Family, church raise funds for adoption

By BRITTANY FHOLER

Cove Leader-Press

The Tribby family of Copperas Cove held a spaghetti dinner fundraiser Saturday evening at North Pointe Park to raise funds and support for their quest to adopt a 14-year-old girl from the Ukraine. 

The girl was their host daughter over the winter break and will be coming back again for the summer at the end of the month. She doesn’t speak English and doesn’t know—and can’t know--that the family is in the process of trying to adopt her. 

Danielle Tribby learned about New Horizons for Children, the hosting organization they met their prospective adoptive daughter through, around three years ago through Facebook. Her husband, David, shared that adoption has always been something they’ve had their eye on. 

New Horizons for Children is an organization that allows families in the contiguous United States host orphans from Ukraine and Latvia for four weeks or more. 

“The goal of the organization is to give orphans the chance to be a part of a family,” said Danielle Tribby. “It doesn’t necessarily mean that they’ll be adopted but it gives a sense of belonging.”

The placement and hosting also helps the children with learning English, which helps them when they are trying to get a job. 

In Ukraine and Latvia, once orphans turn 16, they are on their own, on the street, Tribby said. 

“Sixty percent of orphan girls- when they’re put out on the streets- become prostitutes, they get bought into sex trafficking, drug deals, crime, stealing,” Tribby said. “And of those 60 percent, 80 percent of them will die before they’re 21, either from being murdered, drug overdose, or suicide.”

Tribby added that the rate of suicide is high because they don’t have anywhere to turn and they become blacklisted from stereotypes about orphans. Several orphans have been adopted as a result of the hosting process, Tribby said. 

The Tribby family first hosted another girl through the program 3-½ years ago. They looked into foster care, respite foster care and other ways to help children but felt that hosting was the best way, Tribby said. 

When their soon-to-be daughter came to them last winter, they picked her up in the middle of the night, brought her home, and woke up the next morning to see her playing outside and bonding with their four children, David Tribby said. 

“It’s like we just woke up the next morning and she belonged,” David said. Their previous host daughter took a bit longer to open up to them.

While she was here, they used the help of Google Translate and hand motions to communicate with her, David said. She speaks a combination of Ukrainian and Russian but doesn’t speak English, he said. 

When the girl left for Ukraine at the beginning of January, the Tribbys felt like a piece of their family was missing, Tribby said. They then decided to move forward in trying to adopt her. 

They offered to host her for the summer, for eight weeks, with her returning to Ukraine towards the end of August. If everything goes as planned, they hope to have the adoption finalized in the winter, David said. 

“We went into it just with the plan of hosting and being a part of her life and then it turned into something more,” Danielle said. The Tribbys have four biological children: Delaney, 14, Devann, 11, Dawson, 7, and Dylan, 5. Their new daughter will be the oldest by five days.

The cost of adopting her ranges from $30,000 to $35,000 and is broken up into chunks, according to Danielle. The first chunk is $5,500, of which the Tribbys only need $1,200 more. The spaghetti dinner fundraiser proceeds from Saturday night will go towards that goal. 

The dinner was held at the North Pointe Park on N. F.M. 116. Dinners were $5 per person or $20 for a family, and guests could enjoy spaghetti and meat sauce, green beans, garlic bread and their choice of dessert: apple sauce cake, chocolate chip blondie brownies, or chocolate brownies. There was lemonade for the drink. 

The Tribbys and their close friends and family members wore shirts that said, “It takes a village to raise a child” on the back and “I am that village” on the front. 

There were several prize drawings with items such as LulaRoe leggings, a LipSense starter pack, Walmart gift cards, Amazon gift cards, and a gift basket full of items made from essential oils. Tickets for the drawings were $2 a piece. 

Sponsors of the event included North Pointe Church, H-E-B, Sue Hoeffling, Lacey Griffel, Kandie Walkos, Samantha Callahan, Danielle Key, Rosie Carpenter, Rachel Koepke and Mary Terry. 

There are no concrete plans for the next fundraiser but Danielle said they will try to do one online on Facebook. Because they can’t let their host daughter know about the adoption process, they can’t have another fundraiser like the one on Saturday, Danielle said. 

If anyone is interested in donating to help the Tribby family with the donation, they can contact Danielle at (254) 251-9826 or through North Pointe Church.