Creating Connections East2West

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.