Recently I was watching one of my favourite video series (a wonderful Christmas present) by Jannete Oke. You may have heard of the books, Love Comes Softly. I was on the movie Love’s Unending Legacy in which the main character ends up adopting two children, a common theme in all the videos. I have mentioned this before, but I just can’t get away from how much I enjoy the concept of an orphan train and how often I wonder if we would see more adoptions if we did them today.
With an orphan train, the Children’s Aid Society’s would basically send a group of orphans on a train across the country in search of homes. In the movie, they brought the group of orphans into the local church, where many of the members watched and stood up as they felt themselves as a match to each child. At the ending, there was only one child left, a teenage girl. The only church member who remained in the pews was a widowed mother who already had a child, with very little to offer, and who was not there to adopt. She was simply there as an onlooker. However, and this is where the concept intrigues me, when the mother saw the young girl remain, with no one to care for her, and the prospect of being sent back to an orphanage hanging over her head, the mother jumped up and offered her family and her home to this desperate orphan. It wasn’t a choice made to build a family. It wasn’t a choice based on which country she liked most, or which birth mother’s profile she liked. It was instead, what I think adoption should be, a Christian stepping forward to simply care for an orphan. She saw a need and stepped up to fill it. That is what it is all about, isn’t it?
So often these days’ children waiting for adoption are forgotten about. They spend their days in far away orphanages or foster homes where people think they are ok. The situation isn’t starring people in the faces the way the orphan train was. I am not saying I think people should make the choice of adoption based out of guilt or desperation, but why aren’t we choosing the path of adoption, right now, today? What is holding us back? Are they our reasons, or God’s reasons? The clip in the movie just reminded me how the care of orphans was entrusted to us Christians, not the world, yet unfortunately that is exactly who is managing this huge pandemic. We have failed, and I think if a change in perception happens, on why we adopt, and what God calls us to do, then perhaps we can see a shift back to Christians caring for our forgotten children and steps taken towards the 147 million orphans actually finding their forever families! I know sometimes my posts might come across as harsh, but does anyone else ever feel this way? Just in pure desperation of wanting to find homes for all these children? My heart breaks when I think of all the children out there desperately yearning for a family. If you would like to see the great advocating works of another adoptive mom, actively seeking homes for the many children waiting, I encourage you to check out www.nogreaterjoymom.com. Her posts are great and she routinely posts stories on children in desperate need of a family. A great blog!
Friday, December 30, 2011
Friday, December 9, 2011
A Starbucks Coffee
Five dollars. That is how much a Starbucks coffee costs these days...well at least the ones my husband buys! That is also the amount we have decided to ask for in our new $5 Campaign, our latest fundraiser! I know, it seems like we are fundraising 24/7, and it's true! If $15,000 was easier to come by more people would adopt! So we have dedcided to see if all our friends and families and everyone who views this blog (which has been a lot lately!) would be willing to donate $5 to our adoption through the chip-in on the right had side, if so we could reach our next goal of $500 to begin our homestudy! I figured $5 wouldn't do too much damage to a person's pocket book this time of year, especially if you swaped it for a Starbucks just one day, but a small number in huge amounts can make big change! So if you are interested in helping us on our journey to adopt from Jamaica, then would you consider donating $5 to us today? We appreciate every penny!
Also, just a note that the chip-in amount shows how much we have raised just through that chip-in. Our first goal for the application was $800, which we reached after our garage sale, and our second amount, to begin the homestudy, is $2400, and we have already raised $1900 towards that amount! Our grand total of fundraising to date is $2700! We have been so blessed by everyone we know and we continue to thank you all for helping us along this journey, we just couldn't do it without all of you! Thanks everyone!
(Ps. if you want to read more about adoption, fostering and children waiting for a home check out our ministry page A Home for Every Child!)
Wednesday, December 7, 2011
Adoption: A Global Crisis
Currently there are more than 147 million orphans in our world today. Many of them reside in orphanages, foster homes, in mental institutions or on the street, living in extreme poverty. Despite these frightening statistics for this often ignored and marginalized group, most people still view adoption as a secondary choice when facing infertility, rather than a “humanitarian activity” (Roby and Ife 662) as it once was. Unfortunately though, children who remain in institutional care end up facing severe and unhealthy problems or are adopted by infertile couples and are often viewed simply as a product that meets the needs of wealthy purchasers in foreign countries who dream of fantasy children (McKelvey and Stevens 17). Although there is widespread corruption and unhealthy practices surrounding adoption, the well-being of orphans and children in need should be viewed as a social problem involving proactive solutions from society as a whole, rather than a supply and demand baby business for infertile parents-to-be.
Wikipedia defines adoption as a “process whereby a person assumes the parenting for another and, in so doing, permanently transfers all rights and responsibilities from the original parent or parents.” Once someone has decided to adopt, a person has several options. One of the most polular choices and sometimes even considered “trendy,” is international adoption. In 2004 the US adopted 22,884 children through international routes (Browne and Chou 2008). The majority of children who are adopted internationally come from orphanages or foster homes, with the exception of the United States, where newborn babies can be adopted directly from their birth parents in the hospital. International adoption, however, is extremely pricey, ranging from $15,000 to more than $50,000 and can sometimes take several years to get through the entire process.
The next option available to adoptive parents is domestic adoption. Domestic adoption is when a person adopts a child from their local area through a private agency, and usually involves a parent looking for a healthy newborn. Costs average around $10,000 in Canada for a domestic adoption, and the waiting game can vary anywhere from a day to virtually forever, due to the fact that adoptive families must wait until a birth mother and/or father chooses them. This is one of the most common routes for parents facing infertility who choose adoption as their next choice for building a family. There is, however, a large pool of adoptive parents waiting to be matched and a small pool of healthy infants being born that are then placed for adoption. A large reason for this downward trend in domestic adoptions is the fact that there is a “widespread availability of contraceptives and abortions” (Roby and Ife 662), meaning far less children are being born to birth mothers who do not want or cannot keep their infant.
