As if normal life (what's normal anyway?) in this family of
5 wasn’t loving crazy enough, we've decided to add a 6th person to our family
temporarily. Here is the story on how that came to be.
She (Mithadeline) is a six year old from Haiti needing surgery at Shriners in Philadelphia. That is all we knew when we first found out about her need for a host family on Facebook. See, we had hosted other Haitian girls through this organization in the past, so as far as hosting went, we were good to go. So we sent an email and requested more information from Vanessa at Angel Missions Haiti. And then we called our brood together on the couch for a family meeting; only the youngest did not have a clue what was going on. Our older two remembered hosting in the past and had some really insightful things to add to our discussion! One of our children was having second thoughts about the idea to host again; remembering a few key things from before, the amount of work it would be for me and knowing about how attached we would get and then have to send her home. Our children were able to articulate these really hard things to us.
She (Mithadeline) is a six year old from Haiti needing surgery at Shriners in Philadelphia. That is all we knew when we first found out about her need for a host family on Facebook. See, we had hosted other Haitian girls through this organization in the past, so as far as hosting went, we were good to go. So we sent an email and requested more information from Vanessa at Angel Missions Haiti. And then we called our brood together on the couch for a family meeting; only the youngest did not have a clue what was going on. Our older two remembered hosting in the past and had some really insightful things to add to our discussion! One of our children was having second thoughts about the idea to host again; remembering a few key things from before, the amount of work it would be for me and knowing about how attached we would get and then have to send her home. Our children were able to articulate these really hard things to us.
We prayed about it together and decided to table the
discussion for later, hoping to get some more info and a picture.
After supper we got together again with more information and
decided even with one no out of 5, we felt this was something we should do. We
have many blessings and lots of love to share and just felt that sense that we
should go forward with this. Looking back now, I think we did not realize the
gravity of the situation or the immense amount of doctor and hospital visits we
would be committing to. But we felt the need to share the love that was so
freely given to us with another who desperately needed it, knowing we were not in this alone.