October 2006

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CHI's Walk for Hope on Sunday, October 8th!!

Our annual fundraiser, the Walk for Hope, will be held on

Sunday, October 8

2:00 p.m.

Granny White Park, Brentwood

 If you cannot come but would like to donate to the orphanage we are building in Ethiopia please send checks to our Brentwood office.

This year, we will be joined Galina Savicheva, the CHI representative in Tver Region in Russia, Ms. Alla Zelenina, the head of the Good Start Foundation in Tver Region and the wife of the Tver Region Governor, and Ms. Svetlana Konovalova, the deputy head of the Good Start Foundation. They will take part in the Walk for Hope to meet with our adoptive families and their children, and to learn about fundraising events in the US. This is a unique opportunity for our families who adopted in Tver Region or are getting ready to adopt there, to visit with Galina (those of you have adopted in Tver may have worked with her husband Alexey), as well as to help our honored guests to understand the nature and
forms of fundraising activities in the US.

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               Trick or Treat at CHI

The staff at Children's Hope would like to invite you to
Trick or Treat at our office
October 31
9:00 - 4:00

Come join us for lots of Halloween fun!

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The Lampkin Family, TN (Russia)

Ben is doing well and starting to adjust well to his new home, and we
are learning to live with much less sleep.

 He crawls very well and can walk pretty good with our assisting him in his balance, but he can walk along walls and other objects on his own. Of all the toys that he has, his favorite two are a cereal bowl and water bottles. 

Words cannot express the joy that this baby boy has brought to my life, and I still shudder to think of the fear and anxiety that almost kept me from moving forward with the adoption.  Thank you so much for taking time to pray with us and offer your wisdom, encouragement and support.  It was exactly what I needed to hear and I will be eternally grateful.

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The Collier Family,TN (Russia, Operation Hope)

Please allow me to brag just a bit. When you home school, each year the State
requires achievement testing.  We just received the results from Olya's last test.
She passed all subjects with "flying colors" but two subjects in particular,
Language and Math, she scored "Past High School"!!!!!!!!!!!! Also, Inna is doing
very well but she has yet to be tested. But, she is very smart and is learning
things very rapidly. Just wanted to brag a little.
Of course too, they have a great  teacher!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

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The Earls Family,  TN (Russia)

Svetlana is absolutely precious, and we are very thankful to have her.  Joseph loves being a big brother, and Svetlana absolutely adores Joseph.  She is adjusting beautifully - better than we could ever have imagined.   Can't wait for you to meet her.

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The Sanders Family, TN (China)

The caption for today's PIC is "And the Lamb will lie down with the lion."

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The Marshall Family, TN (Russia)

Brucie is a keeper indeed ! Thanks for checking on us. Bruce is doing great ! In our time with him at the baby home we finally got a smile the day before we went to court. Two hours after we got him out of the Baby Home I tickled him & that was it, like someone had opened the floodgates and out poured the biggest smile & non-stop giggles.

He whacked me in the face turned to his new brother and they both got hysterical. We
thought the bonding with Jacey went quick but this little guy is incredible. Jacey loves his new Brother. 

I cannot tell you how much CHI has given us with the gift of finding our two sons.Even some of our own family members gave us grief when we announced we were going for a second child at this point in our life.  That we would never "hit the jackpot twice"  with another adoption. One look at Bruce is all anyone needs to know that this was all meant to be.

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The Bush Family, GA (Russia)

    THANK YOU ALL for the various roles you have played in making our adoption of Amelia (Mila) a success.  We appreciate your encouraging words, incredible love, unwavering support, and faithful prayers immensely.  Come visit us soon!

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The Wade Family, TN (China)

I hope the attached picture of Elizabeth comes through. It was taken
at her 6^th birthday party this past May. She’s very intent on checking out her gifts!

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The Dunn Family, TX (China)
 

We had a great time in China.  Dennis and Elsie are a blessing. 
I will never forget the moment our mini-bus pulled away from the White Swan and Dennis, who was going to meet his bus for a 10 hour ride back to Nanning, was standing there waving and you could see his bottom lip beginning to quiver as he was trying so hard not to cry.  I am a pretty stoic guy, but that summed up our experience,
CHI coordinators were happy to see us, served us
constantly, and were sad to see us go......needless to say,
I just about lost it myself. 

 Anyway, Lillie is doing great, she loves her brothers,
                               and they adore her.

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The Thompson Family, TN (China)

We just want to thank CHI for helping us each step of the way on our adoption journey. There were so many "things" with each step and you all went above and beyond and made sure we were taken care of. We are now home with Kristina and the boys and her get along wonderfully. Thanks again.

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The Morris Family, TX (China)

 I want you to know that Madlynn is wonderful.  She is so precious,
she has a sweet spirit about her, and she is very social. 
She fits in perfectly with our family, because she loves to
go bye-bye and she is very outgoing! 

She has adjusted beautifully to our home and to our immediate family,
and we could not be happier.  We are so blessed to have this beautiful
daughter and our family is overjoyed. 

Thank you for asking about how we are doing.  It really means a lot to us. 
Also, we had a wonderful time in China, and Dennis was fabulous.
He took care of every detail for us, and we were so impressed
with him and with Children's Hope! 

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The Clanton Family, TN (Russia)

Glad to see you again!
 

