Thing of the Week: Baby Elvie's Homecoming

This post is on behalf of a wonderful family and their newborn daughter who lives thousands of miles away. I've been reading Mary's blog "Finding Magnolia" for years and was fortunate to witness the "finding" of their Magnolia, Miss Zinashi, an incredible little girl I have spent the last year and a half completely smitten with. (Here's a short video of Mary meeting Zinashi for the first time.)

mcbride family photo 2011
a recent photo of 3/4 of the McBride family

Mary and her husband are incredible parents, now to TWO amazing children. Magnolia Zinashi and newborn baby Elvie who they're trying to get home as soon as possible. I'll let Mary take it from here:

Our baby, who we will call Elvie, is 8 weeks old and is waiting for us in Ethiopia. She has a major birth defect that affects the lower half of her body and so we're fast tracking all her paperwork and working together with the Ethiopian authorities and US Embassy to get her home as soon as possible, hopefully in June or early July. The medical evaluations that were done in Ethiopia were inconclusive, so we need to get her into the US as soon as we can have the magnitude of her need assessed. We do know that she will need at least one major surgery. I am trying not to dwell on that too much, as it scares me to bits to think of my tiny baby in surgery.

This happened way faster than we thought it would, so we're scrambling to raise funds to get her adoption fees paid so we can get her home for medical evaluations and to get a surgery plan in place. All the money we raise to get her adoption completed and get her home will be paid back to charity with an additional 10% from us as interest and an additional 10% from a donor who is matching that portion--so every donation grows by 20%, helping bring Elvie home and then helping others.

***

You can read about Elvie's story here and here. This is an incredible family and one that could really use some extra support right now. On behalf of the McBride family and especially baby Elvie, thank you!

GGC