Dear Nanny

Dear Nanny,

As soon as we walked away from our wildly brief time with you, I began to realize what I’d missed, what I’d failed to do.

I didn’t say thank you as I wanted to. I saw you, spoke to you, took photos with you, but I know I didn’t truly look into your eyes and see you. I was so fully surrendered to my moment that I failed to notice yours. I didn’t pause to look for glimpses of your heart, for small signs that my moment was your moment too.

You were a means to my end, the deliverer of my long awaited dream come true. I missed it though, because I missed the gift of more time, of even just a few more words, with you.

Maybe I diminished you to a person doing a job, and assigned all the love, feelings and memory-making to myself. Maybe my mind clumped you together with all nannies, the nannies of books and social media stories, and made you less of an individual. Maybe I assumed that since there were lots of nannies, that you would be detached. I failed to admit that there might have been a love story between you and our precious Lan Cheng.

I must confess that I don’t even know your name now. How can that be? Is the pronunciation of a Mandarin name impossible to recall? I missed you in such a big way.

Did I hug you at least? I think I did. Surely I did?

Beforehand, I planned to make you feel our appreciation. I planned to engage with you, the one who had been there and stood witness to the precious days I had missed. You who had held and fed, comforted and tended to, our baby boy.

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Back at home, when the torrent of life changes and feelings settled, I thought of you. I recalled that, during our moment with you, my husband and I had been suspended in our own swirl of emotions. We had a list of questions to ask you, but we missed the mark. We asked about feeding, sleeping and medical needs, and you gave answers, but most of that care-taking changed immediately anyway. I wish we’d just learned more about you.

I wish we’d have asked for stories from your time together, some memories to give record to the love story between ayi and boy. 
  
In so many ways, it was a love story that I missed. At best, one that I have to make assumptions about. Using orphanage photos as a backdrop; my imagination creates its own story of your time together. So much life and love happened in those months and years between mothers. Was it perfect? I am assuming not, because my time with him isn’t either. Sometimes you just had to get the job done. Sometimes I do too.

You made memories, spent time, and did life together though.

Feeding.
 Comforting. 
Medical care-taking. 
Diaper changing. 
Bathing. 
Dressing. 
Playing.

The days were filled with smiles, words and eye contact exchanged again and again, with the ordinary and extraordinary. The type of crib you placed him in might have been different, the food and the care-taking methods too. But the days filled up with life and some love, didn’t they?

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“Gotcha Day” photos give us a glimpse. I see your smile. I see the way you look at the boy that was new to us, but so familiar to you. I see that after you walked him down the long, familiar hallway, and around the corner to us, that you crouched low beside him. You held his hand and looked kindly into his eyes during his traumatic moment. Did you squeeze his hand one last time? We’ll never know. But you were not detached. I see it now. I see you. I see you and him and a glimpse of the love story.

We got him and you gave him.

For his new life, you sent him with a little blue character backpack filled with photos, a jacket, and snacks. Memories and hopes must have flooded you as you packed. When we first held him, the scent of his spiky, dark hair was clean and sweet. You’d just given him one last bath.
How must it feel to care for a child so intimately, and then to hand them to adoptive American parents? To immediately step back and out of the story? Is it gut-wrenching? Is it relief? Some combination of both?

Is being a nanny a job or a calling? I don’t know, and I won’t presume to. I can’t presume to know the emotions, much less the sheer weight of the work. I am a mom of four and sometimes it feels like my back will break. I can’t fathom what your eyes have seen, what your hands have had to do, or what your mind must process. Children arriving abandoned, coming, waiting and going, living and dying. Some never leaving and some going quickly.
 

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You are an individual with your own story, similar to, but unique from, all other nannies. I refuse to let social media define you. I’ve read stories of nannies, but I haven’t read your story.

I entered this exchange with the cultural lens of a white, adoptive mom from the Atlanta suburbs. Our worlds don’t look the same, and I could never presume to understand your work. I think that got in the way. I didn’t know how to cross that bridge in the emotional state that I was in.
Will you forgive me for all the ways that I dismissed you? Please know that we’re grateful. Please know that your care for our son mattered. Know that he has your photo, and we talk about you.
 