Beyond the popular international and domestic adoption options lies the adoption of children in the foster care system. In Canada these children are known as Canada’s Waiting Children. The majority of children available through this route are usually three years old or older (up to the age of eighteen) and usually have some sort of special need; Fetal Alcohol Syndrome (FAS) ranking most common. These adoptions are free, with all costs covered by the government, and often include financal assistance afterwards; Known as post adoption assistance, help is provided for such things as speech therapy, special equiptment, specific assessments and supportive help. These adoptions are run through government agencies and operate on a matching system, reducing the waiting period for an adoptive family and child. Although this option is extremely accesible to the general public, it is one of the least utilized due to the special needs and traumatic pasts of the children in search of a home. Although FAS is one of the most prevelant special needs, they can also be included as special needs “because they are older, are members of a minority group, are members of a sibling group that must stay together or are in some way physically or mentally challenged” (McKelvey and Stevens 8). Special needs can also include infants that are drug exposed or HIV positive (8).
Where the problem lies in the adoption world is how many children are left unadopted and what ultimately becomes of them. Comparing the earlier statistic of
22, 884 children adopted internationally into the US in 2004 to that of the 147 million orphans in the world (including Canada and the US), the numbers just do not line up for children needing a forever family to children getting a forever family. Millions of children are instead left to be raised in foster homes or institutions such as orphanages, having a very poor quality of life.
In her report The Development of Romanian Orphanage Children Adopted to Canada, Elinor W. Ames conducted a “longitudinal study looking at children’s development over time” (2) from children adopted out of Romania in which 53% were adopted from orphanages, 33% from hospitals and 14% from private homes. She compared these numbers to “never institutionalized, non-adopted British Columbian children living with their birth parents” (5) as well as children who who had been adopted out of orphanages at an early age (under 4 months of institutionalization) and those who had spent at least 8 months in an institution (4).
Of the children studied in Ames’s report coming from Romanian orphanages, “75% of adoptive parents reported that their cihldren did not have enough to eat in the orphanage and 56% reported that their children did not have enough to drink […] and children younger than 1 ½ or 2 years old spent 18-20 hours a day lying quietly in their cribs (15). She continued to reveal that:
There was little for them to look at, and next to nothing to hear. Ames (1990), after oberserving for five hours in one orphanage unit for 15 children between 9 and 24 months of age, reported that there was a maximum of three children making noise at any one time. Even though all the children were awake, there were periods as long as five minutes where there was no sound at all. (Ames 15)
Furthermore Ames explains that social interactions were minimal, with children uninterested in reaching eachother, and when a child did touch another child, no response occurred (15). Ames’s research shows that 78% of the Romanian children adopted that resided in an orphanage for at least 8 months were delayed in 4 areas of development including: fine motor, gross motor, personal-social and language (18). By contrast, of those that were adopted before the 4 month mark, only 4% were delayed (19). Ultimately “time spent in an orphanage was positively related to the number of areas of delay” (23) and the “number of serious problems they had” (100) as a Romanian adoptee.
Children locally in the foster system face equally horrible outcomes. Coming up against social workers who are underpaid and overworkered as well as a shrinking pool of foster families who are qualified to care for their special needs (Mckelvey and Stevens 35), obstacle after obstacle is placed before these innocent children. As well, adoptive homes open to these children, especially those with special needs or of a minority group, are in short supply (36). In Canada there are more than 30,000 children waiting to be adopted out of foster care, and many more in the system waiting in limbo. In America, those numbers are even higher, reaching 423,773 in 2009, with almost 60% of them being part of a minority group (Adoption 2011). What is even worse is that of those staggeringly high statistics in the US, only 13% of the children in foster care are available for adoption (39), the rest are “suspended in a legal limbo by parents who make little effort to regain their children, but refuse to relinquish them fully” (39).
Foster children undergo their own range of issues, similar to those in foreign orphanges. An estimated 375,000 children in the American foster system have been exposed to prenatal drugs and alcohol and pay the price with developmental delays and low IQ (39). Beyond development delays, children in foster care also undergo abuse. Ironically the very homes that are set up to protect these children from a dangerous homelife, can often hand out the same damaging abuse, both physically and sexually (41). In Michael Harris’s Unholy Orders, he brings to light the horrifying case at Mount Cashel, where boys in a Newfoundland Catholic orphanage were being sexually and physically abused by their priests. Inside the orphange walls children were “dangled by their heels from a third story window […] and made to walk around the dorm stark naked” (34) as well as forced to engage in sexual relations with priests (218).
This startling information leaves the realization that adoption (among a great many other things) is vital in rescuing these children from such diar situations and that children living in institutions and foster care should be viewed as a social problem rather than merely a secondary option in family growing. Roughly 15% of women find themselves infertile. These women “want children-they crave children-but cannot produce them on their own” (Spar 1). In her book The Baby Business: How Money, Science, and Politics Drive the Commerce of Conception, Debora Spar reveals that in “2004 more than one million Americans underwent some form of fertility treatment, participating in what had become a nearly $3 billion industry” (3). Once a woman has “exhausted all other channels of child production” (160) many wander down the adoption route.
While there is nothing wrong with infertile couples choosing adoption, the problem arises when the only parents who are adopting are adoptive parents who are in the mind-set of purely building a family and wanting a healthy, normal child. This often “leads to a highly competitive market for healthy babies […] and domestic supply [is] not able to meet the demand in terms of quality or quantity” (Dickens 596-599). Demand for healthy infants can be so extreme that adoptive finders have been known to scour maternity wards offering cash to mothers (Roby and Ife 664). Of course there are healthy infants available for parents of this mind-set, however, since infertile couples looking for healthy infants make up the majority of parents in the adoption process, there are few people left to adopt the majority of children still waiting to be adopted: namely, the children with special needs.
