Near and Dear

I logged onto my blog this afternoon fully intending to bore you all with the mundane, nitty-gritty details of our life. It's no different than life at anyone else's home.

We're a busy family. The three munchkins in our lives kinda force that.

Anyway. Rather than boring you all to tears I'll provide you with a link that I've been just waiting to provide you with. It's actually a blog on the side of mine. International Familia is a blog of a family who just recently returned home with their sweet little boy from the Vlad area.

Obviously, the Vlad area is near and dear to my heart.

Sabrina, the blog writer, details a program that I am most interested in. The Grandma program for orphanages in the Vlad area.

Why does that interest me so very, very much? We have seen first hand the enormous benefits of this program.

You see? Many baby homes/orphanages don't have this blessing. Perhaps I should try to explain to you what exactly this program entails.

The Grandma Program simply pays retired grandparents to go into the orphanages to help out the caregivers. They may take the babies on walks in their prams...

as they did at both Will's baby home in Artem and Jack's baby home in Nakhodka.

The grandmas may simply go in and give the children extremely important one on one attention.

They may go in and just act like grandparents. While they are filling a very important need in the children's lives, they are also filling a very important need in their own lives. It is providing them with a purpose. It is providing them with 'grandchildren' if they have none of their 'own'. It is providing them with a little bit of an income.

For just two dollars a day or sixty dollars a month or seven hundred twenty dollars a year, one more grandma/grandpa can walk through the doors of an orphanage and change a child's life.

You can read all about the program at the Vlad Mission website. You can donate directly on that website where you can read all about the program in full details.

We fully believe that the Bible states that we are to care for the orphans. If we aren't called to bring an orphan into our home, perhaps we can spare $60 per month to help give some orphans the love that they so desperately need. Or even $10 a month.

The amount doesn't matter. The care that the orphans receive does.

So that's that. Rather than an ultra boring post about our little family and our daily lives, I leave you with this meat to chew on. And pray about.

Only God knows just how much those little ones will blossom from knowing that one grandparent figure in this world loves them.