for your continued help and support!
2011 was an exciting first year for us. We started out the year with our clothing/item drive for foster and adoptive children in need. We received an overwhelming response to this drive and as a result, we have helped many families with items they need! We helped a family with flight tickets to bring their two adopted daughters home. 20 bikes were donated and fixed by NP Cycling Ministry then given to foster children. 3 laptop computers were donated to send to the children at the Children's Home in India we support. About 400 items were donated at Pampered And Give Back in August for foster children which included teddy bears, duffle bags, blankets, and bibles from our Recycling Ministry! We had an amazing weekend in November for Orphan Sunday where we had the Watoto African Orphans Choir sing and Elizabeth Styffe talk about adoption to a packed worship center. We have provided meals to two families; one was placed with 3 girls they are fostering and one adopted a newborn baby boy! We also had adoption information meetings and 5 families are now in the process to adopt! What a blessing, more children finding forever families!
Some things we have in store for 2012:
We will once again be doing our clothing drive next month, the last two weekends of January. Items that we found really popular needs were cribs, strollers, carseats, and infant clothing. Although these items were ones we often got asked about, we need any items for children 0-teen that you may have outgrown or don't use.
We are also working on starting a monthly adoption/foster support group to help families during the challenging times that come up. With all the new families starting the process to adopt, we feel this is something our ministry needs to do. If this is something you want to take part in, please contact us.
In May, for Foster Care Awareness Month, we are planning an outing for foster children (maybe ice skating, bowling, or something) to give them a day of fun. We are planning to do the same for adopted children in November for National Adoption Awareness Month.
We will continue providing meals for those placed with new children either fostering or adopting but would also like to add small things for them like mowing their lawns or doing some laundry. The time when you are placed with a child is a time of bonding and adjustment and so it's nice for them to not have to worry about these things. If you would like to help out with this, we are looking for those who like to cook, mow, or wash clothes, let us know!
We will also be continuing our adoption information meetings and pray many more families make the decision to adopt and bring more children to their forever families!
**We have decided, that due to lack of families interested, we will NOT be doing the Orphan Hosting Program for next summer. We will attempt to do this program for a summer in the future. Thank you to those who inquired and prayed about hosting an orphan.**
The KNOWN Ministry wishes you all a very Merry Christmas and a blessed New Year, and we are looking forward to another successful year of caring for orphans!
Saturday, December 17, 2011
Friday, November 11, 2011
Important Questions to Ask Yourself if You Are Considering Fostering or Adopting
We believe it is critically important that parents who are preparing to adopt or foster a child must be honest and realistic about the journey and the challenges that lie ahead. Just as Jesus in Luke 14 challenged those who would follow him to ‘count the cost,’ so too parents who respond to God’s call to adopt or foster must be willing to count the cost of the adoption journey and prepare to “lay down their lives” to love their child and help him or her become all that God intends.
The following questions are designed to help parents (and parents-to-be) begin to honestly assess the journey ahead…and what it will require. We encourage you to thoughtfully and prayerfully consider these questions. They are not meant to scare you or in any way discourage you from continuing on this amazing path. Instead, our desire is simply that these questions will point you toward the hope and help that you need to form a strong and lasting connection with your child as you faithfully follow God’s call in your life.
1. Are you willing to acknowledge and fully embrace your child’s history, including that which you know and that which you will likely never know?
2. Are you willing to accept that your child has been affected by his/her history, possibly in profound ways, and as a result that you will need to parent your child in a way that exhibits true compassion and promotes connection and healing?
3. Are you willing to parent differently than how you were parented, how you have parented in the past, or how your friends parent their children? Are you willing to “un-learn” certain parenting strategies and approaches that may not be effective with your child, even if you have used these strategies and approaches successfully with your other children in the past?
4. Are you willing to educate yourself, your parents, family and friends on an ongoing basis in order to promote understanding of your child’s needs and how best to meet those needs?
5. Are you willing to be misunderstood, criticized and even judged by others who do not understand your child’s history, the impacts of that history and how you have been called to love and connect with your child in order to help him/her heal and become all that God intends?
6. Are you willing to advocate for your child’s needs, including at school, church, in extracurricular settings and otherwise, in order to create predictability and promote environments that enable your child to feel safe and allow him/her to succeed?
7. Are you willing to sacrifice your own convenience, expectations and desires in order to connect with your child and help him/her heal, even if that process is measured in years, not months?
8. Are you willing to fully embrace your child’s holistic needs, including his/her physical, emotional, relational and spiritual needs?
9. Are you willing to seek ongoing support and maintain long-term connections with others who understand your journey and the challenges that you face? Are you willing to intentionally seek and accept help when you encounter challenges with your child that you are not equipped to adequately deal with?
10. Are you willing to acknowledge that you as a parent bring a great deal to the equation when it comes to how your child will attach and connect? Are you willing to honestly examine (on an ongoing basis) your motivations and expectations relating to your adoption journey? Are you willing to look at your own past (including your past losses and trauma, both big and small) and consider how your past may impact your interactions with your child? Are you willing to consistently examine your role as parent as you experience challenges and difficulties along the journey?
As you read through the above questions, you may have concluded that some of the questions don’t apply to you and your situation? That may be the case to some extent, as every adoption and foster care experience is unique. However, we encourage you to spend some time reading and talking with other experienced adoptive and foster parents about what you should realistically expect as you travel this journey. We find that parents sometimes start with less than accurate assumptions about how the adoption or foster care journey will unfold, and as a result they are more likely to form unrealistic expectations. We believe that these questions are helpful and instructive for all parents considering or pursuing adoption and foster care, and we hope that as you work through them they will lead you toward greater insight and understanding.
This resource was originally posted at Empowered To Connect.
The following questions are designed to help parents (and parents-to-be) begin to honestly assess the journey ahead…and what it will require. We encourage you to thoughtfully and prayerfully consider these questions. They are not meant to scare you or in any way discourage you from continuing on this amazing path. Instead, our desire is simply that these questions will point you toward the hope and help that you need to form a strong and lasting connection with your child as you faithfully follow God’s call in your life.
1. Are you willing to acknowledge and fully embrace your child’s history, including that which you know and that which you will likely never know?
2. Are you willing to accept that your child has been affected by his/her history, possibly in profound ways, and as a result that you will need to parent your child in a way that exhibits true compassion and promotes connection and healing?
3. Are you willing to parent differently than how you were parented, how you have parented in the past, or how your friends parent their children? Are you willing to “un-learn” certain parenting strategies and approaches that may not be effective with your child, even if you have used these strategies and approaches successfully with your other children in the past?
4. Are you willing to educate yourself, your parents, family and friends on an ongoing basis in order to promote understanding of your child’s needs and how best to meet those needs?
5. Are you willing to be misunderstood, criticized and even judged by others who do not understand your child’s history, the impacts of that history and how you have been called to love and connect with your child in order to help him/her heal and become all that God intends?
6. Are you willing to advocate for your child’s needs, including at school, church, in extracurricular settings and otherwise, in order to create predictability and promote environments that enable your child to feel safe and allow him/her to succeed?
