Missing Someone You Never Met

Some people will tell you it's impossible.  In order to miss someone, or something, you have to have had it to begin with.  You can't miss someone you never knew.  You can't miss what never had the chance to be.

But they're wrong, because I do.

Instead of missing what was, you miss what could have been.  And at times, it tears your heart just as much. I've lost loved ones... I spoke of many of them in my recent post about grief.  But the type of grief I'm feeling tonight is that first type... the loss of someone you never really got a chance to know.

I'm lucky to be a member of the Reece's Rainbow community, where children and adults with special needs are valued and treasured for the people they are.  Where people have not only children, but brothers and sisters, nieces and nephews, uncles and aunts, friends... with special needs... with down syndrome.  Last month I was priviledged to be present at our local Buddy Walk, a one-of-a-kind event raising awareness and pooling together resources for the Down Syndrome community.

A group of adults and kids dancing on stage at the buddy walk.

I read about these beloved family members and friends, and how their genuine love and care for others lasts their whole lives long.  They rarely become jaded and angry like so many of the rest of us do... their smiling eyes bring joy to their families for years on end.  Sure, there are challenges for a person with down syndrome as they grow older... challenges we all face, and challenges related to down syndrome... but the most important thing is that they live.  And I don't just mean that they inhale and exhale like we all do.  Look at those three dancing on that stage.  They're really living!  How many people do you know who would get up on a stage in at an event with thousands of people and sing and dance with all they've got?

Later, in fact, more people joined these three on stage, and a crowd formed to watch them.

Thick enough with people that I could barely see them

What a wonderful day, what a wonderful event, for special people.

And yet... as I behold this joy and learn the stories of more and more adults with down syndrome... my thoughts always return to the one I'm missing.  The one who never got to go to a buddy walk and dance on the stage (although I'm sure if you ask my mom she'll let you know he was an entertainer in his own right)... the one I only have this one picture of to share (there are a few more but none uploaded to my computer, and there will never be enough...)

My Uncle Tony... how I miss him... his life ended far too soon forty years ago... when he was only ten years old.

I miss what could have been.  I often think what it would've been like to grow up with him around.  He would have been around 27 when I was born.  I bet we would've been friends.  No, I know we would've.

I remember being about four years old... I used to wake up early every morning when my mom got up to go to work... hours before my dad would wake up... and some mornings I would just beg, and beg, and beg to go to work with my mom.  And some mornings, she would give me a sippy cup full of my favorite juice and turn on wacky races and kiss my goodbye.  Other mornings, she would give in, get me dressed, and take me with her to the four-story building downtown where she worked.

My mom is a computer programmer.  She uses scores of programs that are referred to by acronyms... ABDs and CBAs and TYFs and DHCs and I completely made all those up because for the life of me I could never remember, let alone work on all those things.  As a child, I thought it was so funny, though, because when my mom's coworker, Dan, would come into her office to discuss an issue with her, they would stand there and discuss the ABD or whatever it was that day, and I would say, "Silly Dan, it's the ABC's!  Don't you know your alphabet?"  And bless his heart, Dan would humor me and pretend to sing the alphabet song and mess it up on purpose.  So I'd spend hours and hours on end with reams of old printer paper, my mom's highlighters, and a copious amount of staples, making him ABC books, 'so he could learn his ABC's'.  Then I'd hand them to him proudly and tell him to practice.  It's a childhood memory I recall fondly.

There was another man at my mom's office who was blind, and I just loved him because of the beautiful dalmatian he got to bring to work with him every day... but never once did I care that he was blind... because when you're four years old, people are people, not labels.  I imagine, if my Uncle Tony had lived long enough for me to meet him, I would've talked to him and treated him just like I did anyone else... and if I happened to discover, like silly Dan, that there was something he didn't know... I like to think we would have learned together.  I like to think I would've made him a 'book' of old printer paper and staples too.  And I just know he would have been delighted to have it... whatever ridiculous four-year-old creation it ended up being.

Yep.  We would've been friends.  I would've shared my M&Ms with him, even the blue ones (because it was him I thought of when they first came out... and they were my favorite, I never shared my blue ones!  Don't you know that blue things just taste better?), we would've sang songs and rhymes together... my mom's family can throw some lively parties but I just know if he were here he would be the life of every single one.

