Creating Connections East2West

We entered Arizona under the cover of darkness- destination a condo to take some R and R as we prepare to get Sarah to her new home at the U of Arizona - Tucson and continue on our travels to promote adoption. We enjoyed driving during the night, traveling under the dark sky sensing rocks and sand that captures Arizona. We arrived at the condo, bunked down for the day and decided that laundry needed to be done, NOW!!! We need to spend a day hearing the pleasant sound of a Matag taking care of business. About 1 PM on that day of rest, Hannah had a medical issue that needed to be dealt with at an ER - We traveled on with a Scottsdale Ambulance to the WORLD FAMOUS MAYO CLINIC- Scottsdale. Jeanne and I decided that a possible side benefit to our trip is that we could do a compare and contrast article on Emergency Departments and promptness of service.

After four hours the doctors and the tired parents now felt secure enough to take the precious Hannah to the condo. Laundry remained in need of service:but there is a perspective to be gained!!

On the project , we made multiple contacts with several different papers in Arizona and did not make the dead line so we agreed with the writer to do an article after we return to Minnesota- and discuss some of our perceptions about adoption.

IT turned out that this miscue was beneficial to the process of getting Sarah, our beautiful 19 year old daughter settled at the University of Arizona.. What an honor to be part of this transition!!!

Our Post Card Buddies have been to The Rocky Mountains,they have been to The Great Salt Lake they have been to Six Flags, they have been to The Golden Gate Bridge, the have been to The sands of Death Valley.My guess is that they enjoyed Nebraska best!!! They are truly in our thoughts as we travel across the west.

Hello everyone,
We are so blessed to be where we are today, and we are having so much fun. The hotel staff has been spectacular, and they are being so kind to us. The delightful manager of the Concord Hotel in San Francisco has given us free tickets to Six Flags Marine World. We immediatly contacted two adoption agencies to see if any waiting kids or adoptive families could join us on this adventure. We were most disappointed that on such short notice neither agency could fit the pieces together, although they tried hard. Read more about our fun day at Six Flags tomorrow, and how we met with Maurice Healy, the editor of San Francisco

We took a lot of pictures of our postcard buddies at Fisherman's Wharf and Chinatown that we are excited for them to see. We had lots of fun things to take pictures of. We went to Fisherman's Wharf and saw Alcatraz (Neals's previous home) and Sea Lions. Then, we went to Chinatown where we had a terrific lunch of Potstickers and Spring Rolls. After that, we got to go see the Golden Gate Bridge, and crossed it twice. What an adventure!! After that, we headed home and checked our website, where so many people have left us wonderful comments--we love them!!

Write to you soon,
Neal and Jeanne

Hello all,
It is so nice to hear your wonderful comments. They made us laugh and smile at all the great and wonderful people and Kelly Bower (remember the secret code word AAHH) who are in Minnesota thinking about us. Just kidding Kelly, you all are great.

Anyway, tomorrow, we are heading out of Denver at 4:00am, so I thought now would be a good time to update you on what's been going on. We have been meeting with Catholic papers in Colorado Springs and Denver, as well as The Adoption Exchange in Denver. The people who work there are wonderful and dynamic people, we are so lucky to have been able to meet them. This afternoon, Neal, Sarah, Marissa, Ben, Becca and myself (Mikaela) went up to the Rocky Mountains just to see the view, and take pictures with our postcard buddies' pictures for the virtual tour. We also were honored to have Anne's angel with us, and we took a picture of that also. The beauty was breathtaking, I've never seen anything like those mountains. We're so lucky to have been able to see something like this.

Jenna is feeling a little bit better today, and is now well acquainted with poultery itches (great name Walter). We are all looking forward to a full recovery.

Love,
The Binsfeld Family

Hello all!

We're all excited to begin our journey, and while we're looking forward to meeting new friends, we always like to stay in contact with the friends and family we've known and loved for years.

Please join us on our Adoption Awareness Road Trip, and feel free to write in any words of encouragement, humor, questions, or requests.

God Bless!

Greetings to all!!

We have driven almost 1100 miles over the past two days. The landscape and God's handiwork was spectacular!! Our travelers were superb. Needless to say we are all blurry eyed. We have met with three different newspapers and one multi state adoption recruiter at the Adoption Exchange in Colorado. All have been extremely supportive and all three papers have agreed to profile children. All three are seriously considering profiling children on an on-going basis. We are attempting to profile these respective children on our web site- Please keep them in your prayers!!

We are so grateful for all of our friends that have made this all possible!!

