Operation Christmas Child

You may have spotted the word 'Christmas' in the title?  And yep I too agree, it is a tad too early for talk of festivities and to see all the shopping aisles become overflowing with an abundance of Christmas 'stuff' that we are meant to need to make our Christmas special. 

But we have a tradition in our house. 

A tradition that each year we can brighten up someone else's Christmas. 

A little boy or girl we do not know and indeed may never know. 

All we know is that we can have a part in their Christmas. 

Each year, around this time, we think of whether we will choose a boy or girl and around what age they will be. We consider all the little treats they may like to unwrap and explore. We get a little bit each week in our trolley and soon it mounts up. 

 

We wrap a shoe box with pretty Christmas paper and we spend a fun filled night packing our boxes. 

We talk about the little boy or girl as we pack, and think about their little face as they open their box. What will they see first?  What will be their favourite gift?  Will they like seeing the photo and note we've added? 

Christmas is a time to share the gift of love. A gift that costs us nothing but is more valuable than any materialistic object on any Christmas list. To pack this box helps us share that love in a practical way. Sharing love with a child who may feel unloved and devalued. It helps them know someone, somewhere was thinking of them and put the time and effort into preparing this special gift box just for them. 

I love the Operation Christmas Child shoe box appeal that Samaritans Purse run each year. This act of love means so much to each and every child who receive a box. Children around the world, who without these boxes, may not even know that Christmas means love. 

I was in such a fortunate position to ask people of my community to stand by me and help collect as many boxes as we could this year. My community never cease to amaze me.  They selflessly give and support such worthy causes each and every time. They filled my car with their boxes of love. 

These are just a few we squeezed in the boot, the back seat is filled too. 

I can't wait until after Christmas, when we get to find out where our boxes go too. We'll know exactly which part of the world a little boy or girl are from who received our box of love. 

Harvest Table.

Happy Harvest everyone!

Our Harvest Hamper was carefully packed ready for our Harvest service.

This year our collection was for the local Food Bank.  It’s a much needed service in our local area where many people are struggling financially at the moment. 

It’s important to us as a family that we are thankful for all that we have and share our gratitude with others.  Harvest gives us a practical means of helping someone less fortunate that ourselves.  It opens up discussions of serving and love; sharing and caring within our own family.  If we can help someone in need, why would we not? 

We are blessed to be a blessing. 

Our one act of kindness, added to the multitude of other acts within our church community, add up to so much more.  We can each do a small thing to help another and if we stand together in helping we can do so much more.  

Boo!

So we’ve made it to October and the Spooktacular month is upon us!  The month full of pumpkins, harvest baskets, black cats, fancy dress, trick or treat, ducking apples and family fun.  Leaves are starting to change their appearance or fall and there’s a crispness in the air each morning, indicating Autumn has arrived. 

I love the colours of autumn.  I love the fun and festivities. 

I remember making a conscious effort in October 2011 to make Halloween a fun family experience for my then 10 year old daughter, who was witnessing her first encounter of all this madness of witches hats and bats filling up our shopping aisles.  It was all a little scary for a little girl who hadn’t long moved from Uganda, where witchcraft is commonplace and very real.

This year will be no different….other than we want to spread a little community spirit too.

Our October is going to be fun-filled with lots of family activities, gift giving and surprises.  It won’t all be filled with the Halloween horrors, although we do plan to have some extra fun on Halloween night.

So our friends and neighbours can look out because we are coming to surprise you!  Maybe tonight?  Maybe tomorrow?

We are coming to ‘BOO’ you.

It’s a little bit of fun that will hopefully spread a cheer or two around our neighbourhood and I invite you to join in wherever you live too! 

You can get all the details and free printable here!  Courtesy of the Dating Divas.

Basically, once darkness arrives one night in October, you need to run to the door of your chosen family with your print outs and your bag of goodies.  It’s a bit like knock knock ginger, as in you knock their door and run away, leaving only the goody bag and the note to say they’ve been BOO-ed!

The unsuspecting family get a nice surprise and you get the fun of spreading a smile.  They then copy the print out to spread the fun onto another two friends or neighbours within the next two days.  Each family BOO-ed, display the poster in their window or door so no one gets BOO-ed twice.  The fun continues until our whole neighbourhood have shared in the fun and we see a poster in every house window. 

So who will you BOO?  When are you going to strike?  Do you think you can run from the doorway without getting caught?  Your chosen family should never find out it was you who BOO-ed them. (I wonder who will BOO us?)  

Let’s spread some fun and laughter together around our communities and have some more fun filled family nights together this October.  Get spreading the spirit people!

The night you get BOO-ed change your facebook status to ‘We’ve been BOO-ed’ so we can see the fun spread amongst our friends online too.  