We would've been friends.

Some days, even as I smile to see the continuing joy that people with down syndrome so often carry throughout their lives, I feel sad because I miss someone I never met... I miss what could have been.

But on those days...

I remind myself that we'll just have that much more catching up to do in Heaven.

And there will be M&Ms... all the colors of Reece's Rainbow.

Why Should I Care?

This morning you got up.  The cat had coughed up a hairball on your rug... again.  When you went to make your pot of coffee, the figurative lifeblood you need to get through the day, the coffee maker sputtered and malfunctioned and left you with a handful of soggy grounds.  So you fumbled your way through your morning routine without it, figuring you could stop for a Pumpkin Spice Latte on the way to work.  Well, apparently everyone else's coffee makers malfunctioned this morning too, because the coffee line wrapped around the building... and you were already late from fiddling with the cat and the coffee maker.  Great, you think.  Great start to the day.

You work a long eight hours at a job you don't even like, just to make ends meet.  While you work you think about your kids... the ones who are in school or with the babysitter since you have to work.  You hate that you can't be the one with them... helping them with homework... patching up boo-boos.  But this pays and you have to put food on the table.  The economy is rough and your paycheck doesn't always stretch enough to meet your family's needs.  Some days, choosing to put gas in the car to get to work means waiting another week to fill your prescription.  Some days, taking your child to the doctor means going to bed with an empty stomach.

And when you come home from that job, the one that barely makes ends meet, it doesn't stop.  The kids are in a tizzy over whatever went on in their little worlds today, the stack of bills on the counter appears to be approaching a mile high, the cat STILL can't keep his food down (you know, that kibble you're paying out the ears for)... you're thinking, *please* don't let a vet visit be in our future... and by the time you sink into bed at night, you wonder if you'll even be able to get up and do it all again tomorrow.

And that's just the day-to-day.

What about the special cases?  The loss you're still grieving.  The three special needs children you already have.  The elderly parent you're caring for.  The medical struggles you're facing.  The broken heart you're nursing.  Make no mistake... times are tough, even in the USA.  We have more people, more expenses, fewer jobs, and fewer resources.  We've all been touched by the death or serious illness of someone we love.  It seems to get harder and harder to get services you need when you need them.  We're making less - and having to stretch it further.  And, don't you know, these's an election going on right now?  (Shocker, I know, right?)  An ELECTION!  The fate of the country is at stake.  What voters decide at the polls in November could decide the fate of BIG BIRD for crying out loud!  (okay, I admit it, that last one was a little sarcastic)

Don't we have enough on our plates?

And yet...

Across the ocean, Janna is in her crib in a lying room.  No matter which button you press, she won't be learning any letter of the week from a cartoon bird.

Daniel is in desperate need of medical treatment for his hydrocephalus... but he doesn't have a Mama or Daddy to skip dinner to take him to the doctor.  In fact... in his country, a doctor won't even see him.  He is considered a 'malformation'.  Less than human.  Not worth saving.

Joy is a teenager, rapidly approaching the age of 16 - if you have a son or daughter this same age, you probably know just how anxious they are to get that invaluable driver's permit as soon as they can.  But there won't be a driver's permit for Joy.  She will spend the rest of her life in a crib, rocking, biting her tongue, unless someone steps up to adopt her before she turns 16.

Brandie is in a horrible orphanage, one of the darkest of the dark, just lying there all day, every day... drinking through one of those horrible grated bottles - essentially a beer bottle filled with some sort of foul glorp with a nipple stretched over the top with a hole cut in it to let thicker liquids flow through.

Donovan

Kramer

Lilly

Ysabelle

Katrina

One thing seperates them from you and your children.  It's not space.  It's not their special needs.  It's not their age or race.  It's nothing they've done or failed to do.  It's not even money.



It's opportunity.



Because, despite what can sometimes feel like overwhelming odds, in the USA, or even in Canada or the U.K., opportunity is something we have.  And something these kids do not.  Not without you.

They face bleak futures.  Every one of them.

