In the crazy times of the past few weeks with packing up from our time in Pawleys and heading back to Greenville I never got the chance to share with you all about the launch of Frankie’s Candle.  A few weeks we were with the Bridgewater Candle Company as they hosted their reps from across the country in introducing their spring line.  I’ve actually been working with them for the past year in developing  the new Special Edition Signature Candle. 

As many of you know, last year on January 12, Haiti was hit by a major earthquake. At the time our family was in the process of adopting a little boy named Frankie from an orphanage there. We were a year and a half into the process and had been to visit him a couple of times. So as you can imagine, when he heard about the earthquake we were concerned—to put it mildly. The next two weeks are kind of a blur, but basically it was a non-stop battle to get Frankie and the other kids who were already in the adoption process out of the country and home with their new families who could care for them. It was a media circus, and we were telling Frankie’s story and pleading for the government to help him and others get home.

Part of Frankie’s story that has touched our family and ultimately touched a lot of people was the story of his mother’s last act of love before she died. When Frankie’s was sent to the orphanage, he was sent with a bag packed with a few things from his mother. One of those things was a bottle of her used perfume. we were told that Frankie’s mom always wanted her son to know what she smelled like. And we were given the bag to keep for him as he got older. We started referring to this perfume as The Scent of a Mother’s Love, and it became a kind of metaphor for our family as we wanted to honor the love of Frankie’s mom and do our best to live up to that love as Frankie’s adoptive parents. Several newscasts and newspapers and magazines told this story, and it kind of became the story’s legacy, so to speak.

For a while we thought that is where the story would end. But as we began to spend time with Frankie and lived with the reality of Frankie being in our home, our hearts went out for all the kids whose stories didn’t quite turn out so well. We knew that Frankie was one of the lucky ones. So a couple of months later, we started looking for a way for Frankie’s story to help other kids whose stories still hung in the balance. One day as we were brainstorming some possibilities, we came up with an idea to turn the scent of Frankie’s mom’s perfume into a candle. We thought that maybe we could sell candles and help other kids in Haiti and maybe around the world. Fortunately, God was already at work ahead of us.

Our family has been ministering in the Upstate of South Carolina for the past 10 years through our ministry called Wayfarer. One of our board members, Bob Caldwell Jr., who has been serving on our board since the inception of Wayfarer, is President of Grace Management– a Candle Company in the upstate. He knew of our story and the perfume Frankie’s mom left him. The conversation initially started when he wanted us to know that, if we ever wanted to duplicate the perfume (he was not sure how much we had) for Frankie, their company would be more than happy to do that for us. A couple weeks passed after that offer, and so when we came up with our candle idea, we decided to call Bob and see if his company could actually make a candle from the scent.

When we called Bob, Bob said surprisingly that we were actually on his list to call. Grace has a brand of candles called Bridgewater Candles that runs a program called Light a Candle, Feed a Child. Bob wanted to see if they could use Frankie’s mom’s perfume as a scent for their special edition candle. From there the idea was launched, and the candle we hold in our hands today is the result of it. We’re hoping that through one small act of love from Frankie’s mom to her son, thousands of other acts of love will find their way to other orphaned children that need them.

Here is a link to the article and video of the launch – Click here.

We seriously are just honored to have been part of this process. To date  Bridgewater has provided more than 238,956 days worth of food to orphaned children since their Light a Candle • Feed a Child Program began in June 2010. 

You can purchase Frankie’s Candle, at http://www.bridgewatercandles.com. They retail for $20.00. You can also go to the same site and find a local retailer near you.  Our family will sell also sell his candle as a fundraiser for our adoption.  We will be selling them through our blog and also at events through the year.  You can click here to purchase them from us.

Frankie Loves his Candle.  He really talks about it everyday.  I can’t wait till one day he’s actually old enough to understand how it came to be and the good hopefully that came from it.