In the Works

You may recall that I was impacted greatly in Haiti last spring. GREATLY. It changed my life forever in so many ways. All for the better. One of those ways was the huge eye opening experience that propelled me to become not only interested in adoption, but craving it, trying to soak in every word and experience about adoption that passes my way. A fervor for it that hasn't yet been restful.

I am an infamous "what's next" thinker. I have all the passion in the world for a few days and it slowly flickers out over a couple of weeks until I have left is "remember when I was totally into..." and hope for something new to take root. I'm so thankful that hasn't happened with adoption. If anything, I want it more now than I did when I stepped out of the orphanage and into the plane heading back to the US. I get emails from adoption agencies that I requested information from. There are pictures of children awaiting families in the emails, and every time I hit the delete button, I want to cry. I have, on occasion.

Because Dave and I don't feel we're ready to take that step just yet, I feel like I've been living vicariously through some friends of ours who are adopting from Haiti. They are adopting three children from the very orphanage we visited in Port au Prince. THREE! ALL AT ONCE! We couldn't be more thrilled for them. And not just any three kids. Two of the boys they're adopting, I have met! Frantz is a firecracker. He's got spunk and sweetness oozing out of him at all times.

Junior is every bit as sweet. He was afraid of my crutches and my walking boot, as far as I could tell. He would eye me every time I hobbled into a room he was in and would walk wide circles around me. The last day we were there, he sat by me outside and my heart was filled up with love for him. I was so happy that he had chosen to come to me, because I knew if I had approached him with my injury, he wouldn't have appreciated it. We tried to communicate through our language barrier. I muttered, "razè" and pointed to my foot and Junior nodded while reaching out to touch the black plastic boot. I had tried to learn the word for broken, because many people had asked if my leg was sick. I wanted to assure them that it would heal because they had seen so much from the January earthquake that would not heal.

And the oldest of the three siblings is Monique. Monique was still living on the streets when the Colsons made the decision to adopt Frantz and Junior. When the adoption ball began to roll, Monique came to live with her little brothers at the orphanage. Doesn't she look so fun and kind? I can't wait to meet her! Adoptions are not without cost. They can be very expensive.

I'm working on a coloring book to help the Colsons raise money for their adoption of these three beautiful children. Another idea that I had been dreaming up was a tote bags that we could make to sell as a fundraiser, too. Last night I finally finished up the first draft of the tote bag and I kind of love it.

I know that your heart for the Colsons, the orphanage, adoption, and Junior, Frantz, and Monique is not the same as my heart for those things. But I would like you to consider donating to their adoption fund. Can you imagine a better way to spend $5? $20? $1000? Hopefully soon we'll have coloring books and tote bags that you can purchase. All proceeds from those will go straight to the adoption costs. For now, you can just plain donate, or you can purchase a t-shirt and donate that way.

Here's the link to their blog where you can find donation information, the t-shirts that I designed, and information about the kids. http://colsonjams.blogspot.com/