The problem of waiting children, here in Canada, the US and around the world, needs to be addressed as a serious crisis. The astonishing 147 million orphans in our world today is a large number of children requiring homes and the much smaller percentage of infertile couples looking to adopt simply does not meet the current need. Governments need to step in and create a more accessible adoption process and increased education and awareness surrounding the need and addressing the two most common fears: finances and special needs.
One of the biggest hurdles families find when embarking on the adoption journey, in particular the international route is finances. With costs beginning around $15,000 and surpassing the $50,000 mark in some countries, many people feel they simply cannot afford to adopt. If governments covered the costs of international adoption, the same way they cover the costs of foster care adoption, more families would feel comfortable moving forward in the process. In addition, an increase in education on the various financial options currently available might ease some of the worry. Such options as grants, fundraising, adoption loans and tax credits are a few of the only options available to adoptive parents.
Education surrounding special needs is also extremely vital. Education would be best utilized if it was presented to high school and university students, the same way homelessness is currently being presented. Since this problem should be viewed as a social problem, it would not adequately address the problem if education was only directed towards those already in the adoption process. The goal would be to ultimately convince more people to adopt who had not previously considered it. Enlightening students as well as current prospective adoptive parents on the facts of special needs would give more people the confidence to move forward. Currently the average person knows very little about FAS, autism, severe trauma, cleft palates, or transracial child rearing. With the proper education, a well informed individual would know what to do and how to raise a child with such issues. Issues that may be challenging, but not impossible!
Once fears are broken down and education and government support is increased, only then can our society start to embark on a massive scale adoption plan, aimed at reaching out to the millions of children undergoing traumatic and unnecessary experiences in institutions and foster care around the world. The needy children of the world need to be viewed as a social problem, with adoption at the forefront of solutions and every day people leading the way. People need to alter their viewpoints, not seeing infertility as the only reason to adopt, and instead seeing a child, the future of our society, as the driving force behind any motivation to adopt.
Wikipedia defines adoption as a “process whereby a person assumes the parenting for another and, in so doing, permanently transfers all rights and responsibilities from the original parent or parents.” Once someone has decided to adopt, a person has several options. One of the most polular choices and sometimes even considered “trendy,” is international adoption. In 2004 the US adopted 22,884 children through international routes (Browne and Chou 2008). The majority of children who are adopted internationally come from orphanages or foster homes, with the exception of the United States, where newborn babies can be adopted directly from their birth parents in the hospital. International adoption, however, is extremely pricey, ranging from $15,000 to more than $50,000 and can sometimes take several years to get through the entire process.
The next option available to adoptive parents is domestic adoption. Domestic adoption is when a person adopts a child from their local area through a private agency, and usually involves a parent looking for a healthy newborn. Costs average around $10,000 in Canada for a domestic adoption, and the waiting game can vary anywhere from a day to virtually forever, due to the fact that adoptive families must wait until a birth mother and/or father chooses them. This is one of the most common routes for parents facing infertility who choose adoption as their next choice for building a family. There is, however, a large pool of adoptive parents waiting to be matched and a small pool of healthy infants being born that are then placed for adoption. A large reason for this downward trend in domestic adoptions is the fact that there is a “widespread availability of contraceptives and abortions” (Roby and Ife 662), meaning far less children are being born to birth mothers who do not want or cannot keep their infant.
Beyond the popular international and domestic adoption options lies the adoption of children in the foster care system. In Canada these children are known as Canada’s Waiting Children. The majority of children available through this route are usually three years old or older (up to the age of eighteen) and usually have some sort of special need; Fetal Alcohol Syndrome (FAS) ranking most common. These adoptions are free, with all costs covered by the government, and often include financal assistance afterwards; Known as post adoption assistance, help is provided for such things as speech therapy, special equiptment, specific assessments and supportive help. These adoptions are run through government agencies and operate on a matching system, reducing the waiting period for an adoptive family and child. Although this option is extremely accesible to the general public, it is one of the least utilized due to the special needs and traumatic pasts of the children in search of a home. Although FAS is one of the most prevelant special needs, they can also be included as special needs “because they are older, are members of a minority group, are members of a sibling group that must stay together or are in some way physically or mentally challenged” (McKelvey and Stevens 8). Special needs can also include infants that are drug exposed or HIV positive (8).
Where the problem lies in the adoption world is how many children are left unadopted and what ultimately becomes of them. Comparing the earlier statistic of
22, 884 children adopted internationally into the US in 2004 to that of the 147 million orphans in the world (including Canada and the US), the numbers just do not line up for children needing a forever family to children getting a forever family. Millions of children are instead left to be raised in foster homes or institutions such as orphanages, having a very poor quality of life.
In her report The Development of Romanian Orphanage Children Adopted to Canada, Elinor W. Ames conducted a “longitudinal study looking at children’s development over time” (2) from children adopted out of Romania in which 53% were adopted from orphanages, 33% from hospitals and 14% from private homes. She compared these numbers to “never institutionalized, non-adopted British Columbian children living with their birth parents” (5) as well as children who who had been adopted out of orphanages at an early age (under 4 months of institutionalization) and those who had spent at least 8 months in an institution (4).
Of the children studied in Ames’s report coming from Romanian orphanages, “75% of adoptive parents reported that their cihldren did not have enough to eat in the orphanage and 56% reported that their children did not have enough to drink […] and children younger than 1 ½ or 2 years old spent 18-20 hours a day lying quietly in their cribs (15). She continued to reveal that:
There was little for them to look at, and next to nothing to hear. Ames (1990), after oberserving for five hours in one orphanage unit for 15 children between 9 and 24 months of age, reported that there was a maximum of three children making noise at any one time. Even though all the children were awake, there were periods as long as five minutes where there was no sound at all. (Ames 15)
Furthermore Ames explains that social interactions were minimal, with children uninterested in reaching eachother, and when a child did touch another child, no response occurred (15). Ames’s research shows that 78% of the Romanian children adopted that resided in an orphanage for at least 8 months were delayed in 4 areas of development including: fine motor, gross motor, personal-social and language (18). By contrast, of those that were adopted before the 4 month mark, only 4% were delayed (19). Ultimately “time spent in an orphanage was positively related to the number of areas of delay” (23) and the “number of serious problems they had” (100) as a Romanian adoptee.
