LET THERE BE LIGHT!

This will be a short update but a great one! As of Friday March 21st we are LIVE. After 2 months of waiting we have electric we have it!! :) So this week Biba is going to start putting all the items we have bought in the house and will finish buying the rest of the supplies. She has bios of all the workers she is hiring. The phone is being hooking up this week and the Children Service people are coming out to inspect us. So if things go well, we should have kids within 2 weeks. Be praying. We are putting a clay overhand over the courtyard where the children will be plaing to make it cooler and to offer shade. WE are also needing to raise funds for a car. So stay tuned! More info to follow! I am posting a picture of some of the kids from our School sponsorship program. Some of our families generously bought the children more rice and they rec'd it this past Saturday.

Ann

Vote for Heather!

Heather (one of the board members of Fields of Grace) was Woman of the Year in Cincinnati as part of a contest sponsored by Macy's and Chevrolet. Out of over 200 entries, she made the Top Ten.This is how it works. The person who garners the most votes by March 31st is the winner. You are able to vote 1x per day, everyday till the end of the period. Go to www.cincinnatiwoy.com, view Heather's nomination and vote for her if you feel she is deserving. If you feel someone else on the list warrants your vote, vote for her. We need to honor what these woman are doing in Cincinnati.Heather is very humbled and a little embarrassed about the Top Ten.

Even though she does not feel worthy, we all know she is! What is exciting is the fact that the contest sponsors will donate a certain sum of money to the winner's charity of choice, and for Heather, that is the orphanage project she is a part of called Fields of Grace. The great thing about winning would be that Fields of Grace would benefit. So get out the vote! Try to vote daily!!
Thanks so much for your time and consideration.

AGENCY CHOSEN

Wow!!! I think we are finally moving forward. There is so much that goes in to opening an orphanage and there is never a dull moment. It is hard to micro-manage everything from the USA but we have an incredible person on the ground in Africa who is doing an incredible job!

We have finally picked a Hague accredited agency to handle the adoptions for us. They are not on the first list but they are approved. We will be using Kids to Adopt in Washington state. We are in the finalizing stages of paperwork (the adopting parents and the programs) to get the ball rolling. As Burkina is a Hague country we have to have a Hague agency. They have hired a special person to be the liason to the parents, Sarah! We personally know Sarah and we are thrilled about this. Sarah is a mom to 13 children and is very friendly, saavy and truthful, did I mention is super smart and funny too??!! This is going to be such a win win program.

So, if you want more info on adopting we can answer general questions here. Sarah is on this group. Please remember that Fields of Grace does not have anything to do with the American side of these adoptions. We have worked with K2A for a couple of years and they are very straigt forward and honest. All the families I have sent them, not one has ever complained, all said the process was as smooth as it gets in International adoptions and many have gone back to adopt again thru them. They are highly accessable to their parents too.

We are still looking for supplies for one of our board members to hand carry over in the next 30 days. Please see the post below of check out our website.

As for the orphanage, we are STILL waiting on electric! They had a major outage in the captial and everyone took turns having electric a couple hours each day!! The part that will remedy this should be here next week (in Africa) so be praying, they are saying tomorrow they will come and finish putting in our electric!! We are ready with everything else so once this is done, we should be ready to roll.

Please check back for more updates soon!! I hope in the next week we will have so much to tell I will have to post everday!!

Ann

March 3 update

Well, gee, not too much new too post! We have 1/2 of the electric done. There is a waiting list of 2 months so I guess that we got 1/2 done in one is a miracle!! :) We are suppose to have the rest done this week. There was a "peaceful" demonstration in Burkina in the last week about rising prices on food and medicines. Of course like any demonstration, someone had to take it a step further so there was some vandalism. So now the electric company is focusing on that! Please be praying for the ppl of Burkina! They are already without so much and for prices to go that high on essentials is a huge thing for them.

I just saw a list of the worlds most dirty cities put out by Forbes! And guess what, Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso rates 15th!! Right below my next favorite city, Moscow Russia. Now that is truly one dirty city!!
http://www.forbes.com/2008/02/24/pollution-baku-oil-biz-logistics-cx_tl_0226dirtycities_slide_12.html?thisSpeed=15000

Little AJ should be here next week!! I will be posting his updates here!

We are working out all the details with a Hague agency so that they will be ready to handle the adoptions once we get the children in. There are so many details to work out and we want a family friendly agency who is reliable and honest!

We are going to be posting ways to help very soon. We need to raise $10,000 for a car and we need to have some donations to hand carry over by the end of March. I will post the list here. As for the website, our webdesigner is in the process of moving and is without internet. So NO the site is not done. We will have lots of creative ways to help on there too.

So here is the list! We hope for a HUGE update next week!!Be praying!

List of donations needed to handcarry over.

Crib Mobiles
Small toys appropriate for 0-5yo (no stuffed animals, we need washable items)
Motrin/Tylenol infant to adult
Vitamins (same) including iron drops
CD player and CD's appropriate for children
Children books
Lotions
Eucerin (in the "tub")
Hair spray detangler (child brands are best, love circle of friends brand, pricey!)
Baby hair wash
"PINK" hair lotion
Bows, clips, rubber bands
Summer onesies and pajamas (0-5yo)
Skype headset (one that works the same)
Blankets (lightweight)

You could easily put a note or basket into your childs classroom/daycare/preschool and ask for donations. Most ppl love to help! Please contact Heather@untilallhavehomes.org for more info or if you are planning on donating.

Ok, enough for today!!

Ann