Tag Archives: Addition by Adoption

Milo’s Well

In 2010 I wrote the book Addition by Adoption. It’s a collection of tweets and essays that tells the story of my son coming home. It’s a story of adoption, clean water and a stay at home dad. I wanted it to be more than just a book, so we pledged to build a clean water well in Ethiopia. Wells cost an average of $5,000, so we had a lot of work to do.

A little over two years ago we met that goal and raised $5,000. Sales of the book (usually $2 from every copy, in some cases more) generated $628, and the incredible generosity of so many people raised the rest—$4,385. It’s yet another reminder that we can do so little on our own, but we can do more than we can imagine together.

I say all this because that money we raised has built a well in Ethiopia. I just got the email from charity: water. You an look at the Google Map, see the pictures and read about the community impacted by the well.

And there, in the picture, are the words: “In celebration of the adoption of Milo Rahimeto Hendricks.”

"In celebration of the adoption of Milo Rahimeto Hendricks."

I saw those words and started cheering and crying.

You did that.

Thank you.

The Well
The village of Segalu in Northern Ethiopia now has clean drinking water. Before they had to walk up to two hours to collect dirty water. Now clean water is within a 15-minute walk for most of the community. By giving them water, you have given them time and health.

A shallow bore hole was dug and capped with a hand pump. The community build a wall and a door around the well to protect it, taking ownership of it. We’re also working in partnership with the community as each family made a small donation to fund the well (between 3-6 cents) and will pay 3-6 cents per month going forward to fund maintenance.

The well cost a total of $7,244, proving once again that we can’t do it alone. My Addition by Adoption campaign was pooled with two others to collect the necessary funds.

You can read all this on charity: water’s site, but I just love repeating it.

Milo’s Well
I showed Milo the pictures today and told him about the project. I probably said too much—I told him about the book and how it’s about adopting him and clean water and all that. I told him about collecting dirty water in Ethiopia, about giardia and how this well would keep people healthy. I tend to way over-explain these things.

“There it is, Milo,” I said. “There’s a well in Ethiopia with your name on it.”

Then in his little boy voice he said, “Thank you for adopting me.”

His gratitude for being adopted is kind of awkward (would you thank your mom for giving birth to you?). I don’t know what to do with that. It’s not an expectation that should ever be placed on a child. You’re my son. You just are. There’s no thanks required. But he said it, unprompted.

“No Milo, thank you for being my boy,” I said. I hugged him and told him I loved him. That seems like a good response to a great many things in life.

Then he spotted a picture of Lexi on my desk and exclaimed, “There’s Lexi when she was adopted!”

I couldn’t help but laugh. How do I explain that Lexi wasn’t adopted, she was, well, born. Just like Milo was born? But. Wait. Um… Nevermind that the picture was Lexi’s first grade school photo, taken last month.

Confusion abounds, I suppose, but I like that Milo clearly feels safe and loved and knows that “being adopted” is in no way less. It’s just different. And that’s OK. We’re all kind of different.

After all, some of us have wells in Ethiopia with our names on them. And others helped pay for that well. We may be different, but we’re very much the same.

Thank You
I want to say it again: Thank you. While I put my own time and sweat into Addition by Adoption, the numbers above clearly reflect that this didn’t happen because of me. There are at least 80 people who donated to the campaign, others who donated to the campaigns who were pooled together with ours, others who bought books, others who raised funds from their friends and family, and still others who spread the word. To each and every one of you, thank you. I’ll be attempting to send you my personal thanks, but it’s likely I won’t get to everyone (especially the people I don’t even know). So thank you. Thank you.

Milo’s gratitude may have felt awkward for me, but that’s my problem. Let us never shy away from giving thanks. Thank you for helping us help the people of Ethiopia, for giving back to them in a celebration of Milo’s life and heritage. We owe a debt that can never be repaid, but we will try anyway, like drops in the ocean.

Amesege’nallo’.
(‘thank you’ in Amharic)

By the way, Milo’s birthday is next week. What a birthday present.

Support the Mudula Mamas

Mudula MamasThree moms of children born in Mudula, Ethiopia (also in Southern Ethiopia where Milo was born), are competing in a triathlon in Dallas on Sunday, Oct. 2 to raise money for Mudula Water, a clean water project. They’re also part of the Janus Charity Challenge where the top fundraisers earn extra cash for their charity (up to $8,000!).

You can read more about it and donate here.