7. Are you willing to sacrifice your own convenience, expectations and desires in order to connect with your child and help him/her heal, even if that process is measured in years, not months?
8. Are you willing to fully embrace your child’s holistic needs, including his/her physical, emotional, relational and spiritual needs?
9. Are you willing to seek ongoing support and maintain long-term connections with others who understand your journey and the challenges that you face? Are you willing to intentionally seek and accept help when you encounter challenges with your child that you are not equipped to adequately deal with?
10. Are you willing to acknowledge that you as a parent bring a great deal to the equation when it comes to how your child will attach and connect? Are you willing to honestly examine (on an ongoing basis) your motivations and expectations relating to your adoption journey? Are you willing to look at your own past (including your past losses and trauma, both big and small) and consider how your past may impact your interactions with your child? Are you willing to consistently examine your role as parent as you experience challenges and difficulties along the journey?
As you read through the above questions, you may have concluded that some of the questions don’t apply to you and your situation? That may be the case to some extent, as every adoption and foster care experience is unique. However, we encourage you to spend some time reading and talking with other experienced adoptive and foster parents about what you should realistically expect as you travel this journey. We find that parents sometimes start with less than accurate assumptions about how the adoption or foster care journey will unfold, and as a result they are more likely to form unrealistic expectations. We believe that these questions are helpful and instructive for all parents considering or pursuing adoption and foster care, and we hope that as you work through them they will lead you toward greater insight and understanding.
This resource was originally posted at Empowered To Connect.
Tuesday, November 8, 2011
Orphan Hosting Program
We are still in search for five families to host an orphan from Ethiopia next summer. The children will be staying 3-4 weeks in hopes of finding them a forever family. They range in age from 8-13, boys and girls, and are all available for adoption. This however, does not mean you have to adopt them in order to host them, you just have to be willing to advocate on their behalf to everyone who will listen. The last time Welcoming Angels did their hosting program, 9 out of the 10 children found homes! If you have ever considered adopting from Africa, this is a great way to have a child stay with you for a few weeks and see if they are a good fit for your family. Then if so, you would travel to Ethiopia after your paperwork is completed to bring the child you hosted back home.
So whether you have considered international adoption or not, as long as you have a heart for these children, this program is for YOU and we need YOU! We must have at least five families available for the program to happen (and we really want to see it happen). If you are interested, there is a free pre-application that we need you to fill out as soon as possible. After that, the official application is due in February. The cost to host is around $2500 and will be due in the spring, right around tax refund time (hint, hint...). It's that simple! If you are at all interested, or if there are questions I can answer for you, please email me at salvadorfamily4@kermantel.net.
So whether you have considered international adoption or not, as long as you have a heart for these children, this program is for YOU and we need YOU! We must have at least five families available for the program to happen (and we really want to see it happen). If you are interested, there is a free pre-application that we need you to fill out as soon as possible. After that, the official application is due in February. The cost to host is around $2500 and will be due in the spring, right around tax refund time (hint, hint...). It's that simple! If you are at all interested, or if there are questions I can answer for you, please email me at salvadorfamily4@kermantel.net.
Thursday, November 3, 2011
How to be the Village
With many of our NorthPointe families now in the process of adopting, I thought this post I was given today was worth sharing. As these NP families wait to bring their children home and after they are home, there are some important "do's" and "don'ts" that you should be aware of. Here is how Jen Hatmaker (an adoptive mom) puts it:
Supporting Families Before the Airport
Your friends are adopting. They’re in the middle of dossiers and home studies, and most of them are somewhere in the middle of Waiting Purgatory. Please let me explain something about WP: It sucks in every way. Oh sure, we try to make it sound better than it feels by using phrases like “We’re trusting in God’s plan” and “God is refining me” and “Sovereignty trumps my feelings” and crazy bidness like that. But we are crying and aching and getting angry and going bonkers when you’re not watching. It’s hard. It hurts. It feels like an eternity even though you can see that it is not. It is harder for us to see that, because many of us have pictures on our refrigerators of these beautiful darlings stuck in an orphanage somewhere while we’re bogged down in bureaucracy and delays.
How can you help? By not saying or doing these things:
1. “God’s timing is perfect!” (Could also insert: “This is all God’s plan!” “God is in charge!”) As exactly true as this may be, when you say it to a waiting parent, we want to scratch your eyebrows off and make you eat them with a spoon. Any trite answer that minimizes the struggle is as welcomed as a sack of dirty diapers. You are voicing something we probably already believe while not acknowledging that we are hurting and that somewhere a child is going to bed without a mother again. Please never say this again. Thank you.
2. “Are you going to have your own kids?” (Also in this category: “You’ll probably get pregnant the minute your adoption clears!” “Since this is so hard, why don’t you just try to have your own kids?” “Well, at least you have your own kids.”) The subtle message here is: You can always have legitimate biological kids if this thing tanks. It places adoption in the Back-up Plan Category, where it does not belong for us. When we flew to Ethiopia with our first travel group from our agency, out of 8 couples, we were the only parents with biological kids. The other 7 couples chose adoption first. Several of them were on birth control. Adoption counts as real parenting, and if you believe stuff Jesus said, it might even be closer to the heart of God than regular old procreation. (Not to mention the couples that grieved through infertility already. So when you say, “Are you going to have your own kids?” to a woman who tried for eight years, then don’t be surprised if she pulls your beating heart out like Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom.)
3. For those of you in Christian community, it is extremely frustrating to hear: “Don’t give up on God!” or “Don’t lose faith!” It implies that we are one nanosecond away from tossing our entire belief system in the compost pile because we are acting sad or discouraged. It’s condescending and misses the crux of our emotions. I can assure you, at no point in our story did we think about kicking Jesus to the curb, but we still get to cry tears and feel our feelings, folks. Jesus did. And I’m pretty sure he went to heaven when he died.
4. We’re happy to field your questions about becoming a transracial family or adopting a child of another race, but please don’t use this moment to trot out your bigotry. (Cluelessness is a different thing, and we try to shrug that off. Like when someone asked about our Ethiopian kids, “Will they be black?” Aw, sweet little dum-dum.) The most hurtful thing we heard during our wait was from a black pastor who said, “Whatever you do, don’t change their last name to Hatmaker, because they are NOT Hatmakers. They’ll never be Hatmakers. They are African.” What the??? I wonder if he’d launch the same grenade if we adopted white kids from Russia? If you’d like to know what we’re learning about raising children of another race or ask respectful, legitimate questions, by all means, do so. We care about this and take it seriously, and we realize we will traverse racial landmines with our family. You don’t need to point out that we are adopting black kids and we are, in fact, white. We’ve actually already thought of that.
5. Saying nothing is the opposite bad. I realize with blogs like this one, you can get skittish on how to talk to a crazed adopting Mama without getting under her paper-thin skin or inadvertently offending her. I get it. (We try hard not to act so hypersensitive. Just imagine that we are paper-pregnant with similar hormones surging through our bodies making us cry at Subaru commercials just like the 7-month preggo sitting next to us. And look at all this weight we’ve gained. See?) But acting like we’re not adopting or struggling or waiting or hoping or grieving is not helpful either. If I was pregnant with a baby in my belly, and no one ever asked how I was feeling or how much longer or is his nursery ready or can we plan a shower, I would have to audition new friend candidates immediately.