Children locally in the foster system face equally horrible outcomes. Coming up against social workers who are underpaid and overworkered as well as a shrinking pool of foster families who are qualified to care for their special needs (Mckelvey and Stevens 35), obstacle after obstacle is placed before these innocent children. As well, adoptive homes open to these children, especially those with special needs or of a minority group, are in short supply (36). In Canada there are more than 30,000 children waiting to be adopted out of foster care, and many more in the system waiting in limbo. In America, those numbers are even higher, reaching 423,773 in 2009, with almost 60% of them being part of a minority group (Adoption 2011). What is even worse is that of those staggeringly high statistics in the US, only 13% of the children in foster care are available for adoption (39), the rest are “suspended in a legal limbo by parents who make little effort to regain their children, but refuse to relinquish them fully” (39).
Foster children undergo their own range of issues, similar to those in foreign orphanges. An estimated 375,000 children in the American foster system have been exposed to prenatal drugs and alcohol and pay the price with developmental delays and low IQ (39). Beyond development delays, children in foster care also undergo abuse. Ironically the very homes that are set up to protect these children from a dangerous homelife, can often hand out the same damaging abuse, both physically and sexually (41). In Michael Harris’s Unholy Orders, he brings to light the horrifying case at Mount Cashel, where boys in a Newfoundland Catholic orphanage were being sexually and physically abused by their priests. Inside the orphange walls children were “dangled by their heels from a third story window […] and made to walk around the dorm stark naked” (34) as well as forced to engage in sexual relations with priests (218).
This startling information leaves the realization that adoption (among a great many other things) is vital in rescuing these children from such diar situations and that children living in institutions and foster care should be viewed as a social problem rather than merely a secondary option in family growing. Roughly 15% of women find themselves infertile. These women “want children-they crave children-but cannot produce them on their own” (Spar 1). In her book The Baby Business: How Money, Science, and Politics Drive the Commerce of Conception, Debora Spar reveals that in “2004 more than one million Americans underwent some form of fertility treatment, participating in what had become a nearly $3 billion industry” (3). Once a woman has “exhausted all other channels of child production” (160) many wander down the adoption route.
While there is nothing wrong with infertile couples choosing adoption, the problem arises when the only parents who are adopting are adoptive parents who are in the mind-set of purely building a family and wanting a healthy, normal child. This often “leads to a highly competitive market for healthy babies […] and domestic supply [is] not able to meet the demand in terms of quality or quantity” (Dickens 596-599). Demand for healthy infants can be so extreme that adoptive finders have been known to scour maternity wards offering cash to mothers (Roby and Ife 664). Of course there are healthy infants available for parents of this mind-set, however, since infertile couples looking for healthy infants make up the majority of parents in the adoption process, there are few people left to adopt the majority of children still waiting to be adopted: namely, the children with special needs.
The problem of waiting children, here in Canada, the US and around the world, needs to be addressed as a serious crisis. The astonishing 147 million orphans in our world today is a large number of children requiring homes and the much smaller percentage of infertile couples looking to adopt simply does not meet the current need. Governments need to step in and create a more accessible adoption process and increased education and awareness surrounding the need and addressing the two most common fears: finances and special needs.
One of the biggest hurdles families find when embarking on the adoption journey, in particular the international route is finances. With costs beginning around $15,000 and surpassing the $50,000 mark in some countries, many people feel they simply cannot afford to adopt. If governments covered the costs of international adoption, the same way they cover the costs of foster care adoption, more families would feel comfortable moving forward in the process. In addition, an increase in education on the various financial options currently available might ease some of the worry. Such options as grants, fundraising, adoption loans and tax credits are a few of the only options available to adoptive parents.
Education surrounding special needs is also extremely vital. Education would be best utilized if it was presented to high school and university students, the same way homelessness is currently being presented. Since this problem should be viewed as a social problem, it would not adequately address the problem if education was only directed towards those already in the adoption process. The goal would be to ultimately convince more people to adopt who had not previously considered it. Enlightening students as well as current prospective adoptive parents on the facts of special needs would give more people the confidence to move forward. Currently the average person knows very little about FAS, autism, severe trauma, cleft palates, or transracial child rearing. With the proper education, a well informed individual would know what to do and how to raise a child with such issues. Issues that may be challenging, but not impossible!
Once fears are broken down and education and government support is increased, only then can our society start to embark on a massive scale adoption plan, aimed at reaching out to the millions of children undergoing traumatic and unnecessary experiences in institutions and foster care around the world. The needy children of the world need to be viewed as a social problem, with adoption at the forefront of solutions and every day people leading the way. People need to alter their viewpoints, not seeing infertility as the only reason to adopt, and instead seeing a child, the future of our society, as the driving force behind any motivation to adopt.
Monday, November 28, 2011
Long time coming!
Daniel and I first adopted 6 years ago. Since then we have adopted 3 more times, most of our children having special needs. This has resulted in us being different than most people we know for two reasons: the first having a child (or children) with special needs, something that often leaves you feeling alone. The second, is having children who are adopted. Not only because of some of the unique situations you go through because of it, but also because of the fact that no one else seems to understand, or have the same passion as you.