BAAF

I had the privilege to write an article for the BAAF blog about our personal journey recently.  Our story took up two weeks on their blog and I hope it encourages others to consider not only adoption, but older child adoption.

You can take a look at the BAAF blog here!

There’s a smell in the air!

Our house was filled with the smell of baking delights last night as we made some cakes to take to a Macmillan Coffee morning today.  With work, I wasn't able to attend the coffee morning in person, so we popped the cakes across before work and school and made our donation.

It’s funny how a smell can take you to another place isn't it?

I had a firelighter in one of the kitchen cupboards over the summer, in preparation for a BBQ.  Each time I opened the drawer above the cupboard I smelt the odour that kind of paraffin scent and it took me there.  It took me to Uganda.

There are lots of smells that remind me of Uganda.

Little scent triggers can crop up at any moment of the day and I feel like I’m there.  I can even relate it to certain aspects of a visit. 

We went to the Welsh History Museum, St Fagan’s, over the summer.  As we walked past the old houses, with their fires fiercely burning, I am reminded of Uganda.  That fire in the air scent.  Everyone out in the villages; open air kitchens; Ugandan cooking all around.  It’s not quite ‘THE’ smell, you need a trip to Uganda to experience it for yourself, but it’s a close enough match.

Smells can be a trigger for our children’s memories too. 

For lil Miss L, it’s rice boiling on the hob.  As the steam rises, she breathes it in and voices that it’s her memory of Uganda.  It’s a good memory. 

There are many more too.  Not all of them will be good.  Not all of them we will be aware of.  Just knowing they exist is a help as we can support our children in reliving the good and working through the not so good memories as they dance through their minds.

We all have our own personal scent memories from our childhoods.  What’s yours?  Most of them will be opportunities to recall happy times but when our children didn’t have the best start in life, we have to be mindful that a scent can trigger an upsetting memory.  We can’t stop that from happening but we can help manage the reaction and offer reassurance that the time has passed and is in the past.  We can also offer opportunities to link new memories to old scents and create a new catalogue of recollection.  We very often fill our house with the aroma of Ugandan cooking and then have a good time sharing with friends or simply being together as family.   

Cracking open the champagne!

It was my birthday Monday and I got an extra special present that I didn’t see coming at all!

 

It was news from Uganda that I had started to believe would never happen.

 

The last young person, from the children’s home I used to visit, has left and been resettled with a foster family. 

 

The final child is out of institutional care!!!

 

I received the news from my friend who lives in Uganda and she declared she wished we could crack open a bottle of champagne to celebrate together this huge achievement. 

 

You see it hasn’t been an easy journey to resettle this last child.  This young man is deaf as well as being autistic.  On paper, this young man would be tricky to place and would likely be someone who would horribly age out of institutional care and then end up back on the streets, struggling to survive.  The thought of this was a total nightmare for my friend and I.  He just wouldn’t survive.  It was a heartbreaking situation.

 

And then a miracle happened…..

 

In meeting with a foster family who already foster two girls who grew up with my daughter from the same home, my friend discussed this particular boy and the struggle there would be in resettling him.  To her amazement they offered to take him in for a weekend as a trial.

 

This went well and the girls enjoyed having a brother around, so the family have decided to foster him as well.

 

Over the moon is an understatement. 

 

It’s the BEST birthday present I could ever have asked for.

 

Unbelievably this boy has been out of school for some time as the home/charity failed to pay his fees for him to attend his specialised school.  The school works with hearing impaired children and offers a carpentry course that this special boy loved!  Not only that but he can board here alongside other boys with hearing difficulties or who are deaf, so he has his own social network.  He can then come home to his foster family on weekends and holidays.  It’s a brilliant opportunity for this boy to thrive.

 

Now you’d be thinking this course costs a lot and that would be why the charity have stopped him going there….

 

You’d be wrong!

 

The course and boarding costs a little over £100 a term!!!

 

Yes that’s right, it costs a little under £400 to send this precious boy to this specialised facility to do a course he loves!

 

(Why the charity were letting this boy down I never know but at last he is out of there and we can help him from here on in.)

 

So here’s where I need to ask for your help.  Could you give a one off gift to help this boy stay in school for the year?  If you can, no matter how big or small, you can make a difference to this boys life.  If you see me in person, I can accept your donations and pass them on to Reunite Uganda or you can donate here making sure you state that your donation is for the Reunite part of the Alternative Care Framework in Uganda.

 

If you’d like to hold a fundraising event or have any other ideas how we can continue to raise money for this boy and others like him, please get in touch. 

 

This young man gets to stay in his home country with a family who will love him and attend a school that meets his needs, but he needs a little help from us. 