Neal and Jeanne

After dropping Sarah off in Tucson we hustled to Las Cruces- fashionable late of course, to a meeting with David McNamara and Mary Helen Hilanez from the Diocese of Las Cruces. We had a lovely meeting about the Las Cruces Diocese's stand on adoption and how they had done some work on the social justice of promoting adoption in past years. They expressed both positive and not positive experiences- specifically citing the long drawn out process that accompanies adoption home studies ,criminal checks etc and the follow up by the social service agent as a drawback to adoption. They committed to doing monthly profiles of children in their paper.We agreed to assist if possible/ necessary to connect them with the information about specific children. They told us of a catholic priest,in their diocese, who has co adopted two special children and often speaks of his experiences of working with " his children" in his weekly homilies. Both David and Maryhelen talked of different families that they thought who do an excellent job of parenting children with special needs etc.. David and Maryhelen had some fabulous ideas about how they could work an adoption profile into an article about families that have adopted. They thought that by working with specific geographic areas or specific parishes within their large diocese they could both profile the adopted family and the specific region and or parish. They expressed interest in knowing more about existing faith based programs that promote adoption within the nation [ We spoke specifically of " One Church - One Child "as we discussed options} They will attempt to promote the " Heart Gallery" exhibit which is coming to Las Cruces in October. Although the details were not outlined, we feel as though David and Maryhelen were very excited. In fact, we found our conversation with David and Maryhelen delightful. Clearly, the people of Las Cruces are loving and compassionate. David and Maryhelen discussed the clear love and pride of their community.

Greetings to all,

We are amazed at the support that we feel from our friends back in Minnesota. There is a certain peace that we feel knowing that so many people have been following our Creating Connections adventure. We are aware that many of the connections that we have made are a direct result of prayer and positive energy that continues to be present with us. This was no more evident then when we tackled Las Vegas. THE LIGHTS, THE ENERGY , THE COMPLETELY DIFFERENT LIFESTYLE was difficult for a small boy from a suburb of St. Cloud where there were 5000 people who lived and usually had their respective lights out by 10:15 PM. to understand. We had been communicating with numerous different people in the area who really have very good handle on the issues that face the City of Las Vegas: we were told that in Clark County that there are thousands of children in the " the system" and that there isn't nearly enough people to care for all the children in need. We were told that " the system " has issues with those currently providing care for the children and that the system cannot keep up with the demands placed upon it. We were fortunate to meet up with several very dedicated and engaged folks that really want to emphasize positive and work to address the issues proactively behind the scenes. We were told that IF we were to get some media coverage to promote our message we would LIKELY/MAYBE get one story or one outlet interested in promoting the message that Adoption can work. The folks that we talked to stated that they would need a local angle or it would not happen. The Las Vegas people went to work on Jamie to discuss his family's story. On Sunday we got an email that we were to show up at Jamie's office and there was one paper that would write a story.

So off we went, Neal ,again, misjudged how a 15 minute Mapquest trip could take 45 minutes.Needless to say, we were NOT ONLY FASHIONABLE LATE [20 minutes]- but we walked into a room with an ABC , FOX and CBS station and the large newspaper waiting patiently. SO to ward off the angry mob - we sent Ben in first!!! IT WORKED!!!! Jeanne and I along with Sarah and Mikaela were all interviewed by respective reporters along with Jamie , the local adoptive parent who profoundly stated that "you will not find the perfect child: but, you will find your child"

The feedback that we received from Lee Fillipe, one of the adoption recruiters was that the agency had received several calls as a result of the news show. I am not sure what the end result might be. All are sure that the system needs to be injected with some energy.

It was a great day... OFF TO ARIZONA !!!!

Hi everybody,
We just want you all to know we love your messages and support. We are doing terrific with the exception of our chief photographer, Jenna, who has come down with the chicken pox. We are scrambling to get pictures to you without her dedicated services. Between baking soda baths, calamine scrubs, and E.R. visits for asthma, we have four kids profiled in two different newspapers, potentially two more tomorrow, and a Las Vegas PR firm is trying to contact us for media events. Holy Cow!! Who got us into this???? The Rocky Mountains are awesome and don't worry poscard buddys, your photos and postcards will be arriving soon. Send prayers and hope we can make it 25 more days!?!?! Just kidding, we love this trip, and are meeting great and dynamic people

Love,

Neal, Jeanne, Sarah, Mikaela, Becca, Marissa, Jenna, Ben, Hannah, and Jess

P.S. Send prayers Jenna's way, she's itching to be done with the chicken pox.

Hello all,
Today we got to go to Six Flags, it was so much fun!!!! There is such a variety of things to do, and everybody got a chance to do something they liked. Becca had a great time seeing all the animals, which ranged from cheetahs to tigers to lions to dolphins to seals. She loved them!! Hannah, Ben, and Jess got to go on the merry go round, the train, and Ben was brave enough to go on a roller coaster with Dad. Their laughter was so much fun to listen to! Dad and Sarah went on the go carts, where Dad lapped Sarah several times. Mom did many things she enjoyed, such as changing diapers, chasing hysterical children, getting hot and sweaty, and taking pictures!! Yeah, don't we all love to do stuff like that. Marissa, Jenna, and Kaela (me) got the really fun experience of going on a ride called Medusa, the biggest roller coaster in Six Flags, that had a specialty of going upside down super fast. This experience was enhanced by the girl behind them screaming the whole ride as loud as she could. The ride was so much fun, it took them about 10 minutes before they could walk straight.