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The Trimm Family, KY (Russia, Operation Hope)
 

It was a very joyful moment on August 30, 2006, when Nadya, 14, finally joined her three biological siblings. Her mom and dad, Cindy and Dennis Trimm, were able to bring her home two and a half years after they adopted Zhanna, now 12, Natasha, 11, and Zhenya, 10. Zhanna traveled with her parents to adopt her sister, and Natasha and Zhenya met them at the Nashville airport upon arrival. They were also enthusiastically greeted by other Operation Hope
families who adopted in Smolensk, Russia.

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The von zur Muehlen Family, TN (Russia)

Ilse has adapted well to moving to Memphis from St. Louis.  We have had her 2 1/2 years already.  We adopted her from Novokuznetz, Kemerova.  She turned 3 on August 28th.  Ilse enjoyed celebrating her birthday with her four siblings.

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The Ware Family, TN (China)

                                                     

These are from our recent beach trip and the first time Annslee
saw the ocean. She LOVED it. One year ago today I was
on the phone with Brenda..getting "the call".
 Looking forward to working with all of you again.

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The Gilchrist Family, TX (China)

Thanks for the welcome and messages. 
It has been crazy here!  The kids are great. 
Audrey is AMAZING!  She is such a sweet little girl and the adjustment has been fairly easy. 

Now…if I could just talk Harold into another one…

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The Donovan Family, TN (Vietnam)

One of our first families to adopt from Vietnam in Tennessee!!  Welcome home, Zackery David!

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Vietnam Reception in St. Louis ~ September 17, 2006    

We were blessed to have the opportunity to welcome our representative Thuy and her husband, the orphanage director from Tam Binh, and 2 officials from Vietnam to the United States this month.  We gathered in St. Louis for a luncheon celebrating the lives of the many children who have been and will be placed with their forever families.  It was a joyous occasion with over one hundred adopted children, parents and friends.  There were many smiling faces and warm hugs.  The officials thanked us for our partnership with them and for giving their children loving homes.  We presented our guests with tokens of the “south” and a scrapbook with pictures and notes from some of our southeast families that have completed their adoptions.  This was a memorable occasion for all of us. 

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Announcing CHI's New
Orphan Ministries and Church Outreach Programs 

Children's Hope International is very excited to let you know of a new and
wonderful program that is being developed at CHI.

We hear so often from our adoptive parents that they want to do more, that they
 feel they have "a calling" in their hearts to help orphans in need. 

Our new church outreach program will give families the opportunity to take
this fire in their hearts and do something truly wonderful with it. 

We are now creating Packets for Pastor's which will enable you to present Adoption Awareness, Orphan Care, and Orphan Sponsorship to your church and/ or community group.

We hope to bring awareness to the 100 MILLION orphans who
need homes, health and hope in their lives.

 

If you have this fire in your heart, and want to help bring
ORPHAN MINISTRIES into your church or community group, please contact :

Michelle Wehde Howdeshell
Director of Church and Community Outreach
michelle.howdeshell@childrenshope.net
(314) 812-1746

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A great resource for China families...

The Parents and Children's Chinese School (PCCS) has three Nashville locations and offers some excellent classes for kids and parents. The Preschool class is open to families with children 0- 6 years of age (up to 8 years old for the Hermitage class) and waiting families are also welcome to come and learn at the PCCS for a minimum fee.  Also offered is the TCIF (Talk Chinese It's Friday) Language class for Beginners ( pre K - 2nd grade, or older children with no or little background in Chinese) and TCIF Intermediate (3rd grade - 7th grade). Josephine Huang is the teacher for each of these programs. Josephine is a specialist of Early Childhood Education, with two masters’ degrees in educational media and technology.
Josephine also offers translation services and private tutoring.
 

To find our more about these services,
check out the PCCS website www.learnchinesetn.com.

You can contact Josephine at josephine@vizion.com or (615) 662-7420.

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     New CHI Orphan Sponsorship Open!

Since the origins of Children's Hope in 1992, we have given time and money to the needs of orphans wherever we have encountered them. As we became increasingly aware of the immense needs of orphans worldwide, we made the decision to establish an arm of our agency that would encourage others to give as well, thus leveraging our own efforts. We wanted to involve greater forces than our own in order to make a greater impact.

Our first few years of fundraising effort produced some results, but ultimately they were too meager to really meet the vast needs of orphans worldwide.  Direct mail, grant writing, one-time appeals, and "orphan train" events all had their moments of exhilaration, but overall they did not produce many dollars to give to children in need. So, after much research and consideration, CHI has developed  an orphan sponsorship program to meet the needs of thousands more orphans worldwide. 

Visit http://orphan.childrenshope.net/ to see
how YOU can sponsor and orphan child.

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Upcoming Information Meetings 

UPCOMING EVENTS

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A MESSAGE FROM BRENDA BARKER

Fall is definitely in the air, and so much is happening at Children's Hope!  We are looking forward to seeing many families at our Walk this Sunday as well!  I do pray that you have enjoyed the wonderful stories of happy families, and want you to know that we are here for you when you are ready to  make this journey of love!

We don't want to burden you with a lot of information, but we do want to help you if you are looking for a way to adopt. If not, please let us know and we will regretfully remove your name from our newsletter.   E-mail me at my address below with any question you have.  I would love to hear from you. 

Brenda

 Southeastern U.S.
 Brenda Barker, Director
 229 Ward Circle, Suite C-22
 Brentwood, TN  37027
 615-309-8109   Fax: 615-309-8483
brenda.barker@childrenshope.net

Also serving the following states: TN, KY, GA, AL, AR, MS, VA, LA & SC

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Click here to request an information packet regarding

 international adoption with Children's Hope International: send info, please. . .

 

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