Lemon:Aid - kids helping kids

Blood:Water Mission is a grassroots organization that empowers communities 

to work together against the HIV/AIDS and water crises in Africa. 

Their core purpose is to to build community through creative social action. 

One of the ways they accomplish this is through their Lemon:Aid stands. Talk about creative social action! Check out the one minute video to learn more about this campaign.

What an amazing way for kids to help kids huh?! 

My nine year old friend Maggie has been participating in the Lemon:Aid campaign this summer 

and she was kind enough to answer a few questions for me.

 

How did you learn about Blood:Water Mission?

I heard about Blood:Water Mission on the Christian radio station we listen to.

What inspired you to get involved?

I always love to have lemonade stands during the summer 

so this was a good way to do what I like while helping others.

What will the money you are raising be used for?

The money I have raised ($250 so far) will be used to dig wells in 7 different African countries.  People there don't have good clean drinking water and get very sick and sometimes die. 

We want to help them get clean water and live.

Why is it important for people in the US to be involved in caring for people in other parts of the world?

One lady asked me why I wasn't raising money for clean water in America 

and I thought that was a silly question. 

We have all the clean water we want, but many Africans don't. 

My mom says we who are blessed should want to help those who aren't. 

I have pictures of some of the kids in villages who have new wells 

because of Blood:Water Mission. 

They look so happy.

Have you been able to share with patrons of your lemon:aid stand?

We tell every person who stops why we were giving away lemonade and most of them want to help. Everyone gave a donation! 

I also made a poster that explains the mission. That was fun!

What has been your favorite part about this project?

My favorite parts of this project were working with my Dad to build the stand 

and counting the money when the day was done. 

I was very surprised to see how much money we had raised! 

I want to have one more stand and am excited to put the money in an envelope 

and send it to Blood:Water Mission.

Maggie and I at one of her Lemon:Aid stands. Notice the matching haircuts:-)

Safe Families

I've been wanting to do this post for a while now. I learned about this wonderful program - "Safe Families" - from the Louisville based Orphan Care Alliance. Since you can visit the Safe Families website and get all the info you want, it seems futile to write an entire post about it... Although I could because it is THAT amazing.

A couple things about Safe Families that I really want to point out is that it is voluntary and supplemental to the care the parents are providing. It is not mandated by the state - the parents choose to seek a Safe Family for their kids before their situation (addiction, jail time, homelessness, job loss, etc.) escalates to the point that child protective services becomes involved. It keeps kids out of an already overtaxed and underfunded foster care system, provides them with a safe Christian home and allows their parents to take care of some adult business.

Below is an overivew of the program (and some interesting tidbits I pulled from their website and a video for you visual types). Don't take it from me, check it out! It really is amazing and there is a Louisville chapter in the works as we speak! So pumped about that!

When crisis strikes, many of us rely on relatives and our church family for support. But for some parents, there isn't a safety net. Often problems such as drug addiction, domestic abuse, incarceration, or illness can be debilitating, making it impossible for parents to care for their children. With the changing economy many more families are experiencing financial crisis, unemployment, and homelessness. During such crisis, children are especially at-risk for neglect or abuse as their parents struggle to cope with crushing circumstances and emotions.

Currently, 85% of all families in the project come back together, often in the most stable environment they’ve ever known.

The average length of stay is about six weeks, but placements usually last from two days to a year.

While the Safe Family for Children Project can provide placements for newborns through adolescents (0-18), there will be a concentration on the younger and most vulnerable children (ages 0-6).

For those opening their home to a child the process would include an application, a home visit, ongoing training, and a background check and fingerprinting. In total, you can expect the process to take about 2 months before you would be contacted and a child could be placed in your care.

You can "Like" their facebook page to see some of the amazing things God is doing through this organization.

Did I mention that it is uh-may-zing?!

Moses Storying

So, while this is amazingly cute, (and I must confess that we did not teach Moses this story - he learned it in his class at church) the best part is that it's super useful. As I learned from Lisa K., teaching kids to be comfortable with public speaking is a blessing to the Kingdom. And, teaching them to story from the bible is even better because they can share the gospel! At three years old!

Moses has retold this story at least a couple dozen times since the recording and when he tells it we talk about how one day, he will get to tell this story to his friends in Africa. He can't wait.

I promise that he is not a child prodigy or any kind of genius - he's just a regular three year old who, in less than an hour and a half, learned this story. If he can do it - your three (or two, or five) year old can too! Just give it a try!

Meadow says...

"Where's your shirt?"

August Martini

Here's the August martini. If you're wondering why the heck this post is called a martini see here.

Of course we started the month with a trip to Riley Children's Hospital and an MRI for Meadow. She looked pretty stickin' cute in her baby hospital gown but I didn't take any pictures. Here's one from the original trip to the ER that started all this craziness.

As you know we received the news the following morning that the MRI report showed no calcifications on her brain! You can read all about that and how I became the crazy adopting urine mom here. Man, this has been a LONG month.

On August 2nd we had the Third Annual Wallace Home Study. It's never comfortable when someone you barely know comes into your home, asks you a bunch of questions and evaluates your ability to parent, especially when you have two living breathing specimens on display. However, by the third time you're almost use to it. Almost. Also, we love our case worker and she's super easy to talk to. That helps.

