Wearing royal-blue and gold caps and gowns, 17 students will receive their diplomas and present a program. A reception will follow. Among those in attendance will be Lutheran Life Villages residents who participate in intergenerational programming at Children’s Village.

The goal at LSSI’s Children’s Village is to prepare students for kindergarten and beyond. “We hope this graduation will be just the first of many educational milestones passed by these children,” says Children’s Village Director Kathy Lehman.

Children’s Village is located at 6613 South Anthony Boulevard, on the Lutheran Life Villages campus.

Approximately 125 people—30 Lutheran Life Villages residents, 50 students from LSSI’s Children’s Village, 33 staff members representing both organizations, and several volunteers—will arrive at the zoo in two large buses at around 9:30 a.m.

After breaking into smaller groups to visit denizens of the zoo, the entire entourage will reassemble for a picnic lunch before returning to the Lutheran Life Villages campus on South Anthony Boulevard at about 12:45 p.m.

Located on the Lutheran Life Villages South Anthony Boulevard campus, Children’s Village is an early-learning center for children 6 weeks to 6 years old. Many Lutheran Life Villages residents regularly join the children for intergenerational programming that benefits both groups.

Our names are Bob and Michelle, and from the time we married, we have looked forward to God blessing us with children.  We have always felt called to adopt, and had planned on having a family with both our adopted and biological children.  We found out soon after we were married that God was calling us to adopt, rather than have children biologically.  We don’t see our infertility as a loss; rather, we see a new door opening and an opportunity to raise a beautiful child through adoption.

Our lives revolve around children.  While we have no children of our own, we spend a great deal of time with children.    We are both teachers, and also spend our summers developing a love for sports and art in children.  Since we are both teachers, education is very important to us as well.  We can promise that our children will get a great education at a private school.  We can also promise that summers will be filled with fun opportunities as a family, since we are both teachers. 

Our family is also very important.  We take great joy in spending as much time with our family, especially our nephews and niece, as possible.  Our child will enjoy this love of a family as well.  Michelle loves to bake and garden with her nephew; while Bob likes to take his nephew to watch different sporting events.  We also attend games regularly to cheer on Uncle Bob, as he is a boys’ basketball coach as well.  Biking, going on small day trips, taking them to a park, or just sitting around the house playing games are all things we do often with our nephews and niece. 

Bob and I have so much in common that our relationship together is very strong.  We both love our professions, and we can relate well with one another because we are both in the same profession.  We have the same days off, so we are lucky enough to be able to take yearly vacations (usually to warm, sunny Florida), spend weekends together, and do things other couples can’t.  Bob describes Michelle as hard-working, considerate, and fun-loving.  Michelle describes Bob as kind, thoughtful, and excited about all things he does.  We both volunteer often, and this is a way we give back to our community.

We are also active in our church.  Our children will grow up in a Christian household, knowing and loving God.  We attend church very regularly, and this will continue to be a big part of our life as parents.  We strive to be good role models in our morals and values, and we will instill this responsibility in our children, too.

Again, thank you for this precious gift that you are considering.  Many prospective adoptive parents see your gift as a true self-sacrifice.  For a family that cannot have a baby, it will be the most precious gift they can receive.  We will continue praying for a healthy pregnancy.  Regardless of your choice, please know that you are in our prayers.

We are Aris and Heather. Thank you for taking a closer look at us.  We are an educated, happy and fun loving couple who have been married for 8 years.  We are so very ready to become first-time parents through open, semi-open or a closed adoption.

We enjoy spending a lot of time outdoors either in our yard, at the nearby state park, lake or camping with friends and their little ones.  We have a passion for travel and take a week-long vacation every summer along with a few weekend getaways.

We are grateful that you are considering adoption as part of your birth plan. We understand that you are searching for a loving home for your baby and we hope we can be a positive part of the journey along with you. Our hopes for our family are simple. We will love, guide and support our child so that he or she will become the best person he or she wants to be. Our parenting style will be calm, consistent, respectful and centered on learning and love. We can’t wait to welcome a sweet baby into our family and our home as we have so much love to give. We have been “nesting”, preparing our sunny nursery with items that will pamper this sweet baby.  The day that we are able to hold this miracle and sing lullabies (possibly off-key) will be the best day of our lives.