Here’s what we would love to hear Before the Airport:
1. Just kind, normal words of encouragement. Not the kind that assume we are one breath away from atheism. Not the kind that attempt to minimize the difficulties and tidy it all up with catchphrases. We don’t actually need for you to fix our wait. We just want you to be our friend and acknowledge that the process is hard and you care about us while we’re hurting. That is GOLD. I was once having lunch with my friend Lynde when AWAA called with more bad news about Ben’s case, and I laid my head down on the table in the middle of Galaxy Café and bawled. Having no idea what to do with such a hot mess, she just cried with me. Thank you for being perfect that day, Lynde.
2. Your questions are welcomed! We don’t mind telling you about the court system in Ethiopia or the in-country requirements in Nicaragua or the rules of the foster system. We’re glad to talk about adoption, and we’re thankful you care. I assure you we didn’t enter adoption lightly, so sharing details of this HUGE PIECE OF OUR LIVES is cathartic. Plus, we want you to know more because we’re all secretly hoping you’ll adopt later. (This is not true.) (Yes it is.)
3. When you say you’re praying for us and our waiting children, and you actually really are, not only does that soothe our troubled souls, but according to Scripture, it activates the heavens. So pray on, dear friends. Pray on. That is always the right thing to say. And please actually do it. We need people to stand in the gap for us when we are too tired and discouraged to keep praying the same words another day.
4. If you can, please become telepathic to determine which days we want to talk about adoption and which days we’d rather you just show up on our doorstep with fresh figs from the Farmer’s Market (thanks, Katie) or kidnap us away in the middle of the day to go see Bridesmaids. Sometimes we need you to make us laugh and remember what it feels like to be carefree for a few hours. If you’re not sure which day we’re having, just pre-buy movie tickets and show up with the figs, and when we answer the door, hold them all up and ask, “Would you like to talk for an hour uninterrupted about waiting for a court date?” We’ll respond to whichever one fits.
Supporting Families After the Airport
You went to the airport. The baby came down the escalator to cheers and balloons. The long adoption journey is over and your friends are home with their new baby / toddler / twins / siblings / teenager. Everyone is happy. Maybe Fox News even came out and filmed the big moment and “your friend” babbled like an idiot and didn’t say one constructive word about adoption and also she looked really sweaty during her interview. (Really? That happened to me too. Weird.)
How can you help? By not saying or doing these things:
1. I mean this nicely, but don’t come over for awhile. Most of us are going to hole up in our homes with our little tribe and attempt to create a stable routine without a lot of moving parts. This is not because we hate you; it’s because we are trying to establish the concept of “home” with our newbies, and lots of strangers coming and going makes them super nervous and unsure, especially strangers who are talking crazy language to them and trying to touch their hair.
2. Please do not touch, hug, kiss, or use physical affection with our kids for a few months. We absolutely know your intentions are good, but attachment is super tricky with abandoned kids, and they have had many caregivers, so when multiple adults (including extended family) continue to touch and hold them in their new environment, they become confused about who to bond with. This actually delays healthy attachment egregiously. It also teaches them that any adult or stranger can touch them without their permission, and believe me, many adoptive families are working HARD to undo the damage already done by this position. Thank you so much for respecting these physical boundaries.
3. For the next few months, do not assume the transition is easy. For 95% of us, it so is not. And this isn’t because our family is dysfunctional or our kids are lemons, but because this phase is so very hard on everyone. I can’t tell you how difficult it was to constantly hear: “You must be so happy!” and “Is life just so awesome now that they’re here??” and “Your family seems just perfect now!” I wanted that to be true so deeply, but I had no idea how to tell you that our home was actually a Trauma Center. (I did this in a passive aggressive way by writing this blog, which was more like “An Open Letter to Everyone Who Knows Us and Keeps Asking Us How Happy We Are.”) Starting with the right posture with your friends – this is hard right now – will totally help you become a safe friend to confide in / break down in front of / draw strength from.
4. Do not act shocked if we tell you how hard the early stages are. Do not assume adoption was a mistake. Do not worry we have ruined our lives. Do not talk behind our backs about how terribly we’re doing and how you’re worried that we are suicidal. Do not ask thinly veiled questions implying that we are obviously doing something very, very wrong. Do not say things like, “I was so afraid it was going to be like this” or “Our other friends didn’t seem to have these issues at all.” Just let us struggle. Be our friends in the mess of it. We’ll get better.
5. If we’ve adopted older kids, please do not ask them if they “love America so much” or are “so happy to live in Texas.” It’s this simple: adoption is born from horrible loss. In an ideal world, there would be no adoption, because our children would be with their birth families, the way God intended. I’ll not win any points here, but I bristle when people say, “Our adopted child was chosen for us by God before the beginning of time.” No he wasn’t. He was destined for his birth family. God did not create these kids to belong to us. He didn’t decide that they should be born into poverty or disease or abandonment or abuse and despair aaaaaaaall so they could finally make it into our homes, where God intended them to be. No. We are a very distant Plan B. Children are meant for their birth families, same as my biological kids were meant for mine. Adoption is one possible answer to a very real tragedy… after it has already happened, not before as the impetus for abandonment. There is genuine grief and sorrow when your biological family is disrupted by death and poverty, and our kids have endured all this and more. So when you ask my 8-year-old if he is thrilled to be in Texas, please understand that he is not. He misses his country, his language, his food, his family. Our kids came to us in the throes of grief, as well they should. Please don’t make them smile and lie to you about how happy they are to be here.
6. Please do not disappear. If I thought the waiting stage was hard, it does not even hold the barest candle to what comes after the airport. Not. The. Barest. Candle. Never have I felt so isolated and petrified. Never have I been so overwhelmed and exhausted. We need you after the airport way more than we ever needed you before. I know you’re scared of us, what with our dirty hair and wild eyes and mystery children we’re keeping behind closed doors so they don’t freak out more than they already have, but please find ways to stick around. Call. Email. Check in. Post on our Facebook walls. Send us funny cards. Keep this behavior up for longer than six days.
Here’s what we would love to hear or experience After the Airport:
1. Cook for your friends. Put together a meal calendar and recruit every person who even remotely cares about them. We didn’t cook dinners for one solid month, and folks, that may have single handedly saved my sanity. There simply are not words to describe how exhausting and overwhelming those first few weeks are, not to mention the lovely jetlag everyone came home with. And if your friends adopted domestically right up the street, this is all still true, minus the jetlag.
2. If we have them, offer to take our biological kids for an adventure or sleepover. Please believe me: their lives just got WHACKED OUT, and they need a break, but their parents can’t give them one because they are 1.) cleaning up pee and poop all day, 2.) holding screaming children, 3.) spending all their time at doctors’ offices, and 4.) falling asleep in their clothes at 8:15pm. Plus, they are in lockdown mode with the recently adopted, trying to shield them from the trauma that is Walmart.