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We’ll never know most of the details, but yours is a love story, and our family is forever grateful.

Thank you for the important work you do and the love you bring to it.

Sincerely,
Two Grateful Parents

Originally shared on No Hands But Ours.




A Prayer for Adoptive Families

How long must I wrestle with my thoughts…? – Psalm 13
Adoption awareness and orphan care have become a life’s work for us, a calling bigger than adding children to our family. It’s seeped into our faith, hearts, conversations, serving, friendships, and Instagram feeds.

Though our first steps in were tentative, three adoptions later, we are a family flying the adoption banner. We’ve compiled dossiers, read books, received grants, fundraised, waited, travelled, and attached. We’ve also served, bought t-shirts, spoken, written, advocated, and conference-d. We’ve started an adoption ministry, urged our church to offer an adoption grant, and served on mission trips. We’ve jumped onto the bandwagon and we’ve driven it too.

But just because we wear the t-shirt doesn’t mean we’ve got it all sorted out.

This year, this veteran adoptive mom found herself rattled by Orphan Sunday and National Adoption Month. I love the awareness it brings. It stokes the fighter in me who wants to shout at the world to stand up for vulnerable children. I pray that we’d all be outraged that families give up their children because they can’t afford food or medical care. That we’d not be OK with kids growing up in the US foster system or in the world’s orphanages. That the world would see the redeeming beauty of adoption.

But the truth is, I’m still in process with my thinking, and my understanding has layers now. I wrestle with how best to “defend the fatherless”. I wrestle with how to help in a way that doesn’t hurt. I wrestle with my role and my motives. I wrestle with my own apathy and my own helplessness. I wrestle with how much of my kids’ stories to share and with what words to use. I wrestle, and I pray you will too.

Our family was given the gift of three children birthed in China, and they are perfectly fitting puzzle pieces. But, I don’t think God intended them for our family or that we saved them. I wrestle with that thinking. Rather, I think He can redeem any of the losses or the traumas of this broken world, even parents having to give up their children. We are merely grateful that He chose us to receive these beautiful gifts. They are cherished children now, but we didn’t save them. As much as I’d love to believe that, we just don’t have it in us. It was us who were saved. Us who could have missed it. This life turned upside down by adoption and these glimpses into brokenness. This life less comfortable and full of heart checks.

We are just a crazy, under construction family blessed by adoption, redeemed by God, wrestling with how to see with His eyes and love with His heart. Like so many of you, we’re a big mess with rattled hearts.

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I’ve come to realize that God is a fan of heart-transforming wrestling. I can say now that I’m grateful for how adoption stretches my trust, comfort and thinking. From the signatures on our first application, we wrestled to understand the wait, the red tape, the apathy of governments, and the sheer number of children without birth parents who can raise them. We just couldn’t fathom why adoption was so hard when so many wait. One side of my brain gets angry with God and the other knows to trust that He’s good. I pray that even with the hard questions, that I will trust His goodness. I pray you will too.


I don’t yet have tidy answers to my questions, and I don’t suppose I will this side of heaven. This is messy redemption business happening in a broken world, and I think grappling is part of the package. This questioning has forged a sweet, new understanding of who He is to us, to our waiting kids, and to the world’s fatherless.

Years ago, my fired up for orphan care self landed in Zimbabwe to serve kids in group homes. I arrived planning to serve and save and left unsettled and having not saved a soul. One afternoon, while painting strokes of blue paint onto the wall of a home alongside the teens that would inhabit it, I contemplated the words Save and Orphans written in giant letters across my t-shirt. Knowing they could read English, realizing that I was nobody’s savior, and seeing that these “hurting orphans” were not just a cause, but souls with beating hearts, thoughtful minds and stories beyond my comprehension, I felt differently about my well intended t-shirt. My mindset shifted, and though I still fail, I’ve been more carefully considering my words ever since.

