Idea for Foster Children - Foster Bags

Growing up I had two little brothers. I begged and begged my parents to adopt a girl so I could have a little sister to no avail. When I was 25 I knew a teacher that in her 30's had never married but decided to adopt a daughter from China. She now has three. So when my dad asked me where I thought I'd be in ten years, my reply was simple. I told him that by age 35 if I wasn't married I would try to adopt a child. Just because I couldn't be a wife didn't mean I couldn't be a mother. (I wanted to honor God by not having sex outside of marriage.)

So here I am at age 35. I am married but we have not yet had any children. We have thought that even if we did have one child of our own we would still adopt. Having 3-4 kids total would be hectic but nice overall. Since I have talked of our thoughts of adopting and that we are very open to the idea, I have found many female friends that are adoptive mothers or have been foster mothers. Now like most couples, the idea of fostering a child, growing attached to them and then having to let them go and perhaps not knowing what becomes of them may be too much to bear. That's why it is such an extremely difficult thing to have enough foster parents and why it has to be such a specific calling, perhaps even more so than adoption itself. One of my friends through the Baptist Student Ministries Alumni is an adoptive mother. I did not know her in school but was contacted by her when it was decided to have an alumni luncheon to raise money for mission trips for current BSM students. So we became Facebook Friends.

A few days ago she shared a blog of a friend of her's starting a ministry called "Provisional Love" http://provisionallove.blogspot.com/. The idea is that this family (that includes adopted children that have been in the foster care system) wants to collect items for children just entering what can be be a scary experience of foster care. They point out that when children are placed in foster care for the first time, they often have no belongings of their own but the clothes on their backs. Imagine as a child, going from the only home you have ever known, to being taken by one set of complete strangers to go and live with another set of complete strangers, leaving everything familiar behind.

This got me to thinking: what if churches and women's groups could come together and make "Foster Bags" for foster children. The idea would be to buy or make bags - perhaps just canvas bags that could be decorated and fill them with a few toys, a stuffed animal, toothbrush, toothpaste, a pad of paper, crayons and pencils. Older children might receive bags with journals. These could be kept at CPS or a foster agency to give to a child. It would be a way of saying wherever you are and wherever you go this belongs to you. I don't know if you could add children's or teen bibles or not. Now I don't have much money right now, but this is a very real need that could be filled for not too much money per bag. A sort of Operation Christmas Child but for local foster kids that are normally poor, neglected, abused, abandoned, or had something happen to their parents and have no one else to care  for them.

My husband, Ray, pointed out that similar bags might be beneficial to the Red Cross to hand to children devastated by disasters.

Hmm, something to think and pray about.

James 1:27

Pure and lasting religion in the sight of God our Father means that we must care for orphans and widows in their troubles, and refuse to let the world corrupt us.

Mark 9:35-37

He sat down and called the twelve disciples over to him. Then he said,"Anyone who wants to be the first must take last place and be the servant of everyone else." Then he put a little child among them. Taking the child in his arms, he said to them,  "Anyone who welcomes a little child like this on my behalf welcomes me, and anyone who welcomes me welcomes my Father who sent me."

Videos and photo at the SAME TIME!

So there you are, attending a wedding of a dear friend or relative. You want to take photos and video. But you only have two hands. Taking pictures is going to be difficult because the lighting isn't best, but you don't want to disturb others by having the flash going off and frankly the noises your camera makes can be bothersome. But you don't just want video, you want beautiful pictures because it may be a little while before wedding photos are sent to the bride and groom by the photographer. In some weddings there are no videographers to catch the special moments either.

The solution: If your camera has video capabilities, use the video. Make sure beforehand that you have a back-up battery for your camera and plenty of card space. It might be wise to invest in a few gigs of memory card. I have one that is 16g so that I never have to change cards, and I also keep a couple of 2g in case my 16 card goes bad.

After you put your video clips on the computer, here is how you take photos from the video.

First, open the Windows "Paint" program. If you aren't familiar with it you will find it in the Accessories folder in your All Programs menu in your Start button.

Second, watch the video in as high definition as you can on your computer screen. Use full screen for viewing if you can. While watching the video, hold down the "Alt" key so you are ready to take your picture at a moments' notice. When you see a picture perfect moment, and while holding down the Alt key, press the "Print Screen" key. This is usually found at the top right of your keyboard. Then pause your video, go to the "Paint" program and paste the screen shot you just made by either holding down "CTRL" and pressing the "V" or going to the "Edit" menu in Paint and selecting "Paste".  You can then save the photo as a .jpg file and also print the picture. After you save the file, then go back and crop or change colors or whatever and save that file under a different file name. That way if you accidentally mess up the edited version you can just go back to the original.

So in short:

Take video. Open Paint. View video on computer screen. Alt+PrintScreen to take a screen shot. CTRL+V to paste into Paint and then save or edit or print as you like. If you miss the shot you wanted you can always play that piece of video again to get the shot you like. Now you can have video and pictures that are essentially taken at the same time.