BY CHARLEE BEASOR
BROWNSBURG — They say it takes a village to raise a child. In this case, it’ll take the town of Brownsburg to help a family bring their daughters home.
“My husband and I have two biological daughters, one is 13 and the other is 6,” Ami Hall said. “But I’ve always known I was going to adopt. I always knew it was something I wanted to do.”
Hall and her husband Brad, their daughters, Madison, 13, and Aleigh, 6, are raising money to fund the adoption of twin girls. The adoption costs $30,000 and the family has so far been able to pay $13,000 of that.
“So many times, finances is what stops people from moving forward (with adoptions),” Hall said. “We can get creative in how we’re going to fund an adoption. We were very fortunate, that we’ve already paid $13,000 of that and we did that by depleting our savings, and we received a grant from our church, Connection Pointe. The rest was from donations from family and friends, and some people who don’t know us very well.”
Because the cost of adopting the twins is so high, the Hall family is really relying on their family, friends, and community to help bring their daughters home to Brownsburg.
To that end, they are hosting two fundraising events. The first is a garage sale that will run from 8 a.m. to 4 p.m. March 20 at the American Legion, 636 E. Main St., Brownsburg.
“It’s your typical garage sale, but on steroids,” Hall said. “It’s going to be a huge event. We’ve just got tons of stuff ... we’ve got a Netbook computer, tons of furniture from Pier One ... we’ve got so much stuff.”
Admission to the garage sale is free, though donations will be accepted.
“I’ve been advertising it on Craigslist, and I’ve had people reach out and say, ‘I’m adopted, I’d like to come and meet you.’ So it’s been neat to connect with other adopted families, it’s been really cool,” she said.
The second fundraising event is a silent auction and dinner from 6 to 9 p.m. April 10 at the Crown Room at 900 E. 56th St., Brownsburg.
“Dinner has graciously been donated by Maggianos,” Hall said. “They’ve definitely stepped up to the plate, and along with dinner being donated, we have tons of auction items, golf course packages, Rick’s Boatyard Cafe certificates, lots of other stuff.”
Aside from the fundraising aspect of the events, the family is also looking to raise adoption awareness.
“The Fatherless Foundation will be there,” Hall said. “It’s a great organization that helps families overcome that hurdle of financing the adoption. They offer grants to families ... and they’ll be accepting donations on our behalf. The purpose of that particular event is two-fold. One is that we want to raise money to bring our girls home. The other is a special thing, to make people aware of the orphan crisis. There are ways to help even beyond helping the Hall family bring home twins. It’s an important cause. I feel really lucky to be bearing the torch at the moment.”
Tickets to that event are $25 each and are selling quickly.
Hall said she has to be careful in how much information she gives out about her soon-to-be daughters, as they come from a country where child trafficking is rampant. Giving out too much identifying information about them could lead to them being put in harm’s way.
“Child trafficking is one of those things you don’t think about when you live in the country we live in,” Hall said. “We’re very blessed. We need to protect our adoption process, and anyone else’s adoption process as well, so we can’t post pictures, and names, or cities and countries.”
Though adoption was something that Hall always wanted to do, she said she didn’t really expect the possibility of twins.
“After a long time of talking about it, and right after making that decision (to adopt), the company we’re working with, MLJ Adoptions, we got a referral, which is basically that first contact with a child and we had a referral for twins,” she said. “You think you’ve talked about everything, age, gender, country, but it never crossed our minds to consider twins, and sure enough, it came up. But we accepted the referral.”
Hall said she has been blessed with family and friends that have been supportive of their quest for adopting the twin girls.
“It’s a really exciting time for our whole family,” she said. “We grew up in Brownsburg, went to high school here, and we have a ton of support around us. The community family is helping us adopt. We are fortunate. We have a lot of great friends that go to Connection Pointe that are helping. It helps to have the support of friends.”
The family expects to have their daughters by June.
“With most international adoptions, you’ve got 18 months, sometimes longer, sometimes shorter,” Hall said. “But we expect to have our girls home by June — fingers crossed. While this is really good, we can’t really apply for some of the grants out there because they take months to approve. We’ve got weeks.”
There are several ways for people to reserve tickets for the April 10 event. Reservations may be made by e-mailing to halladoption@yahoo.com and fees may be paid by check or PayPal online. Checks should be made payable to Ami Hall and sent to 4419 North C.R. 1025 E., Indianapolis, IN 46234. To pay online, visit www.paypal.com and send a payment to halladoption@yahoo.com.
The March 20 event is cash only.
For more information or to follow the Halls’ adoption journey, visit the website at halladoptionjourney.blogspot.com.
charlee.beasor@flyergroup.com
