Children's Heaven

A remarkable woman came to Denver recently, Hanna Fanta. She came to share with us what she does in Ethiopia to help young teen girls who are orphaned, impoverished, and sometimes ill. She is one of those poeple you meet in life and realize that we are all capable of so much more. She brought tears to our eyes when talking about her girls. She does everything she can to keep the girls at home with family. She does this by providing education in the form of tuition or uniforms, meals, health education, job training, life skills and most importantly love. She wants to make sure she can give each girl what they deserve and by doing that she has kept her numbers down- but this spring added about 40 new girls. At our meeting, which was the last of several she had across the country, all of the girls had sponsors, but she said when she got home that she would take double sponsors on the girls to help off set rising food and gas prices. They have also recently lost the place they were living and are moving into a shipping crate. I will post her recent email here. But first, her website is finally up and here you can make donations or sponsor a child. This child will write to you and you can send her small gifts and letters with families who are traveling. I know several poeple who have visited Hanna's family and find that what she is doing is not only amazing- but is very real. These girls are truly being helped through our direct support. Here is the website for Children's Heaven.

Here are some pictures from Hanna's visit. My good friend, Luana Harris Scott, opened her home for this event. My husband cooked Ethiopian food and we had both families connected to Ethiopian adoption as well as a bunch of caring families interested in hearing Hanna's story at the event.





She was so loving towards Maren and Yabsera. Maren took to her so fast it made me a bit jealous. He would just cuddle up to her...and he has not always been the biggest cuddler in the family...though he does like it more and more.
At the end of the evening, when Hanna was really tired and just waiting to leave, Maren brought her out into the patio and told her to sit in the rocking chair where he rocked her gently and then he would crawl into her lap and then get out and rock her again. It was one of the sweetest things I have ever seen and you got the sense that he really knew deep down inside that this was an Ethiopian woman who should be treated with great respect alternating with the warmth and love he probably has deep memories from his own Ethiopian mama.