September this year all of that has changed, so I felt I just had to write a post about it. Maybe others have been feeling the same way? In September, we started our first adoption support group. We knew there was a lack of support in the Christian circle. Of course there are supports out there for adoption, but it is a different world. We saw a need and thought we would help. What I didn't know, was how much it would help ME! We have only met a few times, and I can honestly say I want to be friends with these people for the rest of my life. It is like I have finally opened the curtain to a new way of living. I never quite realized how important it is to have other people in your life who care about the same things and who truly understand the trials and blessings you might experience! Not everyone in our group has adopted yet. Some are still in the process, some are getting ready to begin in the near future, others have already adopted once or twice. But somehow, it is exactly what I needed. It sparks a new fire in me to continue with things, knowing I am not always alone in my quests. When we first were in our adoption training 6 years ago, I remember thinking how I wouldn't need a group like that. I would be able to parent my children on my own just fine. But that is not what it is about. I still can parent just fine on my own. But now, when I am having a hard week waiting to hear back from an agency, or we have company over and my kids seem like they were fed mexican juimping beans for dinner, I know these people will understand. I know I will have someone to call and rejoice with when a package of papers is received in a new country. I am so thankful for this new group, and blessed beyond words to have these new and wonderful people in my life. Thank you Adoption Support Group!!
September this year all of that has changed, so I felt I just had to write a post about it. Maybe others have been feeling the same way? In September, we started our first adoption support group. We knew there was a lack of support in the Christian circle. Of course there are supports out there for adoption, but it is a different world. We saw a need and thought we would help. What I didn't know, was how much it would help ME! We have only met a few times, and I can honestly say I want to be friends with these people for the rest of my life. It is like I have finally opened the curtain to a new way of living. I never quite realized how important it is to have other people in your life who care about the same things and who truly understand the trials and blessings you might experience! Not everyone in our group has adopted yet. Some are still in the process, some are getting ready to begin in the near future, others have already adopted once or twice. But somehow, it is exactly what I needed. It sparks a new fire in me to continue with things, knowing I am not always alone in my quests. When we first were in our adoption training 6 years ago, I remember thinking how I wouldn't need a group like that. I would be able to parent my children on my own just fine. But that is not what it is about. I still can parent just fine on my own. But now, when I am having a hard week waiting to hear back from an agency, or we have company over and my kids seem like they were fed mexican juimping beans for dinner, I know these people will understand. I know I will have someone to call and rejoice with when a package of papers is received in a new country. I am so thankful for this new group, and blessed beyond words to have these new and wonderful people in my life. Thank you Adoption Support Group!!
Tuesday, November 8, 2011
Movie Night
It is true what they say: The toirtoise wins the race. Fundraising can definitely seem like watching water boil sometimes, but I know God has a plan and in the end the money will come through. This past weekend we held our movie fundraiser at a local theatre. Originally the rental was only going to be $150, then we sell the tickets at whatever price we like and get to keep the profit. However, later we found out that unless you use the movie currently playing that week, the rental is actually $300 (which we weren't because it was inappropriate). I had heard of other adoptive families in our area do the same fundraiser and make $3000! I was having a hard enough time finding enough people to come to cover the $150 cost! I was worried! So Daniel and I started to pray for a miracle. A packed house. It was days before the movie fundraiser was going to happen, and still very few people were coming. In the end, not only did enough people come to cover the rental cost, but enough people came to make a bit of a profit too. Plus, some unexpected supporters came out, which helped with morale :) In the end we walked away with $250, far more then what I was expecting. Was it the $3000 we had heard of others making? No. But it was one step closer to our final goal of $15,000. Little by little I know we will get there, in His time, not ours. Plus I think this will be great for our ministry (we support others going through the process, providing awareness, information and support). We will be able to show others how to fundraise their money, and not give up when things are slow, or times are tough. In fact, today a friend of mine asked if I wanted to sell my Ugandan jewellery at one of her Norwex parties! It was a huge blessing and I am excited to see where the jewellery business goes. I have 3 parties currently booked for this month, and once the product gets here I am heading out to stores and boutiques to try and get them on their shelves! Who knew fundraising could be a part-time job? I just wanted to post this as a reminder; sometimes miracles aren't big and grand. Sometimes they are the tiny things that remind us God is listening and in control, and that ultimately He will take care of our needs, and the needs of His children.
An update on our fundraising so far: Our goal is $15,000 (Canadian fees, and 3 trips to Jamaica)
Currently we have raised $2511.00! Inching closer! Our homestudy begins in April, which we need another $800 for, and then our dossier can be sent out by July! (another $3000). So in the meantime we will keep chugging away! If you would like to help we would LOVE and APPRECIATE your help! We have added a handy chip-in online donation feature on the right hand side of our blog. All it takes is 124 people donating $100, or $20 a month for 5 months. That doesn't seem too impossible! (Although we are a family that loves the impossible!)
Anyhoo, time to finish some homework (towards my quest for slowly becoming a social worker)!
Until next time!!!
An update on our fundraising so far: Our goal is $15,000 (Canadian fees, and 3 trips to Jamaica)
Currently we have raised $2511.00! Inching closer! Our homestudy begins in April, which we need another $800 for, and then our dossier can be sent out by July! (another $3000). So in the meantime we will keep chugging away! If you would like to help we would LOVE and APPRECIATE your help! We have added a handy chip-in online donation feature on the right hand side of our blog. All it takes is 124 people donating $100, or $20 a month for 5 months. That doesn't seem too impossible! (Although we are a family that loves the impossible!)
Anyhoo, time to finish some homework (towards my quest for slowly becoming a social worker)!
Until next time!!!