These inspiring moms are racing for water and racing for life (one of the moms was profiled here). This area of Ethiopia is experiencing a drought and feeling the impacts of the current famine. It’s hard to ignore and this is an easy way to help.

That’s the basics of what’s happening, but there are also several efforts going to help these Mudula Mamas raise more money and score that extra $8,000 for clean water.

I’m getting personally involved as well. I helped edit the copy on the donate page, I’m advising on the social media aspects of the campaign, we’re pitching in (a tiny bit) on the matching fund below and I’m donating my book profits. Will you join me? Here are three simple ways you can help:

1. All You Have to Do is Click
The first effort is the easy one. All you have to do is click. A number of people have offered to donate $1 to the Mudula Mamas efforts for every ‘like’ on various Facebook pages:

All you have to do is visit the pages above and click ‘like’ at the top. Simple.

These are all small, grassroots groups that care about Ethiopia and fighting poverty. I’m sure there’s a practical limit to how much each challenge is willing to donate (I know for one of them it’s over $1,000!), but let’s make them sweat. ;-)

2. Meskel Match
Sept. 27 is the celebration of Meskel in Ethiopia, so we’re celebrating with the Meskel Match. If we can get $1,500 in donations on Tuesday, we’ll match it. Donate on Tuesday, Sept. 27 and help us bring in an extra $1,500 for clean water in Mudula.

Update: We raised well over $1,500 on Tuesday and scored the matching grant. Thank you! That’s a huge shot in the arm towards getting the extra $8,000 from Janus.

3. Buy My Book
Addition by Adoption: Kids, Causes & 140 CharactersMany of you have heard me talk about clean water before. It’s an important issue and it was the center of my book, Addition by Adoption. For the rest of this week I’ll donate all the profits from my book to the Mudula Mamas. I make $3.84 per copy sold on Amazon and usually donate $2 of that to charity: water, but for this week we’ll send it all to Mudula Water (I think Scott Harrison will understand). There are two ways to buy:

The Regular Approach:
Buy it from Amazon – Cost: $9.99 – $3.84 goes to Mudula.

The Save More, Give More Approach:
Buy it from CreateSpace – Cost: $8.99 (with coupon code “TARZGB88” for $1 off) – $4.84 goes to Mudula.
(CreateSpace is run by Amazon, so it’s legit, you just don’t get the benefit of using your Amazon gift card, shipping deals, etc.)

Note: My book came out more than a year ago and sales have really fallen off. So don’t think this is some super generous effort on my part. I expect we’ll sell maybe one or two copies. Go ahead and prove me wrong.

Help the Mudula Mamas
Will you join me in helping these inspiring moms bring clean water to Mudula, Ethiopia? Donate now.

Spoke at Speak

Justin Wise Instagrammed my talk at Speak.

So last night I swallowed my public speaking fears and gave a talk on church communication at the Speak Conference. The response was overwhelmingly positive, which is incredible for this non-speaker.

Thankfully I didn’t trip over the podium or say anything embarrassing. Though I did almost lose my voice by the end (should have brought my water on stage).

Maybe I should venture out from behind my desk more often. Although today I’m completely exhausted. The introvert in me needs some serious alone time, maybe curled up in a corner somewhere.

Continue reading Spoke at Speak

Speaking at Speak

Despite the fact that I hate public speaking, I’m doing more public speaking this week. I’ll be sharing at the Speak Conference in Minneapolis this Thursday, Sept. 8. The event is free for locals (though register now, there are only 54 tickets remaining) and being streamed online for everyone else.

A few folks I work with are also speaking, like CFCC co-director Justin Wise and Table VP Jason Wenell. There are also a bunch of other folks speaking I haven’t met yet, but am looking forward to hearing from.

The conference will cover how churches communicate online. I’m planning to talk about how to tell your story online and I’ll be using my book, Addition by Adoption, as a major example. This afternoon I’m hoping to put together my PowerPoint presentation (eek). Thankfully I only have ten minutes, so we’re going for a very minimal presentation (mostly just an excuse to show pictures of the kids).

The event is from 6-8:30 p.m. and I think I go on near the end, so feel free to tune in online. You can count how many times I say “um.”

Looking Back at 2010

It’s New Year’s Eve and nobody’s really working today, so it’s time for a little 2010 recap. Thankfully my wife did a full recap in photos, so I can skimp a little.

2010 has been insane.

