Here is an email I sent to our Bible Study group at church… thought I’d let the world wide web know what was going on and why there is a chipin button on our blog:
Grace and peace to you this morning.
Sometime… as soon as possible after June 2nd, we will be traveling to Bulgaria! We’ll meet our sons for the first time and initiate the second phase of Bulgarian adoption paperwork so that we can bring our boys home this fall or winter, God willing.
It was the desperate need of special needs children in former Soviet bloc countries that mobilized us. We were first drawn to adopting a sweet little boy named Jacob, who was about five years old and only sixteen pounds. Since then, a family has been working hard to adopt him, but he passed away two days before Mother’s Day, never meeting his mother. (His family’s blog: http://moretulipsfromholland.blogspot.com/) A little girl named Hailee, who was just fifteen pounds when she came home at five years old is blossoming now after a year home!!! (See amazing before and after pictures here: http://www.nogreaterjoymom.com/2011/05/my-inspiration.html)
Thankfully, our boys appear to be growing well and are currently healthy. But orphanages are short-staffed, underfunded and regularly short on necessities. When we arrive at the orphanage in a few weeks, we will ask them if there’s anything in particular that we can buy for them. Diapers, formula, toothbrushes, medicine…. they name it and we will buy what we can!
I’ve set a goal to bring $500 to buy donations for the orphanage. I set up a chipin on our family blog that is tax-deductible. If you would like to contribute this way, go to, “breezysunday.com/blog” and contribute with your paypal account there. Please note in the paypal comments section that this is for the Davis-3 family. We can also easily accept contributions by check or cash.
Thank you all for your prayers and support! We are very blessed to be “planted” here with all of you.
Love,
Brian and Rachel Davis
p.s. We will post updates and photos on our blog even as we are traveling. We’ll include details about the orphanage donation there, hopefully with pictures of the goods. The blog url is: http://breezysunday.com/blog
p.p.s. We were asked if there is any way to support us personally. Hollie Swart has graciously offered to host a baby shower for us this fall to help us purchase many of the items we need/want for the boys (including a triple stroller). If you have boys clothes to pass down, we are collecting. 🙂 We also need a newer camera soon to bring with us that takes both video and photos, since our camera is pretty dated… anybody have one for sale?
Hi Rachel,
When we were in BLG last month one of the things the orphanage seemed happiest about in our donation (most of which we purchased in the US) was diaper rash ointment. And they asked for diapers of which we bought over 600 while in-country. They also appreciated the new and gently used children’s clothes we brought. Our cousin had actually organized a clothes drive for us that collected nearly more clothing than we had room to take. Maybe you can have something similar through your church.
Lastly, you might want to think about taking some of the orphanage donations on the first trip. You’ll have more space in your suitcases as you are only packing for two people and you will have more leisure to deliver everything than on the pick-up trip. We packed a huge dufflebag full of donations for each of our first trips and later collapsed the duffle into our other suitcase for the way home.
Best of luck,
Viviane
Thank you Viviane! What a great idea. I didn’t even consider this… I will look into it pronto! 🙂