Updates

First, an update on our adoption process. We had our second home visit on Tuesday! After reviewing our entire lives, the social worker is still okay with us adopting. Next step: a lot more paperwork. Luckily, DH and I enjoy paperwork more than most. We still need to find the time to do it, though.

Remember sweet Vanessa?

She has a new picture!



Vanessa has had surgery to help her heart. The surgery was a success, but she may need another still. Good news for Vanessa, but the best news would be a family of her own--keep praying for Vanessa!

More good news--
Older children on Reece's Rainbow can now have money in their grant funds!

Dakota is 8 and needs a family very badly. I blogged about him before.


Dakota and other children can now receive grant funds, so if you felt led to give to him before but did not because the money would not go to him directly, now you can give. Please keep praying for Dakota!

Feel free to look back at all the kids I've posted before. They are growing and changing... and they still don't have families. Josie, Heaven, Valentin, and Teri Lyn have families; the rest are still waiting. Maybe you glanced over my quick post on Maeve. Maybe you weren't following yet when I blogged about Sammy. But save the four who were found, every child I have asked you to consider is still waiting. None of them is the child I'm hoping to adopt. The Church--and anyone else who recognizes the value of a little person others call imperfect--needs to step up and make sure these children have families.

A little girl who lost her family

A family had been in process to adopt Victoria, a 6-year-old girl with Down Syndrome, but they were not able to complete the process.


Victoria is lovely and it seems she is still in a place where she is very loved.

Victoria has a grant of nearly $20,000, and the family who could not adopt her is committed to helping her new family fundraise. There's still a ways to go, as Victoria's region is more expensive (around $40,000), but that's still an impressive grant.


Do you think you could be Victoria's family?

Heaven have recently found a family! I advocated for her just last week, and she was only recently listed. If only all these little ones had so short a stay in the photolistings.

There are good orphanages

Not all orphanages are bad. In many, many orphanages, children are loved and taken care of. They are allowed to grow their hair out. They have relationships with each other and their caregivers. They have their diapers changed and they are certainly well fed, even if the diet is not always diverse. Please don't think all children in Eastern European orphanages have to live in poor conditions. Some do. Processes are in place to report and correct poor conditions when they are discovered, and hopefully this will help end them.

This is Heaven. She probably lives in a "good orphanage."



Heaven probably plays with toys. She is probably held sometimes. She probably is changed several times a day. She is certainly fed.

But she still doesn't have a family. Heaven doesn't know what "mommy" or "daddy" really means. She doesn't know what it's like to have a family. She doesn't know what it's like to be held whenever she's scared, to have her needs met when she cries out, or to make choices about her day. She doesn't know what it's like to have someone she can rely on every day to meet her needs, without vacations or employment changes--and even if she does, all that will be torn away when she's transferred. She was born the same year as my son, so she's one or two. A good orphanage is so much better than a bad orphanage... but it's still an orphanage, and Heaven needs a home.