ShawneeDispatch.com

A Lake Quivira family’s commitment to adopting an orphan girl from India is moving forward, thanks in large part to the generosity of their neighbors.

After learning about the plight of orphan girls in India, Alison Phillips and her family were dedicated to the idea of adopting a girl. However, once they did more research, they discovered costs associated with doing so were prohibitive — double what they were expecting. Their goal seemed impossible until their neighbors stepped in to help.

In a massive garage sale of donations from her friends and neighbors earlier this month, the family raised $13,000 to aid in their quest for adoption.

“It’s been the surprise of my life to see how warmly and generously people respond to what we’re doing,” Phillips said. “If I could tell people anything, it would be that yeah, it’s hard, but it’s worth doing, and there is a way.”

The Phillips family moved to Lake Quivira five years ago. Alison and her husband, Sean, had previously lived in Alaska and Colorado, but he had grown up in the Shawnee area and the couple wanted to raise their family here.

The Phillipses already have two boys, Jackson, 5, and Paul, 3. Phillips said adoption wasn’t something she had considered or planned on until the brother of a family friend brought over a little boy that had been recently adopted from Haiti.

“I spent all afternoon watching this little boy who had spent the first two years of his life in an orphanage,” she said. “Just to see how he was starting to attach to his mom and dad … it just really grabbed my heart to see this precious child, to see him rescued and know he would be part of a loving family.”

After that, Phillips said it seemed she continually was met with more stories of adoption, and she began to see it as part of her family’s future. She broached the idea to her husband, and they took six more months before deciding it was something they wanted to pursue.

Phillips said the family decided to try to adopt from India after learning about the country from a friend who does mission work there. Phillips knew orphan girls there were considered “untouchables.”

“They have no hope of ever improving their situation,” she said.

The Phillipses looked into various adoption agencies and decided on one that would allow them to request a girl age 3 or younger and would send them information about their child over the several months it would take to complete the adoption process.

“I originally thought an adoption would cost about $15,000, but that was not the case,” she said, explaining that when she looked at the list of fees and costs, she saw it would be much more. “This knocked the air out of my lungs, because I started going down this and got my calculator out and said, ‘That’s about $30,000. Wow.’”

Costs include various application fees of $1,000 or more, a home study that costs up to $3,000, a required $4,500 contribution to the orphanage and the travel to get their new daughter and bring her home.

The costs were daunting, Phillips admits, but they didn’t deter the family from their mission.

“Little girls in India are frequently thrown in a ditch or they’re sold to temples as prostitutes, horrible things,” she said. “A family like ours wants to save her from all of that — you’d think they’d make it a little easier. But at the same time, I realize all this is in place to prevent child trafficking.”

But the couple, who own their own dry-cleaning service, have been affected by the recession and didn’t know how they could manage twice the amount they had expected.

“But I didn’t want to give up on it; I just think it’s worth pursuing,” she said.

It was then that their neighbors and members of the Lake Quivira Bible Study decided to organize a garage sale, an event that became bigger than anyone expected.

The family spent three weeks preparing for the Oct. 10 sale, gathering two dozen helpers. Another family had a vacant home in the neighborhood offered it for storage of donated sale items and use of the lawn for the sale. They advertised the sale in the paper and on Facebook and Craig’s List.

People also donated generously, with items like furniture, a golf cart and even a boat, in addition to clothing and other household items. One group of neighbors provided free hot dogs and hamburgers to feed up to 350 for the sale shoppers, hoping a full stomach would encourage them to spend more, and a bake sale raised $450. And there were unexpected surprises, too.

“At 9:30 a.m. that day, a friend of mine handed me an envelope and said ‘I’m not supposed to tell you who I got this from, you just have to take it,’” Phillips said. “There was $1,000 cash in it.”

The next step for the Phillipses is the home study, which will take about two months. If everything goes smoothly, Phillips said they could have their daughter by this time next year, and she wants to thank all of those who helped the family reach their goal.

“What’s neat about it is some day our little girl will be here, playing on the beach of the lake or something, and our neighbors will see her and be able to think back and know they helped,” she said.

The Phillips family is in the process of setting up an account with an organization that would enable tax-deductible contributions aiding their adoption. Until the account is set up, anyone interested in helping the family can contact them via e-mail at akphillips107@hotmail.com.

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