3. Thank you for getting excited with us over our little victories. I realize it sounds like a very small deal when we tell you our kindergartener is now staying in the same room as the dog, but if you could’ve seen the epic level of freakoutedness this dog caused her for three weeks, you would understand that this is really something. When you encourage us over our incremental progress, it helps. You remind us that we ARE moving forward and these little moments are worth celebrating. If we come to you spazzing out, please remind us where we were a month ago. Force us to acknowledge their gains. Be a cheerleader for the healing process.
4. Come over one night after our kids are asleep and sit with us on our porch. Let me tell you: we are all lonely in those early weeks. We are home, home, home, home, home. Good-bye, date nights. Good-bye, GNO’s. Good-bye, spontaneous anything. Good-bye, church. Good-bye, big public outings. Good-bye, community group. Good-bye, nightlife. So please bring some community to our doorstep. Bring friendship back into our lives. Bring adult conversation and laughter. And bring an expensive bottle of wine.
5. If the shoe fits, tell adopting families how their story is affecting yours. If God has moved in you over the course of our adoption, whether before the airport or after, if you’ve made a change or a decision, if somewhere deep inside a fire was lit, tell us, because it is spiritual water on dry souls. There is nothing more encouraging than finding out God is using our families for greater kingdom work, beautiful things we would never know or see. We gather the holy moments in our hands every day, praying for eyes to see God’s presence, his purposes realized in our story. When you put more holy moments in our hands to meditate on, we are drawn deeper into the Jesus who led us here.
Here’s one last thing: As you watch us struggle and celebrate and cry and flail, we also want you to know that adoption is beautiful, and a thousand times we’ve looked at each other and said, “What if we would’ve said no?” God invited us into something monumental and lovely, and we would’ve missed endless moments of glory had we walked away. We need you during these difficult months of waiting and transitioning, but we also hope you see that we serve a faithful God who heals and actually sets the lonely in families, just like He said He would. And even through the tears and tantrums (ours), we look at our children and marvel that God counted us worthy to raise them. We are humbled. We’ve been gifted with a very holy task, and when you help us rise to the occasion, you have an inheritance in their story; your name will be counted in their legacy. Because that day you brought us pulled pork tacos was the exact day I needed to skip dinner prep and hold my son on the couch for an hour, talking about Africa and beginning to bind up his emotional wounds. When you kidnapped me for two hours and took me to breakfast, I was at the very, very, absolute end that morning, but I came home renewed, able to greet my children after school with fresh love and patience. When you loved on my big kids and offered them sanctuary for a night, you kept the family rhythm in sync at the end of a hard week. Thank you for being the village. You are so important.
Written by Jen Hatmaker. You can follow her blog here
Supporting Families Before the Airport
Your friends are adopting. They’re in the middle of dossiers and home studies, and most of them are somewhere in the middle of Waiting Purgatory. Please let me explain something about WP: It sucks in every way. Oh sure, we try to make it sound better than it feels by using phrases like “We’re trusting in God’s plan” and “God is refining me” and “Sovereignty trumps my feelings” and crazy bidness like that. But we are crying and aching and getting angry and going bonkers when you’re not watching. It’s hard. It hurts. It feels like an eternity even though you can see that it is not. It is harder for us to see that, because many of us have pictures on our refrigerators of these beautiful darlings stuck in an orphanage somewhere while we’re bogged down in bureaucracy and delays.
How can you help? By not saying or doing these things:
1. “God’s timing is perfect!” (Could also insert: “This is all God’s plan!” “God is in charge!”) As exactly true as this may be, when you say it to a waiting parent, we want to scratch your eyebrows off and make you eat them with a spoon. Any trite answer that minimizes the struggle is as welcomed as a sack of dirty diapers. You are voicing something we probably already believe while not acknowledging that we are hurting and that somewhere a child is going to bed without a mother again. Please never say this again. Thank you.
2. “Are you going to have your own kids?” (Also in this category: “You’ll probably get pregnant the minute your adoption clears!” “Since this is so hard, why don’t you just try to have your own kids?” “Well, at least you have your own kids.”) The subtle message here is: You can always have legitimate biological kids if this thing tanks. It places adoption in the Back-up Plan Category, where it does not belong for us. When we flew to Ethiopia with our first travel group from our agency, out of 8 couples, we were the only parents with biological kids. The other 7 couples chose adoption first. Several of them were on birth control. Adoption counts as real parenting, and if you believe stuff Jesus said, it might even be closer to the heart of God than regular old procreation. (Not to mention the couples that grieved through infertility already. So when you say, “Are you going to have your own kids?” to a woman who tried for eight years, then don’t be surprised if she pulls your beating heart out like Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom.)
3. For those of you in Christian community, it is extremely frustrating to hear: “Don’t give up on God!” or “Don’t lose faith!” It implies that we are one nanosecond away from tossing our entire belief system in the compost pile because we are acting sad or discouraged. It’s condescending and misses the crux of our emotions. I can assure you, at no point in our story did we think about kicking Jesus to the curb, but we still get to cry tears and feel our feelings, folks. Jesus did. And I’m pretty sure he went to heaven when he died.
4. We’re happy to field your questions about becoming a transracial family or adopting a child of another race, but please don’t use this moment to trot out your bigotry. (Cluelessness is a different thing, and we try to shrug that off. Like when someone asked about our Ethiopian kids, “Will they be black?” Aw, sweet little dum-dum.) The most hurtful thing we heard during our wait was from a black pastor who said, “Whatever you do, don’t change their last name to Hatmaker, because they are NOT Hatmakers. They’ll never be Hatmakers. They are African.” What the??? I wonder if he’d launch the same grenade if we adopted white kids from Russia? If you’d like to know what we’re learning about raising children of another race or ask respectful, legitimate questions, by all means, do so. We care about this and take it seriously, and we realize we will traverse racial landmines with our family. You don’t need to point out that we are adopting black kids and we are, in fact, white. We’ve actually already thought of that.
5. Saying nothing is the opposite bad. I realize with blogs like this one, you can get skittish on how to talk to a crazed adopting Mama without getting under her paper-thin skin or inadvertently offending her. I get it. (We try hard not to act so hypersensitive. Just imagine that we are paper-pregnant with similar hormones surging through our bodies making us cry at Subaru commercials just like the 7-month preggo sitting next to us. And look at all this weight we’ve gained. See?) But acting like we’re not adopting or struggling or waiting or hoping or grieving is not helpful either. If I was pregnant with a baby in my belly, and no one ever asked how I was feeling or how much longer or is his nursery ready or can we plan a shower, I would have to audition new friend candidates immediately.
Here’s what we would love to hear Before the Airport:
1. Just kind, normal words of encouragement. Not the kind that assume we are one breath away from atheism. Not the kind that attempt to minimize the difficulties and tidy it all up with catchphrases. We don’t actually need for you to fix our wait. We just want you to be our friend and acknowledge that the process is hard and you care about us while we’re hurting. That is GOLD. I was once having lunch with my friend Lynde when AWAA called with more bad news about Ben’s case, and I laid my head down on the table in the middle of Galaxy Café and bawled. Having no idea what to do with such a hot mess, she just cried with me. Thank you for being perfect that day, Lynde.
