Donate to help with Hope's adoption

Hi, my name is Alecia and I'm fundraising for Hope's adoption. In July 2013, Nepal Orphans Home in Kathmandu, Nepal, received a request to take in a twelve-week-old baby girl whose feet had been amputated. At the time, Anita, my sister-in-law, was working at Nepal Orphans Home as a Girls' Hostel Manager and immediately began caring for Hope. Hope and Anita connected instantly and Hope spent her early years in the orphanage with Anita as her mother. When Sam and Anita got married in 2018, an opportunity came for them to shift to the United States and raise Hope here. They began the adoption process but it took some time to find the right lawyer who could help them with this difficult journey. Sam and Anita have already contributed their own funds to Hope's adoption process but it's proving to be much more expensive than they expected. The estimated expenses remaining for their lawyer and immigration fees are $25,000.

If you are able, we would appreciate any amount that you can contribute to helping their family complete Hope's adoption process.

To learn more about Hope's story, please visit here and scroll down to the August post or you can read the below excerpt:

About Hope (Excerpted from the 2013 NOH Update)

And finally let me close the update with a few thoughts about Hope. I am not talking about desired expectations, trust, faith, belief and wishful confidence in a future event; I am talking about our newest family member “Hope Angel.”

One evening near the end of July I received an e-mail from Jehan Seirafi, our former Volunteer Nepal director and a wonderful friend who has since founded Sunsarmaya.org to offer financial care for struggling orphanages. It was a brief e-mail in which she asked if we would be able to take in a 12-week-old baby girl whose feet had been cut off. I could not get the e-mail off my mind that night and the next morning I asked our house managers what they thought. I listened as they all offered really valid reasons as to why we should not take her in. These folks have more love and compassion for children than any I have met, but we are approached almost daily to help people and they have been very good at analyzing each situation and being able to make the hard choices. I wrote back and told Jehan to make us the choice of last resort, that we really could not in all practical ability help her.

At this same time Medical Mercy, which was founded by Dr. Myron and Mrs. Elaine Semkuley in Canada, notified Nepal Project Director Elsie James, and she immediately asked Kathy Procranik to leave her Ormond Beach Florida home and fly to Nepal to help find a home for this little girl. Already assembled here on the ground Elsie had Ramesh Dhamala, Rajendra Koirala and Surekha Limbu at the hospital to intervene in behalf of “Dil,” our Hope’s given name.

For the next few days this little baby was constantly on my mind. I kept mentioning fragments of thoughts about her to Anita, our Imagine House manager and she would knowingly smile at the wrestling match going on in my mind. I wrote to my cousin Anne and told her everything about Hope and admitted how troubled I was over my decision.

“She was called gone by a senior doctor; we were later told that she arrived pretty well bled out after a long journey from her village to the ER at Teaching Hospital in Kathmandu, she went into cardiac arrest, a junior doctor applied paddles twice without her coming back, the senior doctor called it over but the junior said one more time and Hope wailed back to life.”

Anne said to listen to my heart and the right decision would be made. I immediately wrote an e-mail to Jehan and copied Kathy and Elsie and said we have changed our minds and we want to be the home of first and only consideration.

The next morning Kathy called me and said they would like to meet us that day. They were at the hospital then and so I suggested we meet them there. Anita and I had been on our way to the bank and I said we would stop and see the baby at the hospital first. She asked why, though she already knew the answer.

In the parking lot upon arrival at the hospital, Surekha Limbu in white, Rajendra and Ramesh.

Anita holding “Dil” with Kathy Procranik looking on…

…and moments later one look between Anita and “Dil” would forever change all our lives.

I wrote to Anne and a few friends later:

“Our precious little girl has been named Hope following your suggestion, but I have heard many of our smaller children whisper to her ‘Angel’, as if they know something. She has found a way to touch each of our hearts in exactly the way we did not know we needed them touched; watching some of our older girls talk to her, feed her and hold her with such beatific smiles in the darkening evening’s golden brown hues is more priceless than the Vermeer paintings they remind me of.

Our family has closed around Hope like we do all our children. A new child arrives and their heart beats out of synch; they are feeling alone and then the children draw them into our home and the pain that has brought them here slowly evaporates, and within a few hours their hearts are strengthened by the collective beat of all the children.

This evening with her new Mom Anita radiating love upon her, Hope lay on the bed and surveyed all her sisters cooing over her, she gave a crooked smile, took a deep breath and went to sleep. She had had a long day.

Hope is our family’s finest gift ever; the road ahead will not be easy, but it will be paved in love with all our children sharing her battles. One day the unique spirit of Hope’s will be known to many. Little Hope has a big destiny ahead.”

Hope Angel has been with us since August 8th. I had forgotten how much pleasure can be had by waiting for a baby’s smile. She is a bright happy little one and very communicative. I have been working on her ability to wink and repeat “I Love You.” Her concentration upon your eyes and mouth are similar to that of a chess master. I talk to her a lot and she is pretty intent on listening and smiling. I change her bandages twice daily and attend to her medicine requirements. She has healed quickly. The girls in Anita’s House are doting, older ones sleeping with Hope and Anita to share in night feedings and to play with her until she sleeps again. When I am with Hope I feel strong and immortal, when I leave her in the evening I feel the pain that awaits her. My admittedly inferior knowledge of the future suggests one involving operations and moments of awareness and brief despair (mine for sure) brought on perhaps by the cruelty of others’ insensitivity or her struggle to walk. We want to be sure to equip her with any devices which will keep her natural mobility according to nature’s timeline; she has already learned to roll over and when her bottle is half empty she prefers to hold it alone. She is a strong-willed little girl and she will need to be.

One day I will watch her graduate from a great university and one day I will walk her down the aisle and I will learn to dance so that I may do so with her at her wedding. And her mom and all the brothers and sisters she has now, and all those who will come later will raise a glass in honor of the little girl who twice almost never was.