Building a Village to Raise a Child

so today i want to talk to you about the

african proverb that it takes a village

to raise a child

i’m sure you’re familiar with what that

means raising kids

is hard work and our kids need outside

influences beyond their parents to

thrive and

us parents well we need all the help

that we can get

but in today’s globalized transient

world villages no longer look like they

once did

and i’m absolutely positive that not

everybody feels like they have a village

at all

take me for example i grew up in a small

town in alaska

being the travel oriented person that i

am i left just as soon as i had my high

school diploma

in my hand my husband’s french and

pretty much did the same thing

neither of us as adults have ever lived

in the towns that we were raised in

and therefore we’ve never been in a

position to just drop the kids off at

grandma’s house because grandma

both of their grandmothers quite

literally live on opposite ends of the

world from each other

and us i mean i don’t know if you’ve

ever had to take your kids to your

annual exam

but let me tell you it’s quite a feat

trying to hold still on that table with

your feet up in those stirrups

while simultaneously raining in your

toddler and your preschooler from

from roaming the room i’m telling you

that raising kids

in the absence of a village is tough

so what do you do if you don’t have a

village well i’ll tell you what we and

all of our vagbon

nomad non-village people lifestyle did

we simply

added another child to our lives

my family met jonas in the spring of

2017

shining shoes on the streets of the

dominican republic jonas is originally

from haiti

he didn’t know how old he was he’d never

been to school

but most shocking for this mama was that

jonas had walked by himself

to the dominican republic sometime

between the ages of 10

and 12 in search of a life that involved

regular meals

but despite that jonas received so many

hardships in life

he was so incredibly wonderful that my

family fell in love with him pretty

quickly

pretty soon after our first meeting we

were actively seeking him out

looking for him at the beach or playing

at the park sharing a meal

or buying him much-needed clothing to

replace the ones that he wore that were

a couple sizes too big

and then one day jonas’s mama showed up

at my front door with a small bag of

clothes and a toothbrush

begging me to take her child in of

course i did the only thing that i

thought was appropriate at the time

i told her no way i didn’t know the

first thing about raising a child from

the street and

i didn’t know how long i was going to be

in the dominican republic and

i certainly could never take him with me

when i left

but then jonas’s mother did something

amazing that i’ll never forget

she grasped my hand and looked me so

deeply in my eyes

that there was no escaping the gravity

of her mother’s plea

please she said to me take him you can

teach them things i can’t

you can teach them how to read you can

teach them how to write

you can show them how to be a man with a

future

jonas moved in with my family that same

day we put him in school for the first

time in his life

and very soon he was thriving he would

live with us on the weekdays where he

would attend school

and then on the weekends he would go

back and visit his mama

but all too soon that day came when it

was time for us to return to colorado

which meant leaving jonas behind i vowed

to his tear stained face that i would do

whatever

it took to try to help him continue his

education

being an immigration attorney i know a

variety of ways that somebody from a

foreign country can come to the united

states

but i also know that getting a very poor

child

out of a very poor country and into the

united states was a very difficult task

and every immigration attorney i

consulted felt the exact same way

fortunately for jonas and i both there

was another group of people that had

something different to say

they reminded me that actually

anything’s possible

if you’re willing to work hard enough

and then they went above and beyond

they asked me how they could help so

with their support

i created a step-by-step get jonas to

america plan

you know being one of those people

that’s kind of anal and actually enjoys

filling out forms in the doctor’s office

creating that plan with all of its

bullet points and fonts and multiple

colors

that was easy but when i took a step

back

and actually looked at what

accomplishing each step would entail

i had to admit something that was pretty

difficult for me to face

you see i spent most of my adult life

trying to ever avoid asking for help

but if i was gonna have any shot at

getting jonas to the united states

i was gonna have to ask for help and at

times i was gonna have to beg for it in

short

if i was going to have any chance of

success i was either going to have to

find a village to join

or i’d have to build one so with that

goal in mind i got started

ring ring ring ring yeah hello hi

hi hi uh super elite expensive private

school

yeah i was calling to see how you felt

about accepting a child who can’t speak

english

actually can’t read or write at all also

i don’t know how old he

is um maybe 12 14 he’s 14.