2. Your questions are welcomed! We don’t mind telling you about the court system in Ethiopia or the in-country requirements in Nicaragua or the rules of the foster system. We’re glad to talk about adoption, and we’re thankful you care. I assure you we didn’t enter adoption lightly, so sharing details of this HUGE PIECE OF OUR LIVES is cathartic. Plus, we want you to know more because we’re all secretly hoping you’ll adopt later. (This is not true.) (Yes it is.)
3. When you say you’re praying for us and our waiting children, and you actually really are, not only does that soothe our troubled souls, but according to Scripture, it activates the heavens. So pray on, dear friends. Pray on. That is always the right thing to say. And please actually do it. We need people to stand in the gap for us when we are too tired and discouraged to keep praying the same words another day.
4. If you can, please become telepathic to determine which days we want to talk about adoption and which days we’d rather you just show up on our doorstep with fresh figs from the Farmer’s Market (thanks, Katie) or kidnap us away in the middle of the day to go see Bridesmaids. Sometimes we need you to make us laugh and remember what it feels like to be carefree for a few hours. If you’re not sure which day we’re having, just pre-buy movie tickets and show up with the figs, and when we answer the door, hold them all up and ask, “Would you like to talk for an hour uninterrupted about waiting for a court date?” We’ll respond to whichever one fits.
Supporting Families After the Airport
You went to the airport. The baby came down the escalator to cheers and balloons. The long adoption journey is over and your friends are home with their new baby / toddler / twins / siblings / teenager. Everyone is happy. Maybe Fox News even came out and filmed the big moment and “your friend” babbled like an idiot and didn’t say one constructive word about adoption and also she looked really sweaty during her interview. (Really? That happened to me too. Weird.)
How can you help? By not saying or doing these things:
1. I mean this nicely, but don’t come over for awhile. Most of us are going to hole up in our homes with our little tribe and attempt to create a stable routine without a lot of moving parts. This is not because we hate you; it’s because we are trying to establish the concept of “home” with our newbies, and lots of strangers coming and going makes them super nervous and unsure, especially strangers who are talking crazy language to them and trying to touch their hair.
2. Please do not touch, hug, kiss, or use physical affection with our kids for a few months. We absolutely know your intentions are good, but attachment is super tricky with abandoned kids, and they have had many caregivers, so when multiple adults (including extended family) continue to touch and hold them in their new environment, they become confused about who to bond with. This actually delays healthy attachment egregiously. It also teaches them that any adult or stranger can touch them without their permission, and believe me, many adoptive families are working HARD to undo the damage already done by this position. Thank you so much for respecting these physical boundaries.
3. For the next few months, do not assume the transition is easy. For 95% of us, it so is not. And this isn’t because our family is dysfunctional or our kids are lemons, but because this phase is so very hard on everyone. I can’t tell you how difficult it was to constantly hear: “You must be so happy!” and “Is life just so awesome now that they’re here??” and “Your family seems just perfect now!” I wanted that to be true so deeply, but I had no idea how to tell you that our home was actually a Trauma Center. (I did this in a passive aggressive way by writing this blog, which was more like “An Open Letter to Everyone Who Knows Us and Keeps Asking Us How Happy We Are.”) Starting with the right posture with your friends – this is hard right now – will totally help you become a safe friend to confide in / break down in front of / draw strength from.
4. Do not act shocked if we tell you how hard the early stages are. Do not assume adoption was a mistake. Do not worry we have ruined our lives. Do not talk behind our backs about how terribly we’re doing and how you’re worried that we are suicidal. Do not ask thinly veiled questions implying that we are obviously doing something very, very wrong. Do not say things like, “I was so afraid it was going to be like this” or “Our other friends didn’t seem to have these issues at all.” Just let us struggle. Be our friends in the mess of it. We’ll get better.
5. If we’ve adopted older kids, please do not ask them if they “love America so much” or are “so happy to live in Texas.” It’s this simple: adoption is born from horrible loss. In an ideal world, there would be no adoption, because our children would be with their birth families, the way God intended. I’ll not win any points here, but I bristle when people say, “Our adopted child was chosen for us by God before the beginning of time.” No he wasn’t. He was destined for his birth family. God did not create these kids to belong to us. He didn’t decide that they should be born into poverty or disease or abandonment or abuse and despair aaaaaaaall so they could finally make it into our homes, where God intended them to be. No. We are a very distant Plan B. Children are meant for their birth families, same as my biological kids were meant for mine. Adoption is one possible answer to a very real tragedy… after it has already happened, not before as the impetus for abandonment. There is genuine grief and sorrow when your biological family is disrupted by death and poverty, and our kids have endured all this and more. So when you ask my 8-year-old if he is thrilled to be in Texas, please understand that he is not. He misses his country, his language, his food, his family. Our kids came to us in the throes of grief, as well they should. Please don’t make them smile and lie to you about how happy they are to be here.
6. Please do not disappear. If I thought the waiting stage was hard, it does not even hold the barest candle to what comes after the airport. Not. The. Barest. Candle. Never have I felt so isolated and petrified. Never have I been so overwhelmed and exhausted. We need you after the airport way more than we ever needed you before. I know you’re scared of us, what with our dirty hair and wild eyes and mystery children we’re keeping behind closed doors so they don’t freak out more than they already have, but please find ways to stick around. Call. Email. Check in. Post on our Facebook walls. Send us funny cards. Keep this behavior up for longer than six days.
Here’s what we would love to hear or experience After the Airport:
1. Cook for your friends. Put together a meal calendar and recruit every person who even remotely cares about them. We didn’t cook dinners for one solid month, and folks, that may have single handedly saved my sanity. There simply are not words to describe how exhausting and overwhelming those first few weeks are, not to mention the lovely jetlag everyone came home with. And if your friends adopted domestically right up the street, this is all still true, minus the jetlag.
2. If we have them, offer to take our biological kids for an adventure or sleepover. Please believe me: their lives just got WHACKED OUT, and they need a break, but their parents can’t give them one because they are 1.) cleaning up pee and poop all day, 2.) holding screaming children, 3.) spending all their time at doctors’ offices, and 4.) falling asleep in their clothes at 8:15pm. Plus, they are in lockdown mode with the recently adopted, trying to shield them from the trauma that is Walmart.
3. Thank you for getting excited with us over our little victories. I realize it sounds like a very small deal when we tell you our kindergartener is now staying in the same room as the dog, but if you could’ve seen the epic level of freakoutedness this dog caused her for three weeks, you would understand that this is really something. When you encourage us over our incremental progress, it helps. You remind us that we ARE moving forward and these little moments are worth celebrating. If we come to you spazzing out, please remind us where we were a month ago. Force us to acknowledge their gains. Be a cheerleader for the healing process.
