When the Night To Shine Prom opens its doors at Shelton State Community College on Friday night, five special needs young people from one family will be among those enjoying the night. The Osborn family will send five special needs teenagers to the prom.
Robert and Tina Osborn live in Coker, near Lake Lurleen. The Osborns have 11 adopted children to go with five children they had on their own. Eight of their adoptees have special needs.
Ruby, Jeremy, Sarah and Amelia were all adopted from the Ukraine in December 2015. Coradrius Hamner is their fifth child, who will be attending Friday's event. The Night to Shine Prom is conducted all over the United States for people with special needs. It is the creation of the Tim Tebow Foundation and is hosted locally by Big Sandy Baptist Church.
The Osborns began their adoption saga through the foster parents program. They initially fostered three children whom they adopted.
“After we have had them for five years, of course we were going to adopt them,” Tina Osborn said. “They were my kids by that time. They were my kids as soon as they walked through the door, but they were really mine five years later.”
Tina Osborn thought that would be the end of her family’s adoptions until she and her husband saw a photo of Amelia on Facebook one night in early 2015. The image moved their hearts.
“I jokingly said to my husband, ‘we could adopt her.’ He said, ‘Well yeah, if someone gives you the money,’” Tina Osborn said.
The next day she saw a woman on Facebook offering to pay the initial money to begin the adoption process. That cinched it for her. She said she could see God’s hand moving and she and her husband were willing to follow.
She began the international adoption process with no knowledge of what it entailed. It took her 10 months to file all the requisite paperwork. The United States had to clear her then the Ukraine had to clear her. She then spent seven weeks in the Ukraine going through all that was required including more paperwork and all the legal formalities in the Ukranian courts.
The process came in the nick of time for Ruby. Orphanage life had not been kind to any of the children but Ruby was near death. As a 16 year old, Ruby weighed on 19 pounds.
“Amelia was aging out (16 years old is the cutoff for bringing adopted children into the United States). I was only going to adopt one. Then I got brave and said if I am going all the way to the Ukraine, I might as well adopt three so I picked Sarah and Jeremy. Someone said there is another little girl that is so malnourished if we didn’t get her she wouldn’t make it. I already had the paperwork filed and we were able to get her too,” Tina Osborn said.
Tollie Meggs, a friend of Osborn’s mother, heard about the trip and volunteered her ministry network, Out of the Boat Ministries, to help. Meggs teaches a monthly Bible study for women in Tuscaloosa and women from many different churches attend. Meggs organized them and they helped provide everything from money to diapers to meals.
“Just before I went to the Ukraine, Tollie said she wanted to help, and boy, was that an understatement,” Tina Osborn said. “You have heard it said if God doesn’t do his part you will fail? I didn’t think about that until I brought these four home.”
Meggs recognized it before Osborn realized how hard it was going to be.
“I was thinking about all the kids she would have in the house and how hard it was going to be to take care of the daily functions of the household,” Meggs said. “I sent out an email to all my contacts explaining the situation. I got a daily schedule to together for people to provide help and meals. This group of people has been helping religiously ever since then.”
Meggs said there are about 25 people involved in the effort and they provide many of the meals for the family even now, two years after the Osbornes brought the children home. They also buy all the diapers for the young people, none of whom can walk and none of whom have ever been potty trained.
The community has also reached out and helped the Osborns with the financial stress of the adoption, donating $55,000 that completely covered the cost of adopting the four children from the Ukraine. Many area churches have been involved in the effort and Osborn said she didn’t think there could be a church in Tuscaloosa County that hasn’t helped them in some way.
One of the things that touched Osborn most deeply was a donation she received from a group of impoverished Christians in Brazil. During one of Meggs’ visits to the Osborn home, she brought Antonia Dos Santos, a missionary who works in Brazil, with her. She was so impressed with what the Osborn family was doing, she returned to Brazil and inspired the people she was ministering to. They collected what money they could to send to help the Osborn family.
Osborn received a video of all the children holding up containers. They shook them for the video and she could hear there was money inside.
“I get this little video with all these people going ‘hey, hey.’ They are all shaking little jars. These people literally make their living scouring garbage dumps. They sent us $200. These are people I should be sending money too,” Tina Osborn said.
That spirit of help is what so impresses her about the Night To Shine Prom.
“There’s just not enough stuff out there for special needs children that gives them the feeling that they have what everyone else has. The prom is the best, absolutely the best,” Tina Osborn said.