These Are Days: By Request: "The Welcome Bag"

Wednesday, April 2, 2008

By Request: "The Welcome Bag"

Okie Dokie ... enough folks have asked about the Welcome Bag. I guess I should have explained that better.

AAI requests that each adoptive family puts together a Welcome Bag for their child (or children, whichever the case may be). The Welcome Bag is shipped to Ethiopia and given to the child and is what the orphanage Director uses to let the child know that they have a family. In the Welcome Bag we included:

A photo album of our immediate family, our home, his room, his bed, and fun activities that we do.
A customized t-shirt with a picture of our family on it. We also put "Tinsaye's family" above the picture. After he opens the bag, he will put on the t-shirt and this is how he announces to his friends that he has a family.
A disposable camera. The orphanage staff will take pictures of him opening his welcome bag and then he will be allowed to take whatever other pictures he wants on it. They will ship us the camera and we will develop the pictures. These will be a treasure, I am sure!
Two small gifts under $10. They limit the dollar amount to be respectful of children who are still waiting for families. And also, the orphanage staff cannot be responsible that these items will a) stay in one piece or b) come home with the child. The children often give their gifts with other children still waiting for families before leaving. I think that is precious! Anyway ... they gave us gift suggestions and I also heard that child's sunglasses are a big hit, so we chose to send a pair of Superman sunglasses (Drew picked those out!) and a die-cast car.
A letter from us. We wrote him a letter that told him how happy we are he's in our family and how much we love him already. We included a little picture of each of us and an introduction to each of us.
The girls also wrote/drew pictures for him and we included those as well.

We FedEx-ed the welcome bag and signed placement papers yesterday and I've been stalking ... I mean, tracking ... it all morning. Just to assuage your curiosity ... it is on the truck for delivery and should be there no later than ... 27 minutes from now! :-)

They will send it as soon as they can and then we can start sending letters to him with other traveling families as well.

1 comment:

Keeley said...: Blah! I spend way too much time laughing and crying at the same time whilst reading your blog. =) Thank you for telling us about the Welcome Bag. =); April 3, 2008 at 10:49 PM

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Why Ethiopia?

*Ethiopia is a beautiful landscape and a country rich in culture, history and heritage
*Ethiopia is an ancient Christian nation, named in the Bible as Axum
*As a culture, Ethiopians value their children and love them with a love that sometimes transcends our understanding
*One in ten children die before their first birthday
* One in six children die before their fifth birthday
* 44% of the population of Ethiopia is under 15 years old
* 60% of children in Ethiopia are stunted due to malnutrition
* The median age in Ethiopia is 17.8 years; the average life span is 37 years
* Half the children in Ethiopia will never attend school; 88% will never attend secondary school
* Ethiopia has the highest HIV/AIDS population in the world
* There are 4.8 million orphans in Ethiopia; 1.2 million children have been orphaned by AIDS alone
* Ethiopia’s doctor to children ratio is 1 to 24,000
* In the 1980's one million Ethiopians died of starvation
* Drought struck the country again from 2000-2002 (1st year no crops, 2nd year no seeds, 3rd year no animals)
* Only 24% of households have access to safe drinking water
* 82% of the population survives on less than 1 dollar a day
* Coffee prices (Ethiopia’s only major export) fell 40-60% from 1998-2002
* Per capita, Ethiopia receives less aid than any country in Africa
* In 1993, after 30 long years of war, Eritrea broke from Ethiopia and became an independent nation leaving Ethiopia landlocked without any major seafaring ports

(adapted from a Yahoo group web posting and Unicef-Ethiopia)

How Much Does Adoption Cost?

One of the most frequent questions we get is: "How much does adoption cost?"

Philosophically, the first answer to this question is that adoption, by its very nature, will have cost our child everything. Our child will have suffered more in his short life than we have ever, and, by God's grace, hopefully ever will. Our child, through the lens of three, four or perhaps five years of childhood, will have witnessed the death of his parents; will have perhaps been forced to wander the streets for food and shelter; will perhaps have been taken in by a stranger and then dropped in an orphanage where there is no familiar sound, smell or smile -- he will have experienced the kind of fear that causes you to close your eyes to shut out the desperate world around him. Adoption will have cost him everything.

I've heard several people comment that our child is so "lucky" to be adopted by our family or how "good" we are to be "doing this." I understand the heart of these comments -- and honestly, I think before I really started learning about children who have been orphaned, I probably would have had the same thoughts -- but when we stop to think about it, NO child is lucky to be adopted, because to be adopted one must first be orphaned.

What adoption is, however, is God's hand of love and grace and mercy on a child who, through no fault of their own, has lived in the depths of our fallen world where tragedy and death are realities. Adoption has nothing to do with US and it has everything to do with God. This is not a story of what WE are doing. It is a story of what GOD is doing. God loves this child SO much that He is giving him a second family. For reasons I do not necessarily understand, God has chosen us to be part of HIS plan for HIS child. As a result, God is putting HIS love in our hearts for HIS child. We will love him as our own. But he is not lucky and we are not good. We are, however, both loved beyond measure by our Father in Heaven and we are being used by Him to fulfill His perfect plan for us.

Now, before you get frustrated with me, I understand that most people are asking about our financial cost, however, and the answer to that question is: "a lot." :-) Since we are being very open about our Ethiopian adoption, I thought I would go ahead and outline how the fees are broken out:

Initial Application Fee: $200

Homestudy Fee: $1400 + $200 for the update we needed

Immigration Fees: $685

AAI Agency Fee: $2000

Ethiopia Country Fee: $6000 (for one child, 7-9 years old; $2000 is paid with dossier submission and $4000 is paid after the adoption is finalized in Ethiopian court)

Travel: $7522

Total: $18,007

As I've posted before we have never had this entire sum sitting in our savings account. To God's glory alone we have had the needed amounts available in our savings account each time a fee has been required. (We have made it through the first part of the country fee.) We have gratefully and humbly received gifts from friends, family and even people we don't know or haven't met! No gift has ever been too small and each one has come at precisely the time when we needed some help to meet one of these fee deadlines. We continue to walk in faith that God will use people, organizations and opportunities to provide each amount as it is required according to HIS timeline.

These Are Days

Wednesday, April 2, 2008

By Request: "The Welcome Bag"

1 comment:

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