4. Come over one night after our kids are asleep and sit with us on our porch. Let me tell you: we are all lonely in those early weeks. We are home, home, home, home, home. Good-bye, date nights. Good-bye, GNO’s. Good-bye, spontaneous anything. Good-bye, church. Good-bye, big public outings. Good-bye, community group. Good-bye, nightlife. So please bring some community to our doorstep. Bring friendship back into our lives. Bring adult conversation and laughter. And bring an expensive bottle of wine.
5. If the shoe fits, tell adopting families how their story is affecting yours. If God has moved in you over the course of our adoption, whether before the airport or after, if you’ve made a change or a decision, if somewhere deep inside a fire was lit, tell us, because it is spiritual water on dry souls. There is nothing more encouraging than finding out God is using our families for greater kingdom work, beautiful things we would never know or see. We gather the holy moments in our hands every day, praying for eyes to see God’s presence, his purposes realized in our story. When you put more holy moments in our hands to meditate on, we are drawn deeper into the Jesus who led us here.
Here’s one last thing: As you watch us struggle and celebrate and cry and flail, we also want you to know that adoption is beautiful, and a thousand times we’ve looked at each other and said, “What if we would’ve said no?” God invited us into something monumental and lovely, and we would’ve missed endless moments of glory had we walked away. We need you during these difficult months of waiting and transitioning, but we also hope you see that we serve a faithful God who heals and actually sets the lonely in families, just like He said He would. And even through the tears and tantrums (ours), we look at our children and marvel that God counted us worthy to raise them. We are humbled. We’ve been gifted with a very holy task, and when you help us rise to the occasion, you have an inheritance in their story; your name will be counted in their legacy. Because that day you brought us pulled pork tacos was the exact day I needed to skip dinner prep and hold my son on the couch for an hour, talking about Africa and beginning to bind up his emotional wounds. When you kidnapped me for two hours and took me to breakfast, I was at the very, very, absolute end that morning, but I came home renewed, able to greet my children after school with fresh love and patience. When you loved on my big kids and offered them sanctuary for a night, you kept the family rhythm in sync at the end of a hard week. Thank you for being the village. You are so important.
Written by Jen Hatmaker. You can follow her blog here
Wednesday, October 26, 2011
Waiting Children
I almost daily get emails, facebook posts, etc. on orphans that are waiting for a forever family. Today's emails/posts tugged at my heart a little more than usual (if that's even possible) and so I thought I would share them with all of you.
The first email I had waiting for me when I woke up was from America World Adoption Agency. They are looking for homes for these beautiful boys waiting in China. Most people think only girls wait for homes in China but this is not true, there are many boys waiting as well. Here is the email:
"We would like to ask families to join AWAA in praying for the following four boys in our China Waiting Children program, who are currently looking for their forever family. We trust that God will move through our prayers on their behalf and we are eager to see all He will accomplish through our united prayers! Thank you for joining America World in committing these children to prayer.
Logan* is a smiley little 10 month old boy who likes to cuddle. His favorite time of the day is meal time! He enjoys attention and teasing, and laughs out loud when he is played with. He is also a good sleeper. Logan has repaired spina bifida and is a possible Hepatitis B carrier. He is an agency specific referral and is only available for families who have a dossier in China.
Aaron* is a cute 10 month old boy with a ready smile. He has discovered that he can roll over. He is a sound sleeper and likes to suck on his fingers while he sleeps. Aaron has been diagnosed with hypospadias, mild hydrocephalus and a congenital heart defect. He is an agency specific and special focus referral.
Colby* is a bright-eyed, handsome little boy who just celebrated his 5th birthday. Colby is a special focus referral and has been diagnosed with congenital meningocele, hydrocephalus and a genital malformation. He is enrolled in kindergarten and enjoys playing with other children. He is an active child who enjoys playing hide and seek, listening to music, and playing with animal toys.
Ethan* is a smart, active six and a half year old boy. He likes to watch cartoons and dances when he hears music. He is a social boy who enjoys playing with other children and likes to visit places with lots of people. He likes playing outside and one of his favorite toys is a toy cell phone. Ethan has a repaired cleft lip and palate and is an agency specific and special focus referral.
Please join us this month in praying for Logan, Aaron, Colby and Ethan. Please pray for their development and health, for their nannies/caretakers, and for a family to come forward for their adoptions.
The second one was actually on a post I follow on Twitter called heart4adopt. Each day they post children here in the US that are waiting, in hopes that they find them a forever home. Today's children are so precious. They are a sibling set of 4, yes 4! You can find out more about them by clicking this link and click on Wednesday's child. They update this site every day with a new child/children, so you can check back each day if you would like.
So if you know someone who is looking to adopt, please share this information. Please also pray that these children find a forever home soon! As always, please let me know if we can help you in any way.
The first email I had waiting for me when I woke up was from America World Adoption Agency. They are looking for homes for these beautiful boys waiting in China. Most people think only girls wait for homes in China but this is not true, there are many boys waiting as well. Here is the email:
"We would like to ask families to join AWAA in praying for the following four boys in our China Waiting Children program, who are currently looking for their forever family. We trust that God will move through our prayers on their behalf and we are eager to see all He will accomplish through our united prayers! Thank you for joining America World in committing these children to prayer.
Logan* is a smiley little 10 month old boy who likes to cuddle. His favorite time of the day is meal time! He enjoys attention and teasing, and laughs out loud when he is played with. He is also a good sleeper. Logan has repaired spina bifida and is a possible Hepatitis B carrier. He is an agency specific referral and is only available for families who have a dossier in China.
Aaron* is a cute 10 month old boy with a ready smile. He has discovered that he can roll over. He is a sound sleeper and likes to suck on his fingers while he sleeps. Aaron has been diagnosed with hypospadias, mild hydrocephalus and a congenital heart defect. He is an agency specific and special focus referral.
Colby* is a bright-eyed, handsome little boy who just celebrated his 5th birthday. Colby is a special focus referral and has been diagnosed with congenital meningocele, hydrocephalus and a genital malformation. He is enrolled in kindergarten and enjoys playing with other children. He is an active child who enjoys playing hide and seek, listening to music, and playing with animal toys.
Ethan* is a smart, active six and a half year old boy. He likes to watch cartoons and dances when he hears music. He is a social boy who enjoys playing with other children and likes to visit places with lots of people. He likes playing outside and one of his favorite toys is a toy cell phone. Ethan has a repaired cleft lip and palate and is an agency specific and special focus referral.
Please join us this month in praying for Logan, Aaron, Colby and Ethan. Please pray for their development and health, for their nannies/caretakers, and for a family to come forward for their adoptions.
The second one was actually on a post I follow on Twitter called heart4adopt. Each day they post children here in the US that are waiting, in hopes that they find them a forever home. Today's children are so precious. They are a sibling set of 4, yes 4! You can find out more about them by clicking this link and click on Wednesday's child. They update this site every day with a new child/children, so you can check back each day if you would like.
So if you know someone who is looking to adopt, please share this information. Please also pray that these children find a forever home soon! As always, please let me know if we can help you in any way.