Some of them will die before they reach that un-adoptable age of 16.  They will succumb to starvation, malnutrition, neglect, illness, infection... without ever having known the love of a family.  I don't say this in effort to make you feel guilty - you no more chose your fate than they did - I say this only because it is the truth.

The ones who don't die... their fates will be decided by the authorities of their countries.  Most of them will go to mental institutions.  Please don't be mistaken here - I'm not talking about inpatient psychiatric care.  I'm talking about the type of warehousing of the mentally ill that was common in this country before the efforts of reformers like Dorthea Dix.  Most, if not all of them, will die in these institutions.

If, by some chance, one of these children manages to escape being labeled 'profoundly and permanently retarded' by the authorities, then, one day not long after their sixteenth birthday, they will be given a set of clothes, a rucksack, and a small amount of money.  An overwhelming majority of the girls will turn to prostitution or fall into sex slavery; the boys to lives of crime.



Opportunity.



Do you still wonder why you should care about these children, orphans with special needs halfway across the world?  Why you should sacrifice any of your time, money, or prayers for them?


Why?



Because... without you?  They don't have a chance.

And MORE Buttons!

Hooray!  Another pretty button for my pretty blog!

Allow me to introduce you to Cultivate Wines.  Then allow me to introduce you to their contest, The Give, which ironically has little if anything to do with wines.  One of thirty organizations nominated will receive a $50,000 grant at the end of October, and the next 5 organizations will receive a $10,000 grant.  Right now, Reece's Rainbow is neck and neck for first place!

It takes, maybe thirty seconds, two or three clicks, to vote for RR.  You can vote once a day.  and if we win... each of these ten children will receive a huge $5,000 bump to their grant, greatly increasing the probability that someone will be able to bring them home and make them an ORPHAN NO MORE!

Meet them here.

Then vote here.

Then share - ANYWHERE!

And, of course, enjoy my undying love and gratitude.  ;)

Blog MAKEOVER!

So, can anyone tell that I love COLOR?  The stars were pretty but it was too dark for my taste, and hard on my eyes reading that white font (and I'm 23, I'm supposed to actually have decent vision).  Plus, I was recently alerted to a new BUTTON (see right hand side of blog) promoting Angel Tree, a fundraiser Reece's Rainbow and orphan advocates put on every Christmas.  With a shiny new button, I HAD to fancy up my blog!  By the way, Angel Tree starts on November 1 - I will get into more detail later, but I am a warrior for Elden, the sweet little guy below, and it is my job to increase his grant by $1,000!  Sound impossible?  Nah - last year, every kid made it!

He's such a cutie... I can't help but wonder who *wouldn't* want to adopt this little treasure?  Stay tuned for more on angel tree... I have some exciting things planned!

Grief

This is something that's been on my mind a lot lately... and the funny thing is, as soon as I had, in my mind, a plan for my next few blog posts... this one just wouldn't leave me alone until I wrote it.  Sometimes things make you very acutely aware that GOD is doing the work here... we are just 'willing vessels' through which He can work.

So many people have been grieving lately, especially in the adoption corner of my world.  People have lost mothers, fathers, grandparents, aunts and uncles... on and on, I couldn't name them all if I tried, and this is only within the last few weeks or so.  And most heartbreakingly of all... some people have lost babies.  Sometimes they are babies they got to hold and love before they went home to Jesus.  Sometimes they are babies who just couldn't hang on any longer... leaving waiting families to mourn a child they never actually met.

And indeed grief has been a major player in my life in the past few years too.  I will be one of the first to tell you that it is HARD, and it just plain STINKS!

There are different kinds of loss.

There's the loss you feel when you lose someone you never really got a chance to know... like the loss I feel when I think about my Uncle Tony, my mom's little brother who passed from cardiac complications to down syndrome when he was ten years old.  That was forty years ago.  I never met him.  I know him only through pictures and stories.  But I still miss him.

'Little Tony' not too long before he died.

There's the loss you feel when you lose a grandparent... maybe the one that always snuck you an extra cookie, or the one who read you bedtime stories as a child, or the one who had the neatest old toys and puzzles, or the one with the lamest jokes (Sorry Grandpa T, you know it's true!) ...or the one who drove two and a half hours to help take care of you when you had the chicken pox for three weeks (also a true story).  You know they had long full lives and it's time for them to go, to move on to a better place... but it doesn't make you miss them any less.