Saturday, November 5, 2011
The Waiting Game
Sometimes I feel the waiting game is one of the hardest parts of the adoption process. I mean fundraising - you can work harder, country problems - make a few more phone calls, but waiting....what can be done about waiting? I am reading a really good book right now called "When the Heart Waits" by Sue Monk Kidd. Its an amazing book with great analogies, ideas, and I find it really does help with all the waiting. But there are still days. Days that I don't read that book. Days that I don't think about God's timing, but instead think about my own. Even days that I know it is all in God's timing, but it is still hard. Those days can be challenging. Right now we are in the waiting game for our Jamaican adoption. In Canada, there is a required year wait between adoptions so that the child you have adopted has time to bond and form an attachment to you before you bring another child into your home. I think that is a great idea. Just not for me :) You're probably thinking I am impatient (and perhaps I am). But there is a reason! You see, Chloe, the one whom we just adopted in July of 2011, was first our foster daughter whom we have had since birth. She is now almost 3 years old, way past the required year of bonding. So we have to wait until April to even start the homestudy (we had to beg to get it started thats soon), then are allowed to send our dossier by July of 2012 (if our homestudy is completed by then) then wait for everything to go through the Jamaican court system. Adoption there can take up to 2 years or even more, so sometimes...when I think about all the waiting...I get frustrated. Especially when you know kids are waiting around in orphanages. I know I shouldn't let me mind go there, but it is true. For example, if we adopted a 4 year old, who potentially was in the orphanage since birth, our child is spending all these additional years in an orphanage, while we are just over here waiting! It drives me crazy sometimes thinking about it! But that is just me. Playing the waiting game. I know God has a time, a reason, and a purpose for everything, and I try to remind myself of that every day. We still have a long way to go in fundraising as well. Even if we wanted to, we couldn't move on to the next stage at this point anyways. But the time will come, and thinking about it excites me! Well that is my post for today. Kind of silly, a bit of a vent, but most people who read it have been through or are going through the adoption process themselves and probably know what I am talking about...haha I hope!
Thursday, October 27, 2011
Just a thought...
The last few weeks I have been trying to rack my brain on how to fundraise for our upcoming Jamaican adoption. So far our fundraising has not been as fast as I had hoped...I am sure the keyword there is "I," Im sure God has a specific timing and will make all the funds available when the time is needed! In the meantime, I wanted to figure out how I could raise more money through people outside of my friends and family. I don't know about the rest of you, but I find it incredibly hard to continually always ask my friends and family for money, or to come and pay a lot of money to participate in yet another fundraiser. It is all I have known how to do so far though, so I keep doing it. But after coming across the 147millionorpans website, and seeing their unique ugandan recycled necklaces that they sell and provide to adoptive families at wholesale prices, it got me thinking. What if I could do something BIG with these necklaces? After all, they are recycled, something people are definietly in to today. They are also helping the women of Uganada afford to keep their children, rather than be forced to give them to orphanages for economic reasons. Not only are you helping an adoption, your helping another child AVOID adoption! Weird, but GREAT! So I havde decided to see if I can get these necklaces sold in stores and boutiques, maybe craft fairs as well. There are so many little shops and boutiques where I live, there just HAS to be some stores interested in selling these! This is just the beginning of my process. I am not a business person so I am not sure how this will go. I am going to seek advice from others who know more, and hopefully this will result in some major sucess! Anhyone out there who is business oriented and has any advice I am open ears!!Saturday, September 17, 2011
Our first family vacation!
Although it happened in August, I wanted to blog about our first family vacation. It was a huge endeavour for us and maybe it will remind me next year to bring a map :)
We were headed off for our first big camping trip with a bunch of families from our home group. It was a cute RV resort off the coast of Oregon, and we had opted to rent a cottage, rather than tenting it. Looking back, I am sooooo glad we did! In fact, I don’t think I will ever tent it again, I have officially been spoiled! Some of you may say “that’s not camping!” Haha fine, it is not camping then! But whatever you call it, it is the way to do it with 4 kids!
Our trip started out the usual way things start out in our family; me planning everything and assuming everything is going to work out perfectly! The camp site was suppose to be 7 driving hours away, so we figured we would leave early afternoon, stop in Seattle at The Cheesecake Factory (my favourite restaurant), then continue on and make it to our destination by 10:30pm that night, happily having our children sleep through the majority of the trip (7pm is their normal bedtime.) I am sure many of you are laughing at me for having such thoughts. I know. I don’t know why I always think it will be so simple!
Our first bump was leaving Langley an hour late. I didn’t think it that big of a deal originally, but boy did it add to the trip in the end! The border, something I forgot to account for, actually I always forget to account for border waits because I am a Nexus holder, added another hour to our trip. By the time we hit Seattle, much later than anticipated (we had hoped to be at the restaurant by 5pm) we hit major traffic. I am not sure if it was rush hour or construction, but it took forever just to get into downtown! We thankfully made it to our exit, drove a couple of blocks, and found our place quickly. There was no parking so we went to drive to the next street to look there. Trouble was, downtown Seattle has a bunch of one-way streets, so we couldn’t turn down the next one. Frantically deciding to go one more block, thinking it would be going the opposite direction, we found ourselves on some sort of one way road with no return. It ended up taking us from downtown Seattle to…well I am not even sure where it took us! It was some sort of Express or something. This is where things turned bad. I had not brought a map. When routing out our trip it was so many pages on google that I decided to just hand write all the directions. This would have worked fine, had we need steered off course!
So after driving around for what seemed like hours (It was actually somewhere between 1 and 2 hours) we eventually made it back to where we wanted to go. By this time it was 7:45pm, our children were tired and starving (we would have eaten fast food had we known where any was) and we were a tiny bit cranky. We made it into the restaurant only to find a half an hour wait. Ok. We had made it this far, we decided to just bite the bullet and wait. The waiting itself was rather interesting, as I almost lost Robby and Alaina, repeatedly, into the revolving door. Those are actually really dangerous! Finally, after what seemed like forever, we went and asked how much longer. Turns out, they had accidentally forgotten to write our names down. Blllaaahhhh!!! Haha yeah, I was a bit frustrated. They thankfully brought us right in, but the table had not been cleaned yet, so we tried to hold all 4 restless children still in the middle of the aisle while waiters carrying trays of food tried to rush past. I was positive one of my kids was going to knock them down!