We went to the zoo three times this past month. I'm not a big fan of summer, but for some reason I felt the need to take advantage of the last few weeks of it. Not sure why, the first day of September is supposed to be 99 degrees...

Of all the choices, Moses choose the bench. Poor kid. He got mama's scared-of-fast-moving-things gene.

 Some nice woman offered to take a picture of all four of us - it's a rare one!

William went with us one day, can you guess what his favorite part of the trip was??

Last day at the splash park:-(

 I started homeschooling Moses earlier this month. We are doing the Sonlight 3/4 Core, an alphabet add on I found that focuses on service, a "worksheet" book I got at Costco for $8 and some of Lisa K's Raising Kids with a Heart for Orphans stuff. It sounds like a lot but it's really not. It helps that we're only doing 2-3 days a week. He loves it so far.

This day we read a book about Noah's Ark. Here's our ark - what do ya think?

Yes she's eating a raw squash. She's a freak of nature.

Meadow is 100% girl and has a new infatuation with shoes. We keep all three pairs of her shoes in a basket in the closet and she opens the door, carries the basket over and then hands me each shoe and grunts. It's ridiculously cute.

The last week of the month our Family Group (community group, small group, etc.) has a meal together. Here are Moses and Meadow with their favorite older cool kid buddies. (hence Meadow not looking at the camera but staring at Judah instead.)

A few (half?) of the kids in our date night co-op. If you do not go on regular dates with your man you need to start. The co-op idea is awesome! There are four families that participate in ours so we get three dates a month then, one Friday night it's our turn to watch all the kids. Brilliant. (And FREE!)

And we exposed all the kids in the last two pictures to hand, foot and mouth disease. Whoops. 

Another month is over. Adoption update coming soon.

Rebuked By A Teenager

This is from the newsletter of Lisa Kjeldgaard. I shared her amazing ideas for raising kiddos with a heart for orphans a while back and this story, from her 14 year old daughter Kate, is the fruit of Lisa's hard work.

Be prepared to get rebuked by a teenager.

(And then pray that your kids would have this girls heart. At least that's what I'll be doing)

"I look around. I catch myself complaining, again. Whining because a brother used MY bathroom. Upset that I have to get out of my bed to go to work at 9 a.m. when I'd rather sleep. Bummed I didn't make it to the movies last night with my friends because I can't drive. This is normal American life: Be upset about what you don't have, and forget about what you do.

We don't seem to care about what we have. All we seem to care about is what we don't have.

But. We. Are. So. Blessed.

Running water? Blessed. House? Blessed. A job? Blessed. Three meals a day? Blessed. We seem to notice our idiotic mundane problems but forget the little boy half way across the world on the streets: abused, addicted, starving, and homeless. Let's face it—our "problems" are wimpy.

God put you where you are for a reason, and he put that little boy on the streets of Kenya for a reason too. You could be that homeless Kenyan boy, but you're not. You're a rich middle-class American with EVERYTHING you could ever need.

EVERYTHING.

God wants you and me to do something with it.

Here's what this 14-year-old learned in Kenya:

"Life isn't about what you don't have, life's about what you do have, and what you can give."

If those Agape Kenyan boys pretended to be us whiners and just focused on what they didn't have: how they don't have toilets, don't have soda and might not see their parents ever again, they would never get anywhere. Yet, they don't.

They wake up and say: "I'm off the streets and know I'll eat, I'll live."

We deserve a slap in the face from those boys, because they, they know what they have. And they're doing everything they can to change the world with it. More than anything, I want to go back to Kenya to learn from those boys. Don't worry, I'll be back to tell you about it. ~Kate

Bullet Point Style

It's been a while. That seems to be a theme around here. Since it has "been a while" I thought I would just do a quick bullet point update of the last few months. I hope that more blogging will be in our future. There's a lot going on in this head of mine right now...

December - William arrived home safely from Sudan! We were so happy to see him we arrived at the airport 4 hours early! Oh wait, that was because no one told us the flight was delayed... They have already cut a trailer for the new film - check it out! William is one talented man.

The kids had a blast at Christmas and I am ashamed to say that I must not have taken any pictures once they woke up. But I have this one of our rockin' tree.

January - I turned 30. It's the new 20.

February - Lindsy officially stays at home with the kiddos! An answered prayer we praise God for every day.

March - Our adoption will be further delayed. This may be a full post later but, basically, everything we have done since 2009 is or will be expiring, which we knew, sort of. It does not make sense for us to begin the process again until August, because if we started over this month like we planned, we'd have to redo it all again in August anyway. Frustrating. Confusing. Obedient to His calling. Come on August.

William's first follow up PET/CT scan is later this month. It was originally scheduled for the 22nd but we had it moved up to the 15th. He has a tender area under his arm where the lymph nodes were removed. Since this is an area we are supposed to be watching, we decided to go in earlier and one week earlier was the best they could do. Please pray that it is something silly, like an ingrown hair.

Back to February for just a moment, some of you may have heard that my step mom was diagnosed with brain cancer a couple weeks ago. This will be a full post in the coming weeks but please be in prayer for her and my family. More on that later.