My grandparents at their 50th anniversary

Then there's another loss... one that some people don't understand but is no less real... when you lose a pet... a furry little pal who had become like a member of your family.  I lost my one year old kitten suddenly at the end of July.  I still can't think about it without crying... it was so unfair, so sudden, he was just a baby and I loved him with all my heart... that wound is still fresh.

This was taken the day before he died.

And then there's another one... one that I have been struggling with for over a year... the grief when you lose someone you loved, someone who was a big part of your life... far too soon.  You watch horrible scenes you had never imagined living play out before your very eyes.  Sometimes it gets so dark that you're not sure the sun will ever come out again.  You sob.  You lean on loved ones.  You pray.  You sob some more... as I am doing as I type these very words.  These... these are the kinds of wounds that don't just heal.  They leave scars.  Big ones.  And sometimes, at the lightest provocation (the drop of a name, a place, a photo, a food, an activity)... the scab gets ripped off and the wound feels fresh again.  Like it was still just yesterday.  You ask God why.  Sometimes you get angry, and that's okay.  Sometimes you wonder how you'll ever manage to put one foot in front of the other and live your life in the absence of someone you loved so dearly.

My best friend Angie (left) and I (right) a few months before she died, on 7/15/11.

Losing her has been probably the single hardest thing I have ever been through.  The things I thought were life-altering and terrible as a child pale in comparison.  Bullied at school.  Parents divorce.  Loss of friendships.  None of it could touch the heartbreak of losing my best friend, my confidant, the one who was always there for me even when she had enough on her own plate.  We were there for each other.  I used to tell her sometimes that I felt bad for talking about my problems when she was so sick... and she'd reply "No, don't!  It helps me to help you."  And so it was.  We helped each other and ourselves through being there in thick and thin, until the very day she lost her more than five year battle with an aggressive pediatric cancer.

The first couple of days after she passed away, I was almost numb.  It was too much for me to process.  I all but shut down for a couple days.  Then the visitation and the funeral came.  I stood up to read a poem I'd written for Angie.  She'd asked me to when she knew she was going to die... she came to me and said "Will you read your poem at my funeral?"  Imagine hearing those words from your best friend.  "My funeral".  Those are not things 20-year-old women are supposed to think about.  I almost didn't cry while I was reading it.  Almost.  I only slipped up once, and then the numbness took over again.

But the weeks that followed the funeral were the absolute worst for me.  I had panic attacks, wondering how I could get by without my best friend.  I felt like the world expected me to be 'over it' or 'normal'... and I just wasn't yet.  I felt like everyone else wanted to tell me how to grieve.  I needed someone to tell me that it was okay to not be okay.  Everyone heals in their own time.  Fittingly enough, it was Angie's own words that were my greatest help through this time.  Before she'd passed away, she'd written us a letter and told her hospice nurse - no one else.  The day she died, the nurse asked us if we'd found it yet, and we hadn't, but we knew where to look... and there she had left us this beautiful document on her computer titled 'last letter'. I want to share a few of her comforting words with those of you who are also walking through the valley right now:

"So I want you to cry and hurt and yell and scream if you need to. But I don’t want you to cry forever. I want you to turn around when you’re ready and seize life with all you’ve got. I want you to remember, if anything, for my sake, that life goes on and you’re a precious part of it."

There are kinds of grief I haven't experienced.  I've never lost a child, before or after birth.  I've never lost a 'significant other'.  I thank God that I have never lost a parent... because I still very much need mine.  The list goes on - for as many people there are who grieve, there are that many kinds of grief.  None worse or better than the others... just different.  No two the same... like snowflakes.  If you think about it, why *would* we think that everyone grieves the same?  We're all different people, different personalities, different lives.

So my message tonight is really... to whoever you are... for whoever you're grieving... in whatever way you're doing it... you're doing it right.  And the sun does come out again, I promise.  That's not to say it will never storm again... but the sun will come back every time.  Regardless of your circumstances, it's okay not to be okay.