Now as I parent three kids who know great loss, words matter. I don’t expect to always say the right thing. I don’t have that within me either. It’s just that I want to intentionally tell our story, while still protecting and honoring theirs. I want to consider first how my kids would/will hear my words. There are just too many complexities within parenting from adoption that I don’t have the luxury of ignoring. I’ve made mistakes in this, but I’m learning. I desire to honor God, protect the hearts of my kids, and “look after orphans and widows in their distress”, so it’s a dance I want to dance prayerfully.

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Honestly, I’m just beginning to process how my need to feel good, matter, and belong within the adoption community might subtly sneak into my mindset when serving, advocating, and posting on social media. God’s given me passion, but I’m learning to pause before I act, speak or write. I’m praying that moment by moment, I’ll defer to His guidance in first shepherding my kids’ hearts.

My National Adoption Month prayer is that together we’d wrestle with our role on behalf of vulnerable children. That we’d be shaken by what we’ve seen, what we know, and what we’ve been called to. That we’d wrestle with whom and how we’re called to love. That we’d openly celebrate the beauty of adoption, passionately advocate, and prayerfully consider how to do it well.

This Little Light (No Hands But Ours)

A few weeks ago we asked for your help over at No Hands But Ours. We launched the little light project, with a desire to illuminate organizations that are working on behalf of the fatherless in China.

We were thrilled with the response. So many hard-working, orphan-loving organizations that are – day-in and day-out – loving the least of these.

 

Please spend some time perusing the following list of 19 organizations. You’ll find items for sale that benefit orphans, foster homes, educational programs, media projects and numerous other wonderful (and beautiful) ways to get involved and shine your light this Christmas.

 

It is our hope that in using our little light to shine on these amazing organizations that you will take the torch and use your little light to bless one or more of these organizations this Christmas. And maybe even year-round.

In the same way, let your light shine before others, that they may see your good deeds and glorify your Father in heaven. Matthew 5:16

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Ai Can Make a Difference was created after witnessing the difficult conditions her daughter endured in a Xi’an orphanage. This mom turned ai (the Mandarin word for love) into action and now her growing non-profit works to provide orphaned children with a loving home, education and medical care.

They sponsor special needs school tuition for a child, and a caretaker for therapy and special attention. Their vision is to provide vocational training to teens. During annual trips, they bring supplies and help arrange for better care and conditions. 100% of donations goes to serve orphaned children.

 

Donations to Ai Can Make A Difference can be made here.

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Bring Me Hope is dedicated to improving the lives and futures of Chinese orphans. It begins at summer camp and continues with year-round programs to meet the ongoing needs of orphans in China.

“We believe that every person is created with value. It breaks our hearts when that is not recognized and children are rejected, abandoned and abused. Our experiences and histories vary, but one thing binds us: passion for serving needy children and recruiting others to the same cause.”

Sponsor a child to go to a Bring Me Hope camp here.

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Build a Menu is an online meal planning site that uses proceeds from its membership fees to support orphan care charities.

Owned by two sisters with five adopted children between them, they sponsor dozens of children around the world as well as donate directly to orphan care charities. Read about the charities they support here.

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Butterfly Children’s Hospices is based in Changsha, China. It is the first palliative care service for orphaned and abandoned sick and dying children.

Butterfly Children’s Hospices receives babies and children who have been given a life expectancy of 6 months or less. Amazingly some of our little ones will respond to treatment and go on to live full and happy lives. Others are with us for only a short time. Each story is different, but the need is always pressing

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We have been open since May 2010, and so far have cared for 132 children, aged from 1 day to 14 years old. 71 have received loving end of life care. 16 have had surgery which was previously denied them. 10 have been adopted. Another 6 await adoption. The other children are living happy lives at Butterfly Children’s Hospices or in foster care.

Donate to the work that Butterfly Children’s Hospice is doing here.

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Children’s Bridge Foundation provides much needed surgeries for orphaned children in China. Made up of adoptive moms and grandmas, the foundation covers the cost of surgeries for children living in orphanages and foster care in China who have not received the medical help they need.