Tuesday, October 18, 2011
Caring for Orphans by Keeping a Family Together
Part of caring for the orphan involves keeping families intact so that their children do not become part of the overwhelming number of fatherless children in this world. This is the ideal way of caring for orphans; if at all possible. My friends, the Blocks, are helping to do just that. They recently picked up their family and moved to Guatemala to serve the orphans there (they cannot be adopted because Guatemala has closed their doors to international adoptions). Yesterday they posted about a man named Javier and his wife who has a tumor. She cannot get into the hospital there because it is not considered "life threatening" so she has lived with the tumor for months. Without surgery she could die and leave her husband to try to care for their children. So the Blocks posted Javier's story on their blog and within minutes collected the amount needed for Javier's wife to see a private doctor and have the surgery! The Blocks helped keep this family together; helped keep these children from losing a mother. If you want to care for orphans but don't know how, keep an eye on this blog from the Blocks, they are constantly posting needs that they come across in Guatemala. If you do donate, know that every penny of what you send to them will be spent on exactly what they say it will be spent on. Pray about it and if God is asking you to help, please do!
Friday, October 7, 2011
Wraping Around Adoptive Families
Feel that you are not called to adopt? You can still care for the orphan by providing support to those called to adopt. There are many different ways to minister to God's orphan children and to adoptive families who have welcomed these children home.
Adoptive Families Need Your Help
Due to the challenges of adopting a child, many adoptive families desperately need support from their church families. Asking for help however, can be difficult to do. Many adoptive families may interpret their struggles as failure, question their calling to adopt or, worst of all, feel abandoned by the God who called them to the journey of adoption. Struggling adoptive families need their church families to wrap around and support them during times of trial. When churches do this, they mirror our heavenly Father, who wraps His arms around us during times of joy as well as times of trial. Families struggling in these situations need compassionate, non-judgmental brothers and sisters in Christ to walk beside them to help bear their burdens. Adoptive families need others to WRAP around them with prayer and practical help.
W. Wrestle in Prayer
For previously wounded orphan children, the Enemy stole their childhoods, killed their dreams and destroyed their futures. But that's not the end of their stories. Christ has come that these children may have life and have it to the full. God wants to restore and redeem their beginnings. He has a plan and a future for these children. So when a Christian family welcomes a little child in Jesus' name; provides a loving home; and introduces her to the One who made, loves, heals and delivers her, the Enemy does not stand idly by. The spiritual warfare involved in rescuing orphans is very real and often overlooked. Adoptive families need you to wrestle in prayer on their behalf.
Pray for: Strength and Patience, Grace and Mercy. God's truth to be revealed to the families amid the schemes and lies of the Enemy. Spiritual eyes to see the truth behind their struggle and strength to exercise their faith and trust in their mighty God. Ears attuned to the living God, who will walk them through their trials.
Also Pray Specifically For The Child: That God would heal wounds of rejection, abandonment, fear and mistrust. That God's love, which never fails, will cover him in all he does. To know and believe that there is hope in Christ. To trust in and receive her new family's love and desire to help her heal.
R. Respite Care
No matter how wonderful, committed and loving adoptive parents are, they need a break from the demands of caring for their children. Respite care is defined as "short-term or temporary care...to provide relief to the regular caregiver". Times of respite allow parents to focus on their marriage, take time to regroup, and enjoy much-needed peace, quiet, and rest.
There are several unique aspects to respite care: Respite should not begin until the child has been in the home for several months. You must get to know the children beforehand. The respite must be long enough to be worth the trouble of preparing for it. Respite time shouldn't be a "vacation" for the child where they are free from the rules of daily life. If possible, provide respite in the child's home in order to maintain as much of the structure and schedule as possible.
A. Acts of Service
This is a list of ways you can provide an act of service for an adoptive family:
Meals: Provide a meal or two for a family who just brought their new child home.
Errands and Shopping: Pick up a few things for the adoptive family at the store or run an errand for them.
Laundry: Pick up the family's laundry, take it home, and return it folded.
Yard Work: Have a yard cleanup party for the adoptive family.
Cleaning: Arrange to clean a family's house for them while they are away.
Financial Assistance: Provide a monetary gift to help offset adoption expenses.
Gifts for Homecoming Celebration: Adoptive families don't often have a "baby shower" so a gift to the adoptive family is a great way to provide an act of service.
P. Promises of God
Providing encouragement with God's Word through notes, calls or emails can be a powerful source of comfort and strength for families. Hope-filled words combined with listening ears, understanding hearts, kindness and mercy will deeply resonate.
That's a W.R.A.P.
While not every family is called to open their home to a child in need, everyone can be involved in caring for orphans. Take time to explore how the Lord may be asking you to serve the adoptive families in our community and church. Often it's the smallest gestures that mean the most.
Adoptive Families Need Your Help
Due to the challenges of adopting a child, many adoptive families desperately need support from their church families. Asking for help however, can be difficult to do. Many adoptive families may interpret their struggles as failure, question their calling to adopt or, worst of all, feel abandoned by the God who called them to the journey of adoption. Struggling adoptive families need their church families to wrap around and support them during times of trial. When churches do this, they mirror our heavenly Father, who wraps His arms around us during times of joy as well as times of trial. Families struggling in these situations need compassionate, non-judgmental brothers and sisters in Christ to walk beside them to help bear their burdens. Adoptive families need others to WRAP around them with prayer and practical help.
W. Wrestle in Prayer
For previously wounded orphan children, the Enemy stole their childhoods, killed their dreams and destroyed their futures. But that's not the end of their stories. Christ has come that these children may have life and have it to the full. God wants to restore and redeem their beginnings. He has a plan and a future for these children. So when a Christian family welcomes a little child in Jesus' name; provides a loving home; and introduces her to the One who made, loves, heals and delivers her, the Enemy does not stand idly by. The spiritual warfare involved in rescuing orphans is very real and often overlooked. Adoptive families need you to wrestle in prayer on their behalf.
Pray for: Strength and Patience, Grace and Mercy. God's truth to be revealed to the families amid the schemes and lies of the Enemy. Spiritual eyes to see the truth behind their struggle and strength to exercise their faith and trust in their mighty God. Ears attuned to the living God, who will walk them through their trials.
Also Pray Specifically For The Child: That God would heal wounds of rejection, abandonment, fear and mistrust. That God's love, which never fails, will cover him in all he does. To know and believe that there is hope in Christ. To trust in and receive her new family's love and desire to help her heal.
R. Respite Care
No matter how wonderful, committed and loving adoptive parents are, they need a break from the demands of caring for their children. Respite care is defined as "short-term or temporary care...to provide relief to the regular caregiver". Times of respite allow parents to focus on their marriage, take time to regroup, and enjoy much-needed peace, quiet, and rest.
There are several unique aspects to respite care: Respite should not begin until the child has been in the home for several months. You must get to know the children beforehand. The respite must be long enough to be worth the trouble of preparing for it. Respite time shouldn't be a "vacation" for the child where they are free from the rules of daily life. If possible, provide respite in the child's home in order to maintain as much of the structure and schedule as possible.