And in turn if you know someone who is grieving right now, even if you feel like you've said it a million times, please let them know that you're thinking of them, that you're sorry for their loss, and that you're available to help.  These comments come pouring out of the woodwork immediately after a loss, but after a while people start to 'go back to normal' and the person who is grieving is left, often at a terrible point in their grieving process, feeling more alone than ever.  Keep saying it.  I love you.  I'm here for you.  Please tell me if you need anything.

We can no more make grief 'go away' than we can make the moon and the stars and the sun go away.  But we can make it a little bit easier... by reaching out to one another.

One of my favorite quotes:

"We are, each of us, angels with only one wing, and we can only fly by embracing one another."  ~Luciano de Crescenzo

Badge of Honor

It is often said by Christians that the Enemy (Satan) rises up most mightily against us when he sees that we are on the path of righteousness.  When we are doing God's work, he will stop at nothing to defeat us.

And we all know that God calls us to care for the orphan, the least of these.

I have had a blog for 10 months now - which is now on private for personal reasons (and also dormant).  I only just began this blog a couple weeks ago.  The focus is not the same but very similar, the similar portion being orphan advocacy.

Over those ten months, I heard about and saw families being attacked by 'trolls'... some of our favorite people who make it their noble mission to come onto our blogs and tell us how terrible adoption is, usually by misstating facts and using the world's worst grammar.  (I don't know about you, but all my college professors were sure to tell me that the fast track to successful persuasion is through misstating facts and completely disregarding the rules of the English language.  Good to know I wasn't the only one that heard them.)

But the troll attacks never happened to me, and at first I was glad.

Then, I saw some people chatting one day, and saying that troll attacks are really no different from other ways that the Enemy tries to take us down.  Therefore, when these attacks occur, we should take it as a badge of honor, a marker that we are on the right path.

After that I was almost disappointed I'd never had a troll comment.  What was I doing wrong?  Perps I needed to step it up.  Or perhaps I just needed to be around longer.  I'm not really sure what makes a person so endearing to a troll.  I'd have guessed a foul odor and copious body hair, but I tried both of those to no avail.

Well at this point it's fairly evident what I've come here to say - that's right, my friends, I got my very first troll comment!  I try not to let ugly lies come out of my mouth (or flow from my fingers) so I won't be repeating what exactly was said, but rest assured it was woefully ignorant and factually incorrect, with a healthy dose of that famous bad grammar (they'd hate to disappoint).

All I want to say tonight is a big "THANK YOU!" to that troll whom I won't bother to name since s/he seems to have so many fake blogger profiles they go through names like the rest of us go through underwear (everyone knows that trolls are a species notorious for their poor underwear changing habits).  So whatever your actual name is, Sir-Trolls-A-Lot, thanks for letting me know I'm on the right track here.  Thanks for letting me know you're reading our posts.  Thanks for the increase in blog traffic that myself and others see when we make it known that you chose *us*.  Thanks for spending so much of your valuable time concerning yourself with what I write on the internet.  Thanks for the virtual badge of honor.  I shall wear it proudly.

Maybe You Can

Maybe you can pretend you never saw this face.

His name is Arthur.  He is eight years old.



Maybe you can pretend you didn't gasp when you saw this photo.

His name is Zulfira.  He lives in a mental institution because he has special needs.  He only just turned seven last month.



Maybe when you close your eyes to go to sleep at night, you don't see the children of one criminally negligent orphanage... starved until they, as teenagers, were the size of infants.

Thanks be to God, this one is home.

Maybe you weren't there to cry the day 'Lynnette' died.  Her real name was Tsveti.

She died alone.




Maybe, when you look at this picture, you see a spunky, happy girl.

Maybe you don't know she suffers deep psychological wounds from being abused.  Maybe you missed the part where she doesn't have a mommy to comfort her when she has bad dreams.





Maybe you can watch a group of happy children at the playground

And not think of Janna, still in a crib in a lying room, soaked in her own urine.





Maybe when you see this photo of Joy

You don't notice the bite marks on her tongue.

You don't notice that even though she's fifteen years old, she is confined to a crib.





Maybe you can click the little red X, tell yourself it's not your problem, and you could never make a difference anyway...

And forget Donovan is starving, his ribs showing through his shirt.





Maybe you can't tell that Julia is a little girl.