They also support the Elim centre, which provides care, education and support to HIV positive children.

Read more about their current Kickstarter campaign to fund cleft surgeries.

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Connected Hearts Ministry exists to raise awareness for the plight of orphans who are least likely to be adopted. Their goal is to help older children and children with special needs find forever families. They further this mission by providing adoption funding and education to connect these children with families.

We provide education, support and financial assistance for families adopting older children, sibling groups, and children with special needs. Since adoption is for a lifetime, we commit to serving our sponsored families for life as well. We offer support before, during and after their adoption.

We help raise funds for adopting families through our Family Sponsorship Program. This year we have helped raise over $58,000 to help 7 seven families who are adopting children with special needs from China. Five of these children are already home with their forever families, and we are still raising funds to help bring the other two kids home next year.

We are currently working with All God’s Children International to advocate for children with special needs in China. Anyone interested in finding out more about advocating for these children, or anyone interested in potentially adopting one of these children, can email us for more information here.

Connected Hearts can be found on Facebook here.

Donations can be made here.

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Create H.O.P.E. Designs:

H…Hearts United

O…Orphaned No More

P…Patterns With Purpose

E…Even the Least of These


Our goal is to provide beautiful patterns or tutorials for a very affordable price. All of the designs are down-loadable PDF files, ensuring that Create H.O.P.E. will operate overhead-free. 100% of all funds generated will benefit designated foundations serving orphans and their communities.

 

Visit Create H.O.P.E. at their Design Shop here, and on Etsy here.

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First Hugs is an organization founded by adoptive parents whose mission is to help improve the quality of life for the children in the care of XinXiang Social Welfare Institute who have not yet found their forever families and for those who may grow up without forever families. Most, if not all, of these children have special needs.

 

Read the story of how First Hugs began here.

“We are very small. $30,000 annual budget. All volunteer. 15-18 kids. Just seeing the light and hope in the kids eyes since we started there and moved from an 8 hour a day program to a 24 hour a day program is amazing. Now the kids are going to their forever families knowing love and care.”

 

Donations can be made to First Hugs here.

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Grace and Hope for Children places Chinese orphans in loving foster homes. They sponsor children in 4 provinces and many SWIs, so that they will know the love of a family instead of life in an institution. Since 2005, they have placed over 3,000 children in foster homes. 


 

Sponsor a child or make a general donation to Grace and Hope here.

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International China Concern partners with two SWI’s in Hunan and Henan province to bring the most medically fragile and vulnerable children into their care.

 

Started in 1993 following the death of an orphaned girl, ICC cares for orphans in the following ways:
– to rescue children
– feed, love and house those children
– find schools
– fund surgeries
– prevent abandonment
– train caregivers

You can donate to ICC to sponsor a child, support a nanny, purchase milk or diapers, provide physical therapy or educational supplies and more. Visit this page to learn more.

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Love Without Boundaries exists to transform the lives of orphaned and impoverished children by providing hope and healing.

Read about Arya, a little girl who benefitted from our Medical, Healing Homes, and Foster Care programs. None of this would have been possible without the support of our donors. So often I hear someone say ‘but I can’t really make a difference’ or ‘I can’t donate enough money to save a child’s life’. Statements like these always makes me feel so sad because every single person that makes a donation, no matter how big or small; or tells a friend about a child; or prays for a child is making a difference in that child’s life!

Love Without Boundaries cares for thousands of children in China through the following programs:

Education
Foster Care
Healing Homes
Medical
Nutrition and Special Projects

You can benefit LWB by going to their homepage and clicking on the Amazon link to shop.

 

You can donate to one of LWB’s programs here.

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Morning Star Foundation works with orphaned, abandoned and needy children with severe heart disease in China.

Morning Star Foundation works to care for children with complex congenital heart defects, providing surgeries and care for the children in our foster home, as well as partnering with Chinese families in our LOVE Project, an orphan prevention program.