On a more serious note, we had a delightful interview with Maurice Healy, editor of the Catholic San Francisco this afternoon. He was passionate about the idea that we as a society need to reach out to the children. We bantered about ideas about how churches can take a more active role in caring for the children. He stated that he was willing to profile children in his paper. Maurice is going to stay in touch and we are sharing other possibilities for waiting children

Love ,

Jeanne, Mikaela and Neal

P.S. Check out our new pictures--we finally updated them!!

When you drive a 15 passenger van with four toppers on the roof, you stick out! When you drive a 15 passenger van with four toppers on the roof in Las Vegas - you might as well start humming the tune of the Beverly Hillbillies. So we waited 30 minutes to get across two traffic lights to turn into the World Famous Balagio Cassino so that we could see the lights, we were driving to the Valet, and Neal had a panic attack, " WHO WOULD WANT TO TRY TO PARK THIS THING ? and IF THEY TRY TO PARK THIS THING, WILL THERE BE ENOUGH ROOM FOR THEM TO SIT DOWN WITHOUT HALF OF THE VAN CONTENTS FALLING ON THEM?" What a decision- but now we are in traffic and turning that 15 passenger van is not like turning the Cooper that I drive in my dreams!

HERE WE GO!!

We were struck by how many different languages that we heard, French, Spanish , Middle Eastern etc.... at one point Jeanne stated that she heard 8 different languages . She stated that Italian was her favorite!! WE were all captivated by the water show at the Balagio, we attempted to take pictures of our Buddies facing several of the famous Casinos.

Jenna attempted to take a slide show that we will attempt to link.

We are currently in Arizona and we are having some issues with our internet connections. We will be attempting to update more frequently when we get to a hotel with easier access.

Peace to all!!

Neal and Jeanne

Hello Everyone,
This is Mikaela. To start out, I'd like to address my dad's last comment. First of all, where did you get all those toothpicks, Dad?? Second, I'd like to know how you attached all these toothpicks together. From what I understand, it is not a habit of the guards of Alcatraz to give their inmates Super Glue or string (correct me if I'm wrong there Dad) and thirdly, even if you did have plastic surgery, you still look exactly the same (I know because I am looking at you right now) then you did before we got to San Francisco. I think we need a little better explanation dad, in fact, being that you can't spell Los Angeles right (see last message), I'm starting to have my doubts that you were even in California!!!! What a "storyteller" you are Dad!!!

Now, getting on to the latest news. Jenna's chronic bad luck is back again. (The poor kid, in case you didn't know before, she's only been trick-or-treating four times in her life because she's been sick every other year.) Anyway, this time, it has come in the form of a stingray. A stinging stingray, to be exact. We went to the Pacific Ocean to swim, when Jenna stepped on a stingray, and it stung her. She had to sit in the lifeguard headquarters for an hour with her foot in a boiling bucket of water to get the poison out of her foot. We had to wait until she was well before we could head to Las Vegas, so we ended up getting here around midnight. We are hoping now that Jenna's chronic bad luck will put itself on hold until we are back in Minnesota. Keep that in your prayers. Tonight, we are going to the Las Vegas Strip. Tomorrow, someone will update you with our fun stories from there.

See you,
Mikaela

Certain moments in life are both fabulous and frightening: Sarah attended the orientation and moved into the University of Arizona dorms. We are so proud of her for testing herself, moving outside of her comfortable home and following her dream to participate in college athletics and attend college. I guess on some level you get what you bargain for--- We tell our children to go after what they want-but why couldn't she pick Hamline or Augsburg? We would even allow her to attend St Thomas if it meant she could stay closer to home. We know this certain professor who is in the theology department who I here is an easy "A".It is said that some of his students turn delusional after they graduate. In fact there is one who has been referenced by this same professor that swears she was normal prior to her attending the University of St. Thomas.

Greetings to all!!

I need to clear up a terrible misunderstanding... I was only in Alcatraz for a short amount of time - Don't tell anyone ,but I was not the only to person to escape the island.. I made my break by attaching toothpicks together to make a raft.. To avoid the law, I floated down to Santa Barbara and had major plastic surgery. Who would have known???

More exciting and interesting facts that better explain my many personality quirks to come.

Neal

P.S. This has been an incredible journey!! Today,we met with Paula Doyle, a writer from a Los Angelos paper called The Tidings. We are hopeful, like with all the other papers thus far, that we will have assisted in developing a relationship between the " adoption agency and the paper" that will allow for ongoing profiles of children being published on a regular basis,

It needs to be stated that we are very grateful to the many that have assisted us with this journey!

nb