I’ve recently realized that I’ve failed to make an important announcement:

We have a new “son” in our family.

His name is Krishnamoorthy.

We “adopted” him last summer.

And it’s too bad for poor Max that he lives on the other side of the world…in India to be exact. Because we all know he could use some more boys around here!

To be clear, we didn’t really “adopt” him in the sense you may be thinking of. We are his “sponsors.” You see, when my brother and his wife got married last September and set off to do humanitarian service for a year (read more about that here), part of their work involved volunteering in an organization called Rising Star. And man oh man, those folks are making a difference in the world. They reach out to the colonies of people in India who are affected with leprosy. They have started a school that helps to educate the children of those with leprosy so they can lead a full life. (Those poor kids are usually rejected from society because people get so worked up about spreading leprosy…they explain all this much better on their website here.)

So Krishnamoorthy is not an orphan. He has parents. But because of leprosy they are unable to care for him as healthy parents would.

So we get to help.

And although we don’t get to actually see him in person, we have fallen in love with him. He writes us sweet letters. Rising Star sends us pictures. He is one cute kid:

We send him pictures too:
I hope that some day maybe we can go meet him.

Until then, we will try to build our relationship through letters and count our coins to send them on over to India.
I am so grateful for the opportunity that we all get to open our eyes to what’s happening outside of our little “bubble” here in the desert.

To find out more about sponsoring your own child, click here.

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10 Comments

  1. This is great. I was watching Oprah the other day and she had these girls on that had been life long pen-pals. They had never met until her show. I want my kids to have some sort of experience with kids from different cultures. This is a great way to do that as well. Thank you for sharing and he is a very cute kid.

  2. I LOVE Rising Star Outreach. I'm currently trying to set things up so I can sponsor a child and have my blog readers participate, loving the child right along with me. I'm hoping to offer advertising spots to small businesses in exchange for a donation to Rising Star… advertising with a purpose, know what I mean? There couldn't be a more worthy organization or a more compassionate woman than Becky Douglas. Loved this post!

  3. How wonderful! I too adopted a child "Gabriel" 15 years ago through Christian Childrens fund and still keep in contact..it is such a blessing to see them grow and do so well 🙂

  4. We also have an adopted boy who is growing into a young man. Our oldest boy asked us to do it 8 years ago. Our kids love writing him and getting letters from him and seeing pictures as he grows. Our oldest son wants to travel to visit!

  5. I love krishnamoorty! did you get the pic of him with the family photo from dani? he really is such a good boy. rising star rocks. as do the pothiers. love and miss you guys!

  6. Hi Shawni- I was very lucky to have met two of your sisters at the Power of Moms Retreat in New Hampshire this past fall. They are wonderful and the retreat was amazing. Thank you so much for this post. I was looking for a gift that my family could all give to each other and this idea was perfect. We spent Friday night discussing this organization and we all agreed to sponsor a little girl. We are so excited and know we will get back more than we could ever give.

    Jocelyn Edwards

  7. Funny moment reading your blog. Sometimes I feel everyone else is blogging My Life. I guess as Mom's we do have similar "moments"

    When I read this post on Rising Star I had to check my pulse.

    Recently I have started working with Rising Star as a volunteer and was assigned to write their blog. It's just getting started and I am on the search for "stories." Would you mind if I posted your post on the Rising Star Blog?

    Thanks for giving a shout out like that to Rising Star.

  8. Hi Ember, It really is such a small world!! Of course I wouldn't mind a bit if you posted your post on their blog. I'm so thankful for all that Rising Star is doing!

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