 

Thank you in advance for helping. 

A Mother's Touch

Yesterday we celebrated Mothering Sunday (Mother's Day) here in the UK.  It is such a precious day and I love how my church celebrates ALL women, not just those who are mothers. 

My daughter certainly gave me a memorable day that started with breakfast in bed and beautiful gifts and cards, followed by a lovely family meal after church. 

In the midst of our adoption I longed for the day we would celebrate Mother's Day together.  I had a long wait to bring my daughter home. I had to fight systems, social workers and courts to be deemed worthy of the title 'mother'. 

I won the battle and I cling firmly to the privilege of being a mother. I cherish every moment of being a Mum. I am forever grateful for the blessings motherhood has brought to my life. 

For many, Mother's Day can be a day too painful, a day of heartache. There are some still battling for their title, through adoption processes or fertility treatment.  Others I know have had miscarriages and today they mourn. Others too have lost their children to disease or illness.  Today their grief is raw. They wish for today to pass unnoticed.  For shop shelves to empty of the keepsakes that are all too distressful a reminder of their loss. 

Then there are children who have known a mother's touch but who's mothers have been taken away far too soon. Today they grieve; they remember. They embrace the treasured memories they have. 

Around the world, children wait in orphanages/institutions longing for a mother's touch. I read a quote online recently that implied you only get one mother. For children caught up in care systems there is little hope in that statement. True enough, you only get one birth mother, but adoption or foster care gives children a second chance of having a Mum to call their own.  Adoption made me a Mum. 

So today, like my church, I want to celebrate ALL women: those with us and those taken away; those with children and those without; birth mums, adoptive mums, foster mums; those awaiting their precious bundles and those whose children have passed away from this world; those who choose to remain childless and those still battling for the role.  

Today I am thankful to have felt a mother's touch and to be a mother. More so today, I celebrate being an amazingly and miraculously made woman. Go and celebrate all the exceptional and extraordinary women in your life today. 

Talking Pants!

No matter how old your children are, they will always need protecting.  

Sending out positive, stay safe messages from an early age is essential but don't forget teens need protecting too.

From tots to teens - ALL children can be vulnerable to abuse. As parents (teachers, youth workers, social workers, neighbours, family friends.....add any other title here) it is our job, role, responsibility to protect them.

Safeguarding children is EVERYONES responsibility!

Did you know most children who are abused, are abused by someone they know?

This puts the whole stranger danger talk out the window. 

Children need stay safe advice that is relevant and that works. 

I know most parents would feel happy in explaining to their child that hitting is wrong and that they should tell an adult they trust straight away if someone harms them in this way.  But how would you fair in talking about sexual abuse with your kids?

Scary subject hey?  I mean how on earth would you ever bring this topic up in conversation with your kids?

Well the NSPCC are encouraging us to do just that. They have introduced a new campaign all about 'Talking Pants'.  

By using the NSPCCs underwear rule, children will learn how to stay safe from sexual abuse.  You can watch the campaign video on their website. www.nspcc.org.uk. The kind people at NSPCC have put together tips and advice for parents/professionals too. Take a look at the website for more information. 

So get talking pants people and let's keep our children safe!  

A year in the making

I've been pretty rubbish at keeping the blog updated lately. I apologise for that but I had some photos that jogged my memory that I needed to update the blog so here goes. 

A year ago we were holding our February Flush Fundraiser. Remember it?  Doesn't time fly hey?  So as the year progressed I kept getting updates from Uganda on the progress of our very own pit latrine that our money was helping to build. It was a pit latrine like no other, best in the district I'm told!  

So we had our trials as the first pit was dug when we visited last Easter. Then the rains came and the mud and rain filled the pit and the location had to be moved. A new pit had to be dug which added cost to our overall budget. We had to start from scratch. 

So a new site was found right next to the school and building work began once again. I sent over some additional money to cover the added cost and building continued. Then this week I received a wonderful email that included photos of how things are looking at the moment. I was really impressed at how good it looks. Take a look for yourselves. 

Isn't it looking good?  It's almost finished. (I am ever so envious of that bright Ugandan sunshine in the background of the photos too. It's been rain, rain and more rain here recently.) 

So you can see that there are a few little details needing to be added. There needs to be a gate on each entrance, that will remain locked to keep out intruders and animals, and there also needs to be doors attached to the actual toilet areas. Once these things are fitted then our work here is done and the school children have a toilet that is not only safe to use but a wonderful piece of construction. 

So if anyone has any bright ideas of how we can raise the final amount of money to cover the costs of the doors and gates, please get in touch as every little thing helps. We're almost there and he children will have a toilet to be proud of. 

And anyone heading to Uganda, make sure you head on over to use this toilet during your visit.