Bigger Family
The biggest moment, of course, was welcoming a preteen into our family, along with all the Hannah Montana and Justin Bieber and sparkly pink that comes with a pre-teen. It’s been quite a ride with Yeshumnesh and we’ve got a ways to go. I’ve never felt so old—and at the same time so young. I did manage to welcome Yeshumnesh into our family with a new haircut. First time in three years I paid for one. The mohawk made our Christmas card.

Writing Wins
I also published three books:

Addition by Adoption, is my book of tweets about raising kids and bringing Milo home from Ethiopia. A portion of the proceeds go to clean water in Ethiopia, and in September we hit the $5,000 mark and raised enough to build a well in Ethiopia. The book is also just barely turning a profit, which is exciting.

Then there’s Open Our Eyes, the book that supports homeless advocate Mark Horvath. If you want to know more about what Mark does, read Ka’e k’e‘s story. It’s been a big year for Mark. We also helped him win $50,000. The book has all kinds of big names contributors, like New York Times best-selling author Chris Brogan. All profits from the book go to support Mark’s work with InvisiblePeople.tv. The profits aren’t much—I send Mark his first payment yesterday ($226.56), but he won’t be retiring any time soon. Knowing Mark he’ll be spending it on someone else.

I also published a post-apocalyptic sci-fi novel. More for fun than anything and to give self publishing a try (works nicely, crappy cover and all). The post-apocalyptic fun continued all year as I kept diving into more post-apocalyptic literature (hmm… maybe I should have reversed that order).

For all the writing success, I also had a big failure. My fourth attempt at National Novel Writing Month fell flat. I gave up after two weeks when the story wasn’t coming together and I realized my life was too busy.

Giving Back
With building a well in Ethiopia and publishing a book to fight homelessness I’ve done a lot of giving back this year. But it started even earlier when we responded to an earthquake by coloring. Lexi’s pictures ended up raising $675 for Haiti. Other folks got in on the action about the time the idea fizzled out. I’d love to do more with it, but I think I have enough charity cases on my hand.

Blog Action Day: Clean Water

Today is Blog Action Day and thousands of blogs will be talking about clean water. I wrote a post over at HalogenTV about why I care about clean water. Last month we met the goal of raising $5,000 for charity: water through my book, Addition by Adoption, raising enough to build a well in Ethiopia (and then some). So I already know many of you care about clean water. And rather than telling you more about what you already know, I just wanted to say thank you.

Thank you.

As you see lots of talk about clean water today you can give a hardy thumbs up. You’re already on board and that’s pretty cool. Thank you.

You Did It: A Well in Ethiopia

A week ago today I started a big push to raise $2,146 for charity: water by Sept. 30. I wanted to finish my campaign to raise $5,000 and build a well in Ethiopia and get that money to people who need it right away. I wasn’t sure if we could do it.

But today the final bit came in and we raised $2,147 in eight days! You just built a well in Ethiopia. You provided clean water for an entire village. That is so beyond anything. I’m not even sure what to say. Thank you doesn’t cover it.

So far $628 has come in from my book, Addition by Adoption, and an amazing $4,385 has come from direction donations (Yes, if you do the math that’s $5,013—just because we hit $5,000 doesn’t mean we have to stop). That’s so cool. And proof that this is definitely nothing I did on my own—I had the help of a whole lot of people who donated, bought books and told their friends. So cool. Thank you.

I’ll have more to say about all of this, but right now I’m just grateful and honestly a little bit in disbelief.

Thank you.

Build a Clean Water Well in Ethiopia

I’ve been trying to raise $5,000 to build a clean water well in Ethiopia through charity: water.

We’ve raised $580 from sales of Addition by Adoption.

Another $2,275 has come in from direct donations.

But we need another $2,146. And I’d like to raise it by Sept. 30.

charity: water puts a limit on how long these campaigns can go on, and I’ve already extended this campaign twice. I want to get this money to the field as soon as possible. So let’s build that well!

Of course raising $2,146 in 15 days is no easy feat. I can’t do it alone. I need your help. Will you help me spread the word?

I’ve learned that’s the most important thing. I can’t do it alone. Most of my friends already know about this. But your friends don’t. My friend Julia proved how true that is by raising nearly $800 for this campaign in one week. I couldn’t do that—but Julia could. Can you help me out like that?