...and you don't want to think about why.








Maybe you can sleep at night without seeing these faces....

Ekaterina

Irina  

Katerina

Ksenia

Masha

Matvey

Enoch

...but I can't.  When I close my eyes... I see every one of these faces.  Maybe you can forget.  But I can't, and I won't.

New Blog, New Look, New Focus (Sort Of)

So due to some personal matters I have had to set my regular blog on private for now.  However it looks like it will be that way for at least a month, and with Angel Tree starting up and at least three major fundraisers on my hands, I simply could not be without an advocacy blog.  So - welcome to 'Crazy - Are We There Yet?'  The name comes from... well, my brain... but specifically from how I keep thinking, over the past few years... it's about to get better.  It's about to get better.  Just a couple more months and it will be better.  Notice I said I've been thinking that for a couple years.  Haha.

Then I realized it reflected some of our impatience with the adoption process - you fall in love with a child and you want to just - GO!  But you can't... something's holding you back.  Finally, you commit to a child and you want to just GO!  But you can't... first there are homestudies and fingerprints and USCIS clearances, and by the way, blogger really should develop an 'adoption people' dictionary, because I'm sick of having 'homestudy' and 'USCIS' and of course miscellaneous and various cities and institutions across EE marked as misspelled!  But I digress.  Finally, you clear all that mumbo jumbo and you're ready to just GO!  But... alas, the time has come to compile a dossier... compile, compile, compile... once you're done with that, you're sure that now, at last, it will be time to GO!  No.  Not yet.  Now it's a season of waiting... for approval, for your travel dates, for that blissful final day when you get to meet your child.  And then, of course, no matter where you're adopting from, there's more waiting before you can bring them home.  More paperwork that needs to be filed, more approvals you need to get.  And I'll bet you find yourself thinking... "Are we there YET????"

So it is with advocates too.  We see these children, we fall in love with them, we know we can't adopt them, so we scream and wait and scream and wait for them to be chosen... and then they finally are!  And we rejoice and whoop and holler and praise the Lord... and then we wait to find out who their families are when they appear on New Commitments   And then we wait WITH their families as they go through the process... every agonizing dollar of fundraising, asking - are they funded yet?  Are we there yet?  And sometimes - we think we're there... we see that big sign on the highway that says "DISNEY LAND, RIGHT LANE"... then we notice it says "400 miles ahead" in small letters below.  More fundraising.  More screaming.  Are we there YET?!?!?!

The one way we ARE there 'yet'... is if the place we're going... is CRAZY!  My first blog was called Call Me Crazy (because I knew everyone would, when, as a 22 year old single woman, I announced my future plans to adopt multiple special needs children internationally).  Well, if we're going CRAZY... yep, we're there ;)  In fact, I question whether I ever had to 'go' crazy at all... perhaps I started out there?

And there is the overly detailed story of the name of the new (probably temporary or secondary) blog.  Probably way more than you ever needed to know.  But hey, isn't every post I write novel-length?  I couldn't let you down now!

As for the new look - It's mostly the same, just a different background, some different colors.  I may play around with it a bit more.  I'm mostly happy with it, except this infuriating date stamp above every post seems to be some sort of shadowbox brown color... I've changed the color of everything I could think of under 'advanced options' and that little box seems to be in some sort of untouchable zone... daggone it, Blogger, don't you know that brown just does not go with the rest of the colors on my blog??  If anyone knows how to fix that stupid thing, I'd certainly be open to help.

As for the new focus - not much has changed, really.  Well, one big thing.  I'm going to continue screaming for orphans.  But I'm not sure I'm going to be able to continue my promise to highlight the kids who did not make it onto Angel Tree - at least not at the rate I had intended to do so.  It was stopping me from blogging about other things that God had laid upon my heart to write about - thinking - no, you haven't caught up with your project yet, you should do that first... and I felt uninspired and lacked the energy to do that, so I wound up posting nothing at all.  Posting nothing at all is not going to help anyone.  So I started to feel called to something that I wasn't sure I was quite ready for... something I didn't understand... a season of rest.  Through a good friend I began to accept that taking this time was okay and sometimes for the best.  For as easy as it is for me to charge ahead when God says 'GO', it is also that difficult for me to pause when God says 'Rest.'

