Casa de Amor - Newsletters and Articles - Christian Orphanage in Vinto, Bolivia

From Worlds Away: Local Family Works to 'Help the Ones Left Behind'
By Stephen Willis, McKinney Courier-Gazette, September 21, 2003

The name of the community bordering McKinney where the Thompson family lives couldn't be more fitting - New Hope. From there, the family's mission to build hope for orphans thousands of miles away began unexpectedly with the adoption of a Russian baby four years ago.

The family of six moved to the area from Dallas seven years ago where forty-nine-year-old mother Glenda home-schooled children Jennifer, 21, Heather, 18, Sarah, 15, and now Emma, four.

As busy as they are, father Carl, 48, joked that they wouldn't have time for a traditional school anyway.

After learning through a home-schooling organization about the possibility of adopting Russian children, the Thompsons traveled to the Slavic country in the fall of 1999 to bring home their newest family member.

Carl, a real estate appraiser, thought that no one in the family would likely return to Russia again and suggested bringing Jennifer and Heather along for the experience.

"So we took them with us and that's what started all of this," Glenda said. "We came home and all we could talk about was Russia and the orphans and how we could help the ones that we left behind. We just thought that we were going to add a child to our family. We had no idea that this would just turn us upside down."

Almost immediately after bring the baby home, the family planned to return to Russia and nine weeks later Jennifer went back on a mission trip to Kostroma, the region from which Emma had been adopted. The oldest two children have since made a number of trips on missions and to study the language.

The family also returned last winter with Emma when she saw her orphanage and handed out treats to orphans. Through all of the trips, Glenda said they've gotten to know the community, including members of a local church in Kostroma.

"Now, we know everybody in that church," she said. "Every time the girls come they introduce them as visitors and they say, 'Oh, they're not visitors. They're part of us.'"

Carl had never imagined he would have such a close connection with the former Cold War adversary.

"When I grew up that was the country that we were in the space race with," he said. "We'd always have bomb drills because we were afraid that we would be blown up during the Cold War."

Jennifer and Heather are now so familiar with the language and culture, Glenda said the family no longer needs translators on their Russian trips.

According to Jennifer, the benefits of using translators from a local university were mutual. The family not only gained a powerful insight into the culture, but the visits to orphanages helped quash the stigma surrounding orphans in eastern Europe.

"We changed a lot of their lives by taking them into orphanages to translate and they see the kids," said Jennifer, who has an SUV with license plates reading ADOPT 1. "They had just heard about them because there's a stigma in that culture and they don't actually see them. Then (acting as translators) they see the bright, smiling playful children."

Heather, who has been studying violin for about 10 years, said she hopes to one day give music lessons to Russian orphans.

"Heather always takes her violin with us when we go to Russia and those orphans are just enamored with it," Glenda said. "She can play that and these teenage boys who are just the roughest things will sit down and just stare and beg for more. They just love it." Knowing her oldest daughters would eventually be in Russia working with children, Glenda said she wanted them to have some perspective as to how other cultures approached their orphans and encouraged them to visit orphanages in China and Mongolia last summer.

In that same vein and on another continent, Jennifer went on a medical mission trip to Vinto (near Cochabamba), Bolivia, last August, which has given the Thompson family a focal point for their desire to "help the ones left behind," now in South America.

Three months after working at the Hospitals of Hope in Bolivia, Michael Wawrzewski III, founder and president of the medical ministry, called Jennifer to ask if she would be interested in helping to establish an orphanage next to the charity clinic.

"I just knew I'd be back," Jennifer said. "He asked if we would like to start a home there because they know they're going to have abandoned babies eventually at this hospital they're building. He just wanted us to reach out to kids somehow. There are so many in that city."
"It's a huge need," Carl said. "We could potentially max out in a couple of weeks once it opens." Not only does Jennifer spend her days researching, but petitioning Bolivian government officials attempting to make it easier to adopt internationally. The new orphanage is expected to take about six months to build and Jennifer will oversee the hiring and final touches once the construction has finished. "To get a nice, spanking-new building for an orphanage - that's pretty unusual," Glenda said. "We get to hire the workers. We get to say how they treat the children and how they feed them. We're not going to set them in front of the TV all day, which is the babysitter in a lot of the orphanages."

According to estimates, the city of Cochabamba alone has 5,000 orphans and 60 percent of the population lives in severe poverty. The facility is expected to care for 10 children at first and then eventually handle about 20 children and serve as a holding place until the babies are adopted. Though Hospital of Hope is donating the land, fundraising is largely up to the Thompsons. Local photographer Wendolin Mercado has volunteered to host a charity photo shoot benefiting the orphanage, which will be called Casa de Amor. The photo shoot will be held Saturday, Oct. 4 at her North Light Studio located in the Antique Company Mall on the north side of McKinney's downtown square.

"We started chatting about the Bolivian orphanage and she brought this up on her own within just a few seconds," Jennifer said. "We were real excited and had never thought of that possibility."

A pamphlet for the Hospitals of Hope and Casa De Amor includes a quote from Helen Keller which may best describe the family's mission: "I am only one, but I AM ONE, And I cannot do everything, but I can do SOMETHING. And what I can do I WILL DO. And what I will do, I MUST DO, for I AM ONE."

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