Finally we sat down and enjoyed a wonderful meal. I am surprised my kids did so well! It was already 9:30pm when we left Seattle, and still had the bulk of our trip to go! We got back on to the highway and a micro second later felt like something was wrong again. The US is actually very annoying for this, all their exit signs are placed right at the exit, and there is no warning! Next thing we know, we are back off the highway again, somewhere near Safeco field, still with no map, and still with no clue how to return home. I suddenly remembered I had placed a cartoon map of downtown Seattle in my purse a couple weekends before at a girl’s weekend away. I prayed it was still there! Sure enough, it was, and we managed, after another long hour, to navigate ourselves back to our restaurant to try again. Finally, we made it out of Seattle, and the rest of the drive from Seattle to Portland went mostly without hiccup. Everyone but Mathieu had fallen asleep, although Robby and Chloe woke up hourly frantically screaming, then falling back asleep. Portland finally came though, and we got ready to take our exit towards the coast. Suddenly we realized the exit was closed due to construction. And it wasn’t just a simple exit, where you can take the next one, Portland was filled with so many loops and twists and overpasses and exits! What now?
I suggested we continue on another hour to Salem, where I had some written directions to our site, because of a day trip I had planned while there, and had included written directions in all my papers. Daniel thought we should pull over and get directions. I thought that might take more time, with all the mind boggling loops. Daniel decided to get off though, and what was almost an hour later we found our way to a gas station, somewhere off the highway, with nothing but a map of Portland, something that would not help us. By this time we were both rather grumpy, needless to say, and decided to just continue on to Salem.
We hit Salem by 1:30am. We were tired. Daniel had managed to down a 5 shot espresso in Portland, but I was barely hanging on. Then we realized we didn’t know what to do next. My hand written directions (I know great idea!) were from the Olive Garden, to our resort. Problem was, we didn’t know where the Olive Garden was, and Salem was way larger than we anticipated! We finally found a gas station, and inside, wait for it…was an Oregon map! Ahhhhhhh! We figured out how to get out of Salem and head towards Pacifc City, where we were headed, and went on our way.
About a half an hour outside of Salem, somewhere in the middle of the forest, we suddenly realized something. In our extreme tiredness, grumpiness, and just plane absent mindedness, we had forgotten to check our gas tank. Yeah. We were on E. I will point out, we own a massive Yukon XL, a gas guzzling beast! But we were in the middle of the woods! The 2 gas stations we even saw were closed! I was terrified we were going to run out of gas and then get eaten by bears. I have an unfounded fear of bears. We did, however, have enough sense to start praying. Finally, after hardly knowing where to go, almost getting lost again, and more than an hour of driving below E, we made it to our campsite! I know we made it there only by the Grace of God, as our tank usually can go through $20 in 30 minutes worth od driving! Thank you Lord!! By this time it was 3:30 in the morning. We unloaded the kids and our truck, and finally lay down to go to sleep!
Despite our interesting and challenging road trip down, the rest of our vacation went amazingly! The kids had so much fun playing with all their friends (there were more than 20 kids from our home group) and we enjoyed visiting as well. It was the first time any of us had been away from home for so long (even our honeymoon was only 2 days) and it felt good to just relax! The kids enjoyed splashing in the ocean, skim boarding in the puddles, and sand boarding down the giant dunes. Back at camp they rode bikes around the site and ran around the playground. It was wonderful. At night we played board games and chatted with friends. Just thinking about it makes me want to go back! There is something so wonderful about getting to just play with your family all day. To have your husband home and have no to-do lists. No housekeeping to take care. Just good old fashioned quality family time!
While there were 2 more incidents of getting lost while driving, the rest of the trip went perfectly, and before we knew it we were heading home! We stopped off at the outlet malls for some back to school shopping and eventually made it back to Canada all in one piece. We did manage to bring home half the beach though :) Despite how crazy our road trip experience was, I am still pondering driving down to Disneyland with the kids next summer, haha what do you think?
We were headed off for our first big camping trip with a bunch of families from our home group. It was a cute RV resort off the coast of Oregon, and we had opted to rent a cottage, rather than tenting it. Looking back, I am sooooo glad we did! In fact, I don’t think I will ever tent it again, I have officially been spoiled! Some of you may say “that’s not camping!” Haha fine, it is not camping then! But whatever you call it, it is the way to do it with 4 kids!
Our trip started out the usual way things start out in our family; me planning everything and assuming everything is going to work out perfectly! The camp site was suppose to be 7 driving hours away, so we figured we would leave early afternoon, stop in Seattle at The Cheesecake Factory (my favourite restaurant), then continue on and make it to our destination by 10:30pm that night, happily having our children sleep through the majority of the trip (7pm is their normal bedtime.) I am sure many of you are laughing at me for having such thoughts. I know. I don’t know why I always think it will be so simple!
So after driving around for what seemed like hours (It was actually somewhere between 1 and 2 hours) we eventually made it back to where we wanted to go. By this time it was 7:45pm, our children were tired and starving (we would have eaten fast food had we known where any was) and we were a tiny bit cranky. We made it into the restaurant only to find a half an hour wait. Ok. We had made it this far, we decided to just bite the bullet and wait. The waiting itself was rather interesting, as I almost lost Robby and Alaina, repeatedly, into the revolving door. Those are actually really dangerous! Finally, after what seemed like forever, we went and asked how much longer. Turns out, they had accidentally forgotten to write our names down. Blllaaahhhh!!! Haha yeah, I was a bit frustrated. They thankfully brought us right in, but the table had not been cleaned yet, so we tried to hold all 4 restless children still in the middle of the aisle while waiters carrying trays of food tried to rush past. I was positive one of my kids was going to knock them down!