The LOVE project aims at forming a community of believers who come together to reach out to families parenting children with heart disease who, because of financial limitations, are faced with the terrible choice of abandoning their child in hopes of receiving medical care, or taking their child home knowing they will not survive. The LOVE project requires significant funding, but we would also love if you would partner with us in prayer for the families of these children.

 

Donations to Morning Star Foundation can be made here.

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New Day Foster Home was founded in 2000 with the vision to help provide life-saving care for orphans abandoned because of their special needs. Since its founding New Day has coordinated over 280 surgeries and celebrated 262 adoptions.

 

New Day consists of a 25-bed facility in Beijing with an additional fifteen children living in local foster families.

 New Day South is a 12-bed facility located in Zhongshan, a Southern city.
New Day North in Inner Mongolia began its first project this May and provides care for twelve children in a local orphanage.

New Day posts frequent updates and pictures on their facebook pages for New Day in Beijing, New Day South and New Day North.

You can read stories on New Day’s blog, or follow on twitter (@NDFosterHome) and Instagram (@Newdayfosterhome).

 

Donations can be made to New Day here.

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Orphanage Projects aims to improve the quality of life of children living in children’s homes by creating awareness and providing information, training and guidance tailor-made for each individual children’s home. The approach is to work alongside caregivers and analyze the care system in place and then discuss with management what can be done to improve things. In March ‘Children Everywhere. How to Provide Good Institutional Care to Infants and Toddlers. Book 1: Essential Elements of Childcare in Institutions’ came out.

This is the world’s first institutional childcare manual, written by Orphanage Project founder, Florence Koenderink. The manual gives practical information, in simple English with lots of photos, on how to provide good care in children’s homes.

The manual can be ordered here. It can also be ordered through other major online bookshops. (if ordered through Lulu.com, Orphanage Projects receives the small portion.) The price was set this low to make sure the information reaches those who need it.

 

Please consider ordering a Manual and sending it to a children’s home or orphanage – it would be a small gesture with a huge impact.

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POP’s Foundation is dedicated to serving orphaned children with special needs in China.
Founded in 1994 by Kenneth Yeung, President of Prince of Peace Enterprises, Inc., POP’s Foundation is a non-profit organization that helps abandoned and disabled children by managing and financing the Prince of Peace Children’s Home in Tianjin, and promotes with other organizations that help the adopted children and the needy, in order to develop harmonious societies.

POP – a child’s term for ‘dad’. We would like to refer to the ‘Big POP’ – a God who loves all His children and whom we all can belong. POP’s Foundation was created to bring the love and care of God to orphans and the adoption families. With bilingual abilities, and cultural understanding, we are an organization established to fill many such needs in the United States and aid children in China.

 

Donate to POP’s Foundation here. Learn more about volunteering at POP’s Foundation here.

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Show Hope is a movement to care for orphans, restoring the hope of a family to orphans in distress around the world. Founded by Steven Curtis Chapman and his wife Mary Beth, this nonprofit organization is helping to make a difference for the millions of orphans and waiting children around the world.

 

Primarily they do this through Adoption Aid financial grants that help give orphans families and Special Care Centers in China that help orphans with special needs. You can learn more about Show Hope and sponsor a child here.

 

This Christmas, you can also join Show Hope in giving the “Gift of Hope” to orphans here.

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The Archibald Project uses media, such as photography, video, and blogging, to document real examples of orphan care. These creative, firsthand stories will inspire and move you to action. Witness as ordinary people do extraordinary things for orphans. Buy a t-shirt and spend a moment watching their incredible video on Bethel China, a home for visually impaired orphans.

When people see these firsthand stories, they are inspired and moved to action. This happens because we are exposing people to ordinary people who are doing extraordinary things.

 

Donations to The Archibald Project can be made here.

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Three Cord Creations has great gifts for coffee lovers. Each custom coffee pour over stand is created with a heart for the orphans of China.