and um i can afford your tuition so if

you could just go ahead and give him a

scholarship that’d be great

thank you click was pretty much how i

envisioned my call to the peak school

located right here in beautiful summit

county but since it was the only school

in our area that had the accreditation

to sponsor jonas’s visa

it was my absolute only option it took

me

a little bit to get up the nerve to make

the phone call because

i didn’t want to be rejected but once i

did

something amazing happened the

admissions director didn’t hang up on me

she invited me in for a meeting with her

and the head of the school

and within two weeks of making that

initial phone call i was holding jonas’s

acceptance letter and we’d added an

entire school to our village

step two jonas and his mother had to go

back to haiti

so i’m just going to come out and tell

you that this next step

scared the stuffing out of me i had no

idea how to get jonas and his mom from

the dominican republic

back to haiti but i knew that dangerous

the journey would probably be dangerous

so i didn’t like it

but fortunately i knew somebody who

lived in the dominican republic a lot

longer than i had

and one phone call one phone call to her

and she was in

working with a local church she arranged

the entire trip

and within just a couple more weeks from

getting that acceptance letter

jonas and his mama were on their way

back to haiti and we had new residents

for our village

step three jonas has to get a passport

so things work a lot differently in

haiti than they do in the united states

and i didn’t know how to get a passport

and since no one in jonas’s immediate

family had ever had a

passport they didn’t know either

fortunately i was put in touch with a

local pastor who agreed to help us

now i’m not going to sugarcoat this next

step because there were hurdles that we

had to jump that we had

no idea were ever going to be in front

of us but what’s important for you to

know

is that those hurdles just required us

to ask for more help

and eventually jonas was holding that

passport and we had new residents for

our village

step four visa application and interview

so as i may have mentioned i’m a

paperwork pro so that part wasn’t

difficult find that application

done but actually figuring out how to

get jonas and his mother

from their hometown to the embassy which

was about eight hour bus ride away was

pretty difficult

and we had to do it twice because his

first visa got denied

this step took a really long time but

fortunately

there were people willing to help us

once we asked including a colorado

senator

and a congressman but there were also

those wine and cord bread laid angels

that would show up at my house on those

super tough days when

i was pretty sure had gone crazy and

this scheme would never work

and they not only held my hand why i

cried but they sat there and they cried

with me

and eventually you guessed it jonas had

that visa

and we had new residents for our village

step five

i really really love this next step

because it brought somebody into my life

that i never knew i was missing jonas’s

big sister she jumped at the chance to

help her let a

little brother obtain this incredible

opportunity she not only took him to the

airport

but she also gave him a mani pedi so

he’d look his best when he arrived in

america

so in the end we did it jonas finished

his freshman year with a 3.0 and he

just started his sophomore year a couple

weeks ago but what’s amazing

is our village membership didn’t stop

with jonas’s arrival in the united

states

because people continued to join it they

read about us in the local paper and

dropped off snow gear at my house

people had never met asked me how they

could sponsor jonas for scholarship or

contribute to his educational fun

and i’ve had so many people reach out

and give me advice on what it’s like to

raise a teenager because

let’s face it i am very much in over my

head here sometimes

so to circle back to my original

question

what do you do if you don’t have a

village you build one

you get out there and you ask for help

and you create relationships based on

mutual trust

love respect and understanding and for

those of you who are watching this and

thinking

i already have a village well lucky you

then your job is to look for people who

need a village and ask how you can best

help them

you know jonas’s mother asked me to take

in her child

so that i could teach him things but

what she didn’t realize

was how much she was about to teach me

that by following her lead she was

seemed to be vulnerable

and asking for help i would finally get

that village that i’ve been missing all

of these years

and now that i have one i am never ever

ever taking my kids to my annual exam

again

thank you

you