Finally we sat down and enjoyed a wonderful meal. I am surprised my kids did so well! It was already 9:30pm when we left Seattle, and still had the bulk of our trip to go! We got back on to the highway and a micro second later felt like something was wrong again. The US is actually very annoying for this, all their exit signs are placed right at the exit, and there is no warning! Next thing we know, we are back off the highway again, somewhere near Safeco field, still with no map, and still with no clue how to return home. I suddenly remembered I had placed a cartoon map of downtown Seattle in my purse a couple weekends before at a girl’s weekend away. I prayed it was still there! Sure enough, it was, and we managed, after another long hour, to navigate ourselves back to our restaurant to try again. Finally, we made it out of Seattle, and the rest of the drive from Seattle to Portland went mostly without hiccup. Everyone but Mathieu had fallen asleep, although Robby and Chloe woke up hourly frantically screaming, then falling back asleep. Portland finally came though, and we got ready to take our exit towards the coast. Suddenly we realized the exit was closed due to construction. And it wasn’t just a simple exit, where you can take the next one, Portland was filled with so many loops and twists and overpasses and exits! What now?
I suggested we continue on another hour to Salem, where I had some written directions to our site, because of a day trip I had planned while there, and had included written directions in all my papers. Daniel thought we should pull over and get directions. I thought that might take more time, with all the mind boggling loops. Daniel decided to get off though, and what was almost an hour later we found our way to a gas station, somewhere off the highway, with nothing but a map of Portland, something that would not help us. By this time we were both rather grumpy, needless to say, and decided to just continue on to Salem.
We hit Salem by 1:30am. We were tired. Daniel had managed to down a 5 shot espresso in Portland, but I was barely hanging on. Then we realized we didn’t know what to do next. My hand written directions (I know great idea!) were from the Olive Garden, to our resort. Problem was, we didn’t know where the Olive Garden was, and Salem was way larger than we anticipated! We finally found a gas station, and inside, wait for it…was an Oregon map! Ahhhhhhh! We figured out how to get out of Salem and head towards Pacifc City, where we were headed, and went on our way.
About a half an hour outside of Salem, somewhere in the middle of the forest, we suddenly realized something. In our extreme tiredness, grumpiness, and just plane absent mindedness, we had forgotten to check our gas tank. Yeah. We were on E. I will point out, we own a massive Yukon XL, a gas guzzling beast! But we were in the middle of the woods! The 2 gas stations we even saw were closed! I was terrified we were going to run out of gas and then get eaten by bears. I have an unfounded fear of bears. We did, however, have enough sense to start praying. Finally, after hardly knowing where to go, almost getting lost again, and more than an hour of driving below E, we made it to our campsite! I know we made it there only by the Grace of God, as our tank usually can go through $20 in 30 minutes worth od driving! Thank you Lord!! By this time it was 3:30 in the morning. We unloaded the kids and our truck, and finally lay down to go to sleep!
Despite our interesting and challenging road trip down, the rest of our vacation went amazingly! The kids had so much fun playing with all their friends (there were more than 20 kids from our home group) and we enjoyed visiting as well. It was the first time any of us had been away from home for so long (even our honeymoon was only 2 days) and it felt good to just relax! The kids enjoyed splashing in the ocean, skim boarding in the puddles, and sand boarding down the giant dunes. Back at camp they rode bikes around the site and ran around the playground. It was wonderful. At night we played board games and chatted with friends. Just thinking about it makes me want to go back! There is something so wonderful about getting to just play with your family all day. To have your husband home and have no to-do lists. No housekeeping to take care. Just good old fashioned quality family time!
Thursday, September 15, 2011
Fundraising now online!
Hi everyone! As many of you may know, Daniel and I are currently in the process of doing our 5th adoption, but this time through Jamaica! We can't start the home study portion until April 2012 (we had to wait 9 months from when our last adoption went through) so we are now in the fundraising portion! Jamaica, thankfully, does not charge any fees, which makes this much cheaper than other countries. We are basically raising money for the Canadian agency fees and travel expenses. If you are interested in helping out we now have this handy online feature, and we appreciate all the help we can get! Thanks everyone, and I will be posting more about our newest adoption journey in coming days! Although the counter says we haven\t raised any funds yet, at least not through this online feauture, we have currently raised more than $1500! Thanks to everyone that has continued to help us, and don't forget, for those that are local we are still collecting bottles!
Friday, August 19, 2011
The first one...
I know, what a dorky title, haha but it is not the beginning of our lives...not the beginning our kids...really just the beginning of blogging our tales...so the first one it was!
I have decided to start blogging! I currently have a website for our ministry, (http://www.ahomeforeverychildbc.ca/) but the articles on there are more general and geared towards people looking for information on adpotion and or fostering. I thought I would start a blog detailing our crazy adventures! Afterall, we are busy raising 4 kids with special needs, adoption left right and centre, soon onto number 5, and trying to run a ministry aimed at bringing awareness about the plight of the orphan! But mostly, detailing the lives of raising 4 adopted children with special needs. I know for myself, I always find it encouraging when I read someone else's blog and realize I am not alone in something, or get really helpful information on how someone else did something that worked. Especially with adoption and special needs, I often feel alone, with no one who really understands what I am going through. So there it is! Our life is definitely crazy, always has been, so hopefully somewhere along the way it will encourage someone out there, that your not the only one on life's crazy journey!!
I have decided to start blogging! I currently have a website for our ministry, (http://www.ahomeforeverychildbc.ca/) but the articles on there are more general and geared towards people looking for information on adpotion and or fostering. I thought I would start a blog detailing our crazy adventures! Afterall, we are busy raising 4 kids with special needs, adoption left right and centre, soon onto number 5, and trying to run a ministry aimed at bringing awareness about the plight of the orphan! But mostly, detailing the lives of raising 4 adopted children with special needs. I know for myself, I always find it encouraging when I read someone else's blog and realize I am not alone in something, or get really helpful information on how someone else did something that worked. Especially with adoption and special needs, I often feel alone, with no one who really understands what I am going through. So there it is! Our life is definitely crazy, always has been, so hopefully somewhere along the way it will encourage someone out there, that your not the only one on life's crazy journey!!
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