So I have rested.  The series will continue, but perhaps at a less stringent rate than previously promised.  And, for a little good news, some of those sweeties who were on angel tree or narrowly missed angel tree... have found families!  Let me introduce you to the kids who WON'T be on Angel Tree this year, because instead, they are on My Family Found Me!

First, the kids who were chosen for angel tree, or would have been on angel tree, had their families not found them between the first day that voting for Angel Tree began, and now.

The very first was... MAXIM!  His family found him WHILE he was leading the voting for his category for a place on the Angel Tree!  Praise the Lord!

Then...  a cascade of children, some of whom would've been on the AT because of their age and diagnosis, and some who were voted onto the Angel Tree.  There are so many, I can't possibly write much besides their names... when possible their names are linked to their family's FSP with Reece's Rainbow in case you feel so inclined to donate.

Adalia

Annabeth

Colleen

Dorothy

Gerri

Kacey

Kaydee

Mabel

Melody

Michelle

Nico

Peyton

Vaughn

Victoria

Zofia

Micah

Then, today, to MUCH rejoicing... came...

DAYNA!

There are a few more kids who should be noted... kids I might have profiled, who were up for Angel Tree voting but didn't make the cut, who also found families.  Praise the Lord for those who have stepped forward to adopt these precious angels.  I know there are more than one, but until I can identify the rest of them, meet HEATHER!

Heather is TEN years old, and thank God a family is coming for her.

And then there are my special angels.  The ones from the orphanage where Katie Musser spent her first nine years.  The ones from the place that opened my eyes to the plight of special needs orphans across the world.  The ones I was going to profile when I had time and space.  These ones won't need to be profiled now... they have families coming for them.

A friend kicked us off with THREE more children on MFFM... a friend who JUST got home with FIVE new children... meet:

Carson

Presley (who I did profile at one point)

and

Thad

Soon followed:

Gage

and

Peyton

Remember Peyton?  In the past he was listed as Payton (with an A)... at the same time as Penny... and his file got sent back.  We thought hope had run out for him... until a family stepped forward.  Now they've received absolutely NO donations to their FSP since they stepped up for the little boy we all feared would languish in that horrid place, his file forever in a government black hole.  But they stepped up.  Can we show them a little appreciation please?  The early parts of the process can be daunting and expensive... a little encouragement - no matter how little - thrown in their FSP, would mean the world to them.

Oh, and just in case anyone is wondering... there are still kids waiting at this orphanage, or at the older child orphanage where many of them were transferred after the inhumane conditions at their baby house were discovered.  Those transferred to the older child orphanage are doing wonderfully with love and care and nourishment!



So with Angel Tree beginning, my focus will be the little boy who I have signed up as a Christmas Warrior for, and the other little boy who I love deeply whose Christmas Warrior is getting my help, like it or not!

My AT boy, Elden 14G... He is five years old and this is likely his last year for Angel Tree.

My friend's AT boy, Brett.  He turned eleven in August and was voted on the Angel Tree.

Any donation made to these boys after November 1 will go towards their goal of raising $1,000 each over the two months of Angel Tree.  I have been working with Brett's warrior to put together a series of auctions to benefit him and other children who might have been on the Angel Tree but did not make the cut.  I will also be working on a carnival fundraiser for the boys.  Then, I have a super secret *ultimate* fundraiser... which I'm not revealing until November 1... so stay tuned!

Angel Tree won't be the only focus of my blog.  I'm going back to blogging when I feel led to.  Some days I might feel led to blog about the children left off Angel Tree.  Some days I might feel led to blog about these two boys.  Some days I might be led to plead for a family in the process who is struggling to make ends meet and save a life at the same time.  Some days I might be led just to put my thoughts out there, whatever they may be.  Some days, I might read something or see something that I want to share with you.  The one big difference is that there will be no more posts solely about my personal life - there may be personal stories, photos, but for security reasons there won't be whole posts about what's going on in our world anymore.  I think this is for the best, since Angel Tree season is almost here.  Don't worry - you're not missing much!

So please... bear with me.  I haven't gone anywhere, I promise!  As long as there are orphans... I will be hollering about them.