Using his God given talents and creativity, the artist provides a wonderful coffee experience with his stands while empowering children who have aged out of being adopted by donating all profits to Shepherds Field Children’s Village Vocational Training Center in Tianjin, China.

You can find Three Cord Creations on Instagram and on Etsy. Visit the Etsy shop to purchase custom coffee stands from an artisan who uses his talent and creativity to provide a unique coffee experience.

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Zhanjiang Kids Organization is a nonprofit association celebrating kids adopted from Zhanjiang, Guangdong, China and devoted to helping the children of the Zhanjiang Social Welfare Institute.

Zhanjiang Kids Organization started in 2007 as a parent-led charity in our children’s large SWI. All of our children came home with significant delays and deficits in 2004-2006, and we began praying about how we could change things for the hundreds left behind, and those hundreds still to come.

Doors opened despite a multitude of “no’s” and since that time, we have tried to affect every single demographic there: first, with the infants, next, with the older school-aged children, and most recently, the children with special needs, ages 4-12. The Shining Stars preschool program has been a quick success and the children are thriving in it. This last summer we debuted a summer camp and the SWI director heartily welcomed it back again next year, and for a longer period. These children depend on us, and we are doing our best to keep their confidence.

As we are 100% volunteer, and our overhead is in the 2% region, we depend on the generosity of those who believe in what we’re doing. No gift is ever too small, and our pledge is that every dollar will physically touch the children. Thank you so much for considering us in your year-end giving. You can find us on Facebook here.

 

Donations to Zhanjiang Kids can be made here.

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We hope you have found some ways to involve yourself and your family in orphan care through your shopping and donating this Christmas.

 

Merry Christmas to all of our orphan hearted friends. 

Worth the Fight: Bridget (17 of 31)

This little face is heavy on my heart.

Meet Bridget, found just days ago in Guizhou, China. 

Thankfully, she was placed in the care of Love Without Boundaries Foundation.   Suffering from one of the same conditions as Evelyn, her story wrecks us. 

She needed emergency surgery to survive, but LWB founder, Amy Eldridge, reported that "none of the local hospitals wanted to care for her because they didn't want a mortality to be recorded on their records."

The cards are stacked against her, but we are praying that she keeps on fighting.  She's been dealt an unfair hand, but she was found and now her redemption story has begun.  When found, she was one month old, having survived without treatment for those weeks.  Her belly was hard and she was in great pain.  One can only hardly fathom her birthparents' heartache.   

Flown to Shanghai and provided with a nanny by LWB, she survived, but still fights for her life. 

$6,480.00 was needed to pay for her surgery.  That surgery is very similar to one that our Evelyn will have in just a week. Their two stories are so parallel, and this momma's heart is burdened for Bridgett.  Because we have medical insurance, I'll get to hold my daughter's hand when she is wheeled into the recovery room.  Bridgette's parents likely did not have medical insurance, so she now fights alone in a city thousands of miles away from them.  If Blue Cross and Blue Shield could be convinced to pay for both surgeries, the world would feel a bit more just.  Instead, LWB is depending on those with hearts burdened to stand in the gap for orphans to cover this cost. 

I'm so grateful that she now has a nanny, but sad that her birth parents can't be by her side. 

I don't know how to raise funds.  I stink at it actually.  But I can donate myself, and can share her with you.  I believe she's worth the fight.  That she's worth any small donation made on her behalf that some reader might feel led to give. 

This is why I want to write. 
This is what I want to write about.
This is what stirs my heart. 

My heart longs for God to use my words to rally readers on behalf of little ones who need a team to fight when they can not. 

Love Without Boundaries still needs $5,029 to cover this surgery.  Anybody want to join her team? 

Unity (Compelled to Orphan Prevention)

There is unity among adoptive families, a connection of experience, passion and heart. Becoming a card carrying member of this big, powerhouse club takes tears, bravery, faith, paperwork and prayer. We’ve paid our dues and call ourselves blessed to stand shoulder to shoulder, unified in many ways.