We have been praying for a child and despite failed fertility treatments, we still know that one day a beautiful baby will be a part of our family.  We hope you know that you will always be a part of your child’s life.  As part of our family, your child will always know about you and will be ensured that you love them.

How it all began

We met on September 11^th, 1999 when Heather came home for her birthday weekend while working in Chicago.  We were both out with friends when Aris asked Heather to dance.  We corresponded for a few months through emails and weekend visits until Heather moved back to her hometown, where Aris was attending college.  Emails turned into dates, dates made them fall in love, love led to marriage and we now live in wonderful home.

We were married in 2003 in Heather’s hometown surrounded by close friends and family. It was such a beautiful day! Even before we were married, we knew we wanted to have children. A few years into our marriage we realized that despite all of our efforts to conceive, it was not going to happen and so we started thinking about adoption.

Aris’ story

Aris grew up on one of the Greek Islands in the Mediterranean Sea.  In his culture children are always surrounded by many cousins, aunts and uncles and learn strong family values.  He was raised by both of his amazing parents, Eleni and Andreas.  Aris has an older brother and the two grew up very close to one another.  They are best of friends.  Aris’ mother is a Radiologist and travels the world to help others in need.  Aris’ father spent his career educating and rehabilitating the underprivileged in their country.

Aris and his brother are both very serious athletes, which is what brought Aris to the United States.  After completing his bachelor’s degree and master’s degree he chose to become a United States citizen and has developed a new interest in learning about the US political system.  Aris absolutely loves his job as a software engineer.  He is still very active with other athletes he attended college with and plans monthly dinners for all of their families.  Aris’ hobbies are learning the US political system, volleyball, gardening, home improvement, boating, camping and traveling.

Heather’s story

Heather grew up in the Midwest attending Catholic school’s through college.  She was raised by her nurturing mother and father in the home she and Aris now own.  Heather earned her bachelor’s and master’s degree and is now a college instructor teaching hospitality administration.  Previous to teaching, Heather worked for 11 years in professional sports which eventually took her around the world to Australia where she worked for the Sydney Olympics.  She has an older sister who has three sons.  Heather loves yoga, scrapbooking, reading, fishing, camping and traveling.

Our story

A month after we were engaged Heather’s adorable mother passed away.  We chose to purchase the house that Heather grew up in to stay close to her father.  A large remodeling project was underway and a beautiful in-law suite was quickly built so they could all live together.  Luckily the house is on a large property with plenty of room to grow and play.

Our house has 4 bedrooms, 3 full baths and 2 half baths with a huge living room and media room, which we hope to fill with lots and lots of children’s toys.  We have already picked out the room that will be the baby’s room!  It will get the prettiest views and the warm sunshine through the full grown trees in our neighborhood.  Our family consists of the two of us and our two loveable and lazy basset hounds, Fred and Lola.  Fred and Lola love everyone and everything.  Lola is a bit of a diva and the groomer paints her nails pink to prove it.  Fred loves his belly rubbed and they both love snuggling.

If you can picture a neighborhood with lush mature trees where people jog, walk with their baby strollers and dogs all of the time, you have a picture of our neighborhood.  Everyone waves or stops by to say hi.  The neighbors have cookie exchanges and backyard cookouts all of the time.  There are many children in our young neighborhood with plenty more on the way.  So our baby will grow up with a lot of neighborhood friends to fill our house with play-dates and sleep-overs.

We live just a couple of blocks from a few parks complete with fun play areas, swings, slides and teeter-totters.  In the fall there is a huge harvest festival just a few blocks from our home.  Heather has wonderful memories as a child going to that festival with her parents and eating caramel apples while watching the “pioneers” teaching the children about what life was like long ago.

Parenting together

Thank you for taking a moment to allow us to introduce ourselves and share some perspectives with you about our family and our passion for adopting a child.  We are Russell and Stephanie – a loving Christian couple with a strong faith and family base.  We have been married for eight years now and have a dog named Maggie.  We always have known that we are destined to be parents.  We appreciate you taking the time to read through our profile and hope it calls to your heart and mind as you consider all the choices involved in the adoption process.

