Visit to Wide Horizons Waltham

We contacted Wide Horizons to tell them we have some unused luggage allowance and offered to use it to carry donations to Addis. WH was psyched because they have lots of donated stuff and it is prohibitively expensive to ship.

I met Marianne and Erica in the basement of the Waltham office. The donations store room is about the size of a one car garage. All the walls and a row down the middle are lined with floor to ceiling storage shelves. And all the shelves are chock a block full with clothing, shoes, games, first aid stuff, vitamins, diapers, toys, etc. etc.

What's interesting is how parochial the donors are about their donations. A lot of the boxes are labeled in the donors handwriting with labels like "Only for the Phillipines" "Send to China Only" "For use in Addis only" and stuff like that. I interpret this as a sign of how loyal and grateful the families are to the facility that cared for their adopted child before the adoptive parent could gain custody. It is uplifting to witness the depth of stewardship obligation the families feel toward their childs homeland or specific orphanage.

So for you who labeled your goods "Addis only", we are fulfilling your wishes. We will carry several packages of diapers; a huge box full of kids shoes; two shopping bags full of chewable vitamins, pedialite, and topical antibacterial; several childrens games, toys, and puzzles; and a box full of kids clothes.