VEHICLE FOR THE ALEXANDER FAMILY @ JABEZ HOUSE – GOAL R300 000

My husband (Shawn), and I (Chantal) felt led by the Lord, while we were still dating, that one day we would open our home to children in need.

In 2003 we were married and in 2005 we had our first biological child, a son, Mr. Z. Two years later, we had a daughter, Miss H, (also biological) and 18 months later another son, Mr. L (biological too).

When Mr. L, was 3 years old the time arrived for us to follow through on what the Lord had birthed in our hearts so many years ago, and we adopted our son Mr. N, who at the time was 10 months old.

When Mr. N was two and a half years old we took into our foster care siblings, Mr. I and Miss A. They were with us for 3 years, and were then placed in another children’s home where they could receive ongoing treatment and therapies as they had been exposed too much trauma in their lives prior to coming to live with us and required specialised care. We have fortunately been able to maintain contact with them and get to enjoy weekly phone calls with them and we readily see them on weekends and during school holidays.

Mr. M was 18 months old when he joined our family in 2014, and now finally after 3 years of waiting, his adoption has been finalised.

Miss S entered our home as a place of safety placement in 2015. We later learned that she had a younger brother from whom she had been separated as they had been moved around from one home to another. In 2016, a year after she had been placed with us, we managed to take both her and her brother into our foster care.

And amidst all of this, we decided to have one more and the final biological child. Our daughter, Miss E, was born in 2016.

We started off 2017 by bringing yet another foster child, Mr. J into our home. We hope to be able to adopt him in the near future too.

We have recently been asked by social workers if we would be willing to take in a newborn baby who will be arriving in January 2018. We naturally said, “Yes!” So that means that in January 2018 we will have a total of 10 children.

Many people ask us why we adopt as opposed to just fostering, so we’d like to take the time to explain why it is that we do what we do. We have a number of reasons why we adopt.
Firstly, we believe that there is a biblical basis for taking children in as James 1:27 says that “Religion that God our Father accepts as pure and faultless is this: to look after orphans and widows in their distress.” You see, we do not merely want to be hearers of the word, we want to be doers of the word.

Secondly, we ourselves have been adopted by our heavenly Father when we accepted the sacrifice that Jesus made for us on the cross. Having experienced the joy and pleasure of having been accepted by such a loving Father, we would like others to experience that same joy.

We also believe that there is a significance in giving these children a new name. By sharing our surname with them, we share our identity with them. Our hearts’ desire is that each child in our home will feel that they have a place where they belong, that they are part of something greater than themselves. We know the joy that we experience when we receive that letter in the post that says that this child is now formally adopted and that henceforth it will be as though the child was born to us.

Our love for them truly is such that it feels as though I did indeed carry them in my own womb.

People argue that with fostering we can get grants to assist with the cost implications of having an extra child in the home and many believe that since we adopt we must be rich.

This is both true and untrue. We ourselves are not rich, but our heavenly Father is. We trust Him to provide all of our needs and it is of far greater value to us for a child to feel safe and secure and for them to know that they will never be removed from our family, than what a SASSA grant is.

The foster care system is not healthy for children as it leaves children feeling unwanted and as though they have nowhere where they actually belong. We don’t want children to think that they are just living in our house, we want them to experience family and know that they have a place in our home forever.

So with all that said and done, we would like to make our humble appeal for your assistance in helping us to fund a bigger vehicle. We currently drive an 8 seater VW Syncro, but since we are already a family of 11 and will soon be a family of 12, we are in desperate need of a bigger vehicle. Together with the funds raised on this platform, we will sell our current vehicle to finance a new 14 seater that can accommodate our growing family.