Here’s How You Can Help
Post this to your blog, Facebook or e-mail it to your friends and family:

Help my friend Kevin build a well in Ethiopia. Clean water=life. He needs to raise $2,146 by Sept. 30. You can help:

  1. Make a donation to charity: water. Any amount helps.
    http://mycharitywater.org/addition
  2. Buy a copy of his book, Addition by Adoption:

You can post this to Twitter:

Help @kevinhendricks build a well in Ethiopia. Clean water=life. He needs to raise $2,146 by Sept. 30. Donate: http://ow.ly/2EEWm

Every little bit helps. Thanks.

A Class Reunion of Sorts

I had a weird dream last night. I was visiting my high school (Yes, I have reoccurring dreams about school—you’d think at 31 these dreams would go away, but no. A few weeks back I dreamed about having to go to school with Yeshumnesh!) and while stopping by the room of a former teacher (who suddenly had a ginormous office complete with fire place) half of my graduating class showed up. It was some kind of bizarro reunion, but I was seeing all these people I hadn’t seen since high school (and I couldn’t remember half their names). Unlike most of my high school dreams this one wasn’t traumatizing—it was hopeful and uplifting.

Which is all very fitting because that’s pretty much what happened yesterday (not the bizarro reunion part, let me explain).

Julia Music is an old friend from middle school and high school. We were really just classmates back then, but today I consider her a friend as we’ve bonded over adoption and long waits. She’s been a big supporter of my book, Addition by Adoption, and even got an unnamed mention on page 50. She heard about the slow but steady pace of my effort to build a clean water well in Ethiopia through charity: water. A portion of the proceeds from my book go to the well and a lot of folks have donated above and beyond that. Since April we had raised $2,046 of the needed $5,000, which is pretty remarkable.

Well, Julia stepped in and decided to help me get to halfway in one day. That meant raising $454 in one day. She started bugging people on Facebook and didn’t stop. She posted well over 150 times on people’s Facebook walls, asking them to donate to my cause. Some people call that annoying. I call it life-changing. Because the money started coming in.

It was $10 and $20 at a time (and sometimes a little more) and it started adding up. Since launching the book and this campaign in April I’ve had 10 people make donations directly to my charity: water campaign. Yesterday 21 people donated. Many of them were people I went to high school with.

By midnight a total of $475 came in, putting the campaign at $2,521—just over halfway.

We’ve been so busy lately—busy with our second Ethiopian adoption—that I’ve hardly had time to think about promoting my book or continuing to beat the drum for clean water in Ethiopia. $5,000 was beginning to feel like it would take forever. And then someone else comes in and carries the load for a little while.

As Mark Horvath of InvisiblePeople.tv would say, I’m just wrecked. I’m humbled that my former classmates would rally like this. I’m full of gratitude and overwhelming thanks. “Thank you” hardly begins to cover it.

A class reunion indeed.

Only $2,479 to go until we can build a clean water well in Ethiopia.

Book Sales By the Numbers

Sometimes it’s easy to get discouraged when you’ve published a book. We’re not all Seth Godin. Books don’t fly off the virtual shelves. So I thought it might help to take a look at the numbers and try to keep them in perspective.

Addition by Adoption officially released on May 11 with a pre-sale in April. A few numbers to date:

  • Copies sold: 185
  • Copies in circulation: 212 (we’ve handed out 27 freebies for publicity, promotion and to friends/family)
  • Total donated to charity: water from book sales: $568
  • Total donated to charity: water by others: $1,478
  • Total raised for charity: water: $2,046
  • Number of people receiving clean water so far: 102
  • Amount we still need to raise to build a well in Ethiopia: $2,954

That’s all pretty incredible. Namely that a self-published book by an author with no platform (love my Twitter friends, but 1,600 followers is not a platform) could sell 185 copies. Even more incredible is that folks have pitched in nearly $1,500 to help build this well in Ethiopia with charity: water. That’s awesome.

What’s a little less awesome is that my net-profit is currently negative. People have told me that writing books is not a good way to make money, and I’m seeing how true that is. Though in all fairness, part of that negative profit is due to unsold inventory from an event that wasn’t very successful. If I can sell that unsold inventory I’ll be back in black (want a multi-copy pack or an Awesome Edition?).

Yes, I’ve become the self-published author with a box of unsold books in the basement.

Though they’re not in a box in the basement, they’re sitting on a shelf in my office. And now I’m thinking a shelf full of my own books in my office is a little narcissistic.

Then again, it’s a Twitter book. Maybe that fits.

So 185 books and $2,046 for clean water in Ethiopia! Those are good numbers. Thank you.