We thought you may want to know a little bit about how the decision to adopt a child became a defining moment in our lives.  Our adoption journey has been a lengthy one, full of excitement and also challenges.  We have learned from others about their experiences, some of whom are close members of our family; others are close friends; and still others are people we have met as we have become extremely dedicated to reaching our dream of adopting a child.  A great deal of prayer, thought, planning, and soul searching helped us not only to decide but to know with the utmost confidence, that adopting a child is the answer to our prayers.  It would be unfair of us to pretend that we fully understand how difficult it must be for you to go through this experience because we want so much to become parents, but we do have something in common in that we all want is what is best for this child.

After we made the decision to adopt, another very important aspect of the adoption process for us has been the preparation.  Planning for a child’s arrival is an amazing process, and one in which we have been fully engaged for quite some time.  When we purchased our home, we did so with a family in mind.   Our house is located in a family-friendly neighborhood.  We have a three bedroom home with both a family room and living room, and a large fenced-in backyard.  In the summer we enjoy our beautiful shade trees and thriving vegetable garden.  Most importantly, we lovingly have prepared a special room in our home for a child.  Family and friends have been blessing us with gifts to make this child feel at home. We have been making it a safe, warm and happy place for our future family.

In addition to decision making and preparation, we felt it would be important to share the makeup of our core values.  God and family are the centers of our lives.  Our faith in God gives us a sense of strength, joy and comfort.  We have close relationships with all of our family members who could not be more in agreement with and supportive of us pursuing the adoption of a child.  We have very excited grandmothers, siblings, aunts and uncles, cousins, and close friends who are ready to meet and love a child.  We are just waiting for our opportunity to share our whole lives with a child, as a member of our family.

We are people who like to plan, and we began planning a while ago for this blessed opportunity.  For instance, we met in nursing school and on our first date we talked about how many children we each wanted to have – our discussions and excitement only grew in positive ways from that point!  We both graduated with nursing degrees and work in our chosen fields.  We enjoy that we have the good fortune to meet and work with many people, and that we are able to help them through their illnesses and pains.  We also strive to help them overcome the apprehensions they experience.  Encouraging our patients to find their inner strength as they are recovering while also supporting them is something we both focus on in our daily work.  This is something we do with our personal lives as well.  We will be so richly and deeply blessed to have a child to share these and other lessons with as he/she grows up within our family.

Thank you for taking the time to read our profile.  We hope that you will consider us as you make this critical decision – we promise to raise this child through faith and love as our foundation.  Choosing us to raise this child would be the most selfless act from you, and for us the most tremendous gift we ever could receive.  We want you to know that we value the role you could have in this child’s life (if you choose to have one).  We also would share with this child any information that you would want him/her to have in the future.  Thank you again for your consideration, and we wish you all the best with this choice and any other future decisions.

Most sincerely,

Russell and Stephanie

Children’s Village

Provide a warm, nurturing, safe and loving environment in which children can grow physically, emotionally, spiritually, socially, and intellectually where faith is nurtured, self-concepts are enhanced, independence is encouraged and individuality is respected. Responsible for assigned children and classroom activity, operation and performance in accordance with the co-teacher. Perform duties according to agency program and guidelines.

Requirements

• At least 21 years of age for licensing purposes.
• High School diploma or GED.
• CDA or degree in early-childhood or elementary education preferred.
• Experience in early-childhood education preferred.

Submit a cover letter and résumé by mail to Lutheran Social Services of Indiana, Attn: Human Resources, 330 Madison St. Fort Wayne, IN 46802, or by email to lssinmailbox@lssin.org.

EOE

This month Impact 52 came to Children’s Village to volunteer with one of our classes. Aaron joined the class for a few hours in the morning, and the kids really loved interacting with him. First, they walked down to exercise class with residents at Lutheran Life Villages. Everyone loved seeing him there, and the kids were fascinated by how tall he was. One little boy was very concerned that he might not fit into the elevator to ride down to the class. Then after exercise, the kids enjoyed some creative hands-on playtime. Aaron joined several kids making clay. They made a snake named “brain.” The kids really loved having Aaron there.

For more information, visit the Bank on Fort Wayne website, www.bankonfortwayne.org, or call Bethany, our financial literacy coordinator, at (260) 426-3347.