She’s a five-year-old girl who is proving it’s not what you do or how much you can raise, life is about being compassionate no matter how young you are.
For a few days in a row, Madden Friesen has sat on a quiet residential street just off of Broadway Avenue in Saskatoon. Instead of a lemonade stand, she is offering stylish and sassy hairdos for a donation.
“She came up with the idea of doing a hairstyle stand all by herself,” said Angie Friesen, Madden mom.
“She got the table, the chairs, made her sign and carried it all outside and got ready for a booming business.”
Thinking outside of the box, Madden’s hairstyle experience does not include a brush, a comb or barrettes. She’s offering dye jobs with washable markers, something the kids in the neighbourhood don’t seem to mind one bit.
“We did a little promotion, she went and knocked on a few doors on her street,” laughed Angie.
Madden doesn’t have a goal in mind but the cause behind her little sidewalk hairdressing shop will warm your heart.
“So we can help Chantel adopt another baby,” she said in almost a whisper.
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For years, Greg and Chantel Denie have done missionary work overseas including in South Africa with Legacy One.
“We fell in love with the kids and the people, we just really felt called – like that was what we were supposed to do,” Chantel said.
On one trip the couple visited an orphanage and describe the experience as eye opening. They were also struck by just how strong their connection was to the children inside and had a hard time leaving.
“I had never been to a third world country before and I had never seen that kind of need before,” Greg said.
“Just seeing the kids that so desperate for attention, desperate for love. Literally, I remember them just standing as we left and they were weeping at the door.”
That’s when the couple decided they could no longer deny their desire to adopt.
“My grandfather is adopted, Chantel has an aunt that is adopted, my best friend growing up he’s got five brothers that were adopted so we’ve been around adoption a lot,” Greg explained.
“Even when we first got married we talked about that as being an option. I think we thought we have a biological one first but it didn’t pan out that way and we were excited to start our journey this way.”
In 2015, they signed the official paperwork and things moved along a lot quicker than they first thought it would. By the next year, little Ezekiel came into their lives when he was just 14-months-old and they have fallen madly in love.
The goal now is to add a fourth member to their family but there’s a huge financial hurdle to overcome first.
“Our last adoption cost about $50,000 once everything was said and done and it’s sort’ve what we anticipate again,” Chantel said.
The couple says it’s about $30,000 in adoption fees then there’s a home study, travel and a seven-week stay in South Africa when they get the good news. They fund-raised the first time and plan to do the same in the hopes of adopting a second child.
The couple says to see a little girl with such a big heart try to help them achieve this, brings a tear to their eyes and a smile to their faces.
“It’s just so cool, I think the world needs more little kids like her that think outside of ‘me, me, me’ and find some causes and it’s pretty cool that she would step up and do that for us,” Greg said.
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