A. Acts of Service
This is a list of ways you can provide an act of service for an adoptive family:
Meals: Provide a meal or two for a family who just brought their new child home.
Errands and Shopping: Pick up a few things for the adoptive family at the store or run an errand for them.
Laundry: Pick up the family's laundry, take it home, and return it folded.
Yard Work: Have a yard cleanup party for the adoptive family.
Cleaning: Arrange to clean a family's house for them while they are away.
Financial Assistance: Provide a monetary gift to help offset adoption expenses.
Gifts for Homecoming Celebration: Adoptive families don't often have a "baby shower" so a gift to the adoptive family is a great way to provide an act of service.
P. Promises of God
Providing encouragement with God's Word through notes, calls or emails can be a powerful source of comfort and strength for families. Hope-filled words combined with listening ears, understanding hearts, kindness and mercy will deeply resonate.
That's a W.R.A.P.
While not every family is called to open their home to a child in need, everyone can be involved in caring for orphans. Take time to explore how the Lord may be asking you to serve the adoptive families in our community and church. Often it's the smallest gestures that mean the most.
Friday, September 30, 2011
Do We See America's Orphans?
A great post about the Fatherless in our own back yard. Take a minute and read it. Be changed.
Do We See America’s Orphans
Do We See America’s Orphans
Friday, September 23, 2011
Orphan Hosting Program for Summer of 2012
I received some additional information this morning about the hosting program that I want to share with you all. It has been confirmed that the children will be coming from Ethiopia. They will be boys ages 8-14, girls ages 10-14, and maybe some sibling sets. They will be staying in Fresno for 3-4 weeks next July and are all adoptable! The last hosting event Welcoming Angels did was with 10 children from Ethiopia and of those, 9 have been adopted! You do NOT need to want to adopt to host a child, but you do have to advocate for the child! Some of the 9 I mentioned were not adopted by their host families, they were adopted by neighbors and friends that fell in love with them! We can make this happen in Fresno, at NorthPointe! How amazing would it be to have 10 little Ethiopian children running around NP and then placed in their forever families?!
I was originally told the costs would be up to $3500 but was told today that it will be more like $2500 and she is trying to get the costs lower! That is great news! One of the ways to get the costs even lower is to find a doctor and dentist to treat these children pro bono if they become ill or there's an emergency, so that it lessens the costs of insurance for the children. So if anyone knows of anyone who may be interested in volunteering their services, please let me know. Also, if any of you are interested in hosting, please let me know as soon as possible. We need a minimum of 5 families to host...let's make this happen NorthPointe!
I was originally told the costs would be up to $3500 but was told today that it will be more like $2500 and she is trying to get the costs lower! That is great news! One of the ways to get the costs even lower is to find a doctor and dentist to treat these children pro bono if they become ill or there's an emergency, so that it lessens the costs of insurance for the children. So if anyone knows of anyone who may be interested in volunteering their services, please let me know. Also, if any of you are interested in hosting, please let me know as soon as possible. We need a minimum of 5 families to host...let's make this happen NorthPointe!
The Oasis - Our Ethiopian Adoption: All Fall Down
The Oasis - Our Ethiopian Adoption: All Fall Down: A great post on adoption and, more importantly, orphan care.
Sunday, September 18, 2011
International vs. Domestic Adoption
Strolling through a blog I love to read, the Blocks, and I came across this old post from them about international and domestic adoption that I wanted to share with you. If you have ever considered adoption this one's for you: click here to read the post!
Friday, September 16, 2011
Sam is This Week’s Waiting Child
An adoption agency I follow on Facebook often posts children that are waiting for a home. Many times, because many people share the child's information on Facebook, Twitter, and other outlets, the children find homes! Thank God for social media and how it helps to advocate for waiting children! Check out this week's waiting child and foward this to your friends. You never know who's heart will be broken for one of these children...allowing these children to find forever homes!
Sam, Minnie and Me — Sam is This Week’s Waiting Child
Sam, Minnie and Me — Sam is This Week’s Waiting Child
Thursday, September 8, 2011
From the Eyes and Heart of an Adopted Child
Came across this blog post and really loved the perspective from a young woman named Erica who was adopted as an infant.
Hope at Home: An Adopted Child's Perspective on Adoption: Erica
Hope at Home: An Adopted Child's Perspective on Adoption: Erica
Wednesday, September 7, 2011
Caring for Orphans in Ethiopia
Bethany Christian Services is doing an amazing job caring for orphans in Ethiopia. Ethiopia has the largest population of orphans, mostly due to AIDS, and Bethany is not only finding forever homes for them here in the US, they are also helping families there in Ethiopia foster these children and they have a sponsorship program which helps families earn a profit to care for their children instead of giving them for adoption. Click this link for a great video.
Heartbreak and Adjustment of Adoption
Came across this blog post tonight of the heartbreak of orphans and the hard, hard, adjustment of adoption. Yes, adoption of an orphan IS beyond worth it, but it IS also very hard. Click the link below for a blog about a family's struggles "after the airport".
After the Airport
After the Airport
Sunday, September 4, 2011
Saturday, September 3, 2011
Special Needs-Cleft Lip
Don't let the term "special needs" scare you from adopting a child with this label. Many children are considered special needs because they are either older and healthy or they have a need that is easily correctable like a cleft lip. Here is a great article of adopting a child with a cleft lip, click here. These children need forever homes as well, so be open to the child God already has chosen for your family.
Friday, September 2, 2011
Orphan Hosting Program
Our newest project is working with Welcoming Angels to hold an Orphan Hosting Program here during the summer of 2012! There are well over 145 million orphans in the world today. Not having a mom or dad is just a small part of being an orphan. The real pain of being an orphan comes from living your life under a banner of being REJECTED, UNWANTED, and OPTIONAL. The value and self-worth issues continue...for life. Christ was clear. He instructs us to care for and love orphans. YOU can care for an orphan and show them they are loved and valued by God by hosting them in your home. These children are all adoptable, ages 8-15, and from either China or Ethiopia (we have not heard which country they will be coming from). The children will be here for 3-4 weeks during the summer. This is a great opportunity for those considering adopting because you can see what it is like having another child, especially a child from another country, in your home without the "commitment" of adoption. However, this program is NOT for those only considering adopting. Any family can host a child, and in doing so, maybe someone in your immediate family or circle of friends falls in love with the child you host and decides to adopt him or her. Think of the look on these children's faces when they experience things they have never seen before! What an experience for them! We have to have at least 5 families commited to host a child and we pray that all the children who come next summer find forever homes while they are here. There are costs involved to host a child and the applications are due in February, so contact me ASAP if you are interested in opening your home for an orphan.
Meals for Families
One new thing we have started recently is providing meals for families who just received placement of either foster or adopted children. When families welcome these children into their homes, there is a big adjustment period. What better way to help then to deliver a few meals to these families? We have a team of women who have signed up to prepare meals when needed but would love to welcome more women (or men) on this team. If you would like to prepare a meal when we hear of a family in need, please contact us.
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