Can You Open Your Heart and Home to a Child in Need?

Having successfully built my family of four through adoption, not only am I a proponent of adoption, but also of adopting school aged children. There are many families in our area who have built their families through adoption too. My husband and I hosted our eldest son Alex for a month in the summer of 2008 through a program called "Bridge of Hope for Russian Children." This program assists children who live in orphanages in Far East Russia to come over to the US and spend one month at summer camp while living in a family setting.

Each Bridge of Hope child or sibling group lives with a host family and then goes to camp during the day. Evenings and weekends are spent with the host family doing what kids typically do here in the summer; bike ride, swim, go to the park or beach, the list goes on. The host family sponsors the child and provides food, shelter, clothing, camp and other fun activities. 

May 8th marks two years home! This weekend marks the 2nd anniversary of our family doubling in size through hosting to adopt. Hubbie and I arrived back home on US soil on May 8th, 2009 with our two newly adopted sons, ages 4 and 5 at the time. We had just spent about 1 month in Far East Russia and also Moscow completing our adoption trip. Upon landing on US soil, our sons automatically became US citizens through adoption- hooray!

Bonding and love has bloomed... Looking back, our adoption journey seems like a dream, yet here I am with a heart full of love, keeping busy in the day-to-day lives of my children as if they were born to me. We've been through a lot with our children, helping them to learn English, go to school, play sports and enjoy living together as a family. We've bonded well and are a solid family unit just two years after coming home to the US with our boys.

This adoption poem sums up the love we feel for our children...

Not flesh of my flesh, Nor bone of my bone,
But still miraculously my own.
Never forget for a single minute,
You didn't grow under my heart - but in it
--- Fleur Conkling Heylinger

Bridge of Hope needs more host families... I'm sharing this story in my blog today because, as co-coordinator for Bridge of Hope in the Long Island Region, we are actively seeking several more families to host children this summer, with the hope of adoption afterwards. If you are interested in becoming a host and prospective adoptive family, please contact the director of Bridge of Hope right away at pgancie@cradlehope.org or call her at 301-587-4400. The application deadline actually just passed last weekend, but there are three more sets of brother/sister sibling groups in need of host families.

If you think your future child could grow in your heart instead of under it, as the poem states, please contact Bridge of Hope right away. Maybe yours will be next family in our town that is built or expanded through adoption!

The following links may help you discover what Bridge of Hope is all about. Please click or copy and paste into your internet browser...

http://www.cradlehope.org/BOH/background.htm

For descriptions of the children available for hosting, click on this link or copy and paste it into your browser...

http://littlehandslovinghearts.blogspot.com/

Please pass this information along... to anyone you know who might be considering adopting an older child. Summer hosting is a great way to spend time to get to know each other to see if becoming a forever family is right for everyone involved.

And for a good laugh about the early challenges of communication when you speak one language and your child speaks another, check out the June 24, 2009 entry on the littlehandslovinghearts blog listed above. It's called Dump Trucks and is sure to make you chuckle!

'til next time,

Deb