Unified in celebrating adoption.
Unified in raising funds to bring babies home.
Unified in advocating for children who wait.
Unified in cheering on travelling families and holding signs at airports.
Unified in praying for newly home little people facing surgery, therapy and emotional challenges.
Unified in our deep appreciation for the Peoples Republic of China.
Unified in our heartbreak for, and desire to serve, the waiting children we left behind.

Together, we’ve shed tears, encouraged, penned blog posts, donated and prayed.

And when our time came to walk into orphanages, we all realized that adoption falls on the redeeming side of loss and trauma. We stood close to the fire, and felt the heat of searing hurt. The sparks lit fires in our hearts, burdening us to consider how we might extinguish some of the flames for the fatherless.

We had to leave China though, and got to start moving toward the happy redemption side of our children’s adoption stories. But, if you are like me, you still feel the heat.

For us, the fiery trauma started with three sets of parents somewhere in China who carried the weight of our children before we did. We try not to conjure romanticized versions of stories that we’ll never know, but we do know that children are abandoned daily due to the cost of medical care. Three of our children have special needs that might have resulted in their abandonment, and this grieves me. Two of them were with their first parents for several months. They were fed, bathed, dressed, held and nursed  by them until they no longer could, until the smoldering fire of loss was lit.

The ugly truth is that we might possibly get to parent these three precious souls because our fallen world is turned upside down, and we’re blessed with really good medical insurance. We are deeply grateful that part of God’s redemption plan included them forever calling us mommy and daddy, but we can’t ignore the story’s beginning.

Though I’d like to, I can’t believe that our adopted children were “meant for us”. God placed our babies in the wombs of other women, and I don’t believe He makes mistakes. I presume that when those families deemed it necessary to abandon their babies, it crushed God’s heart. As those mothers wept, I trust He grieved alongside them.

Parents having to give up a lifetime with their child is unjust. I can no longer walk humbly with my God on the adoption journey, and not be burdened by what He has opened my eyes to. I can’t do orphan care well without pondering why orphans enter orphanages.

Read the rest over at No Hands But Ours.

This sweet one has a father in China who loved her so desperately that he wrote to Love Without Boundaries, begging them for help with his daughter's medical care. 

Orphan Hearted Peeps

There is just nothing like hanging with orphan hearted pals. 

They get us, support us and challenge us. 

Several families have been meeting at our church since last
January to lock arms together as we adopt,
foster and parent adopted kids. 

There has been all kinds of good discussion,

questions answered, and orphan care projects organized. 

On this night though,

hanging, playing and eating were the only agenda items.

The littles got sweaty, sticky and giggly. 

Thanks, Jill and Adam.  Good times. 

 

 

Looking for a way to make a difference in the life of a child?

Click here to find out a way to give a child some hope. 

Guatemala: Pre-Orphan Care

"Orphans are easier to ignore before you know their names. They are easier to ignore before you see their faces. It is easier to pretend they're not real before you hold them in your arms. But once you do, everything changes.”  -David Platt

Far above Lake Atitlan, overlooking majestic volcanoes,

sits the Eagle's Nest Orphanage.

On our last morning in Guatemala,
I had the opportunity to love on kids.

As beautiful as the setting was,

inside there was a room full of the fatherless.   

So we loved.   

We held.  We read.  We played train. 

As a mom of a child who once lived in an orphanage,

a morning of loving was worth the whole trip. 

Hugs, smiles and playing matter. 

Ending our trip in this way,

helped bring our work full circle. 

Redeemer's House

works to prevent children from ending up in orphanages,

by working with single mothers like Lucia. 

This sweet, and very tiny lady, sells souvenirs. 
Carrying a large cloth sack
full of her wares, she finds an open spot on the street.

Laying out her goods, she can only hope to draw

the attention of a shopper. 

She lives on the edge of survival, 

hoping each day to feed her children.

A sickness, storm or slow selling season threatens

her ability to care for her kids. 

All over the world, there are mothers and fathers

who face decisions beyond our comprehension. 

Due to poverty, family expectations, and a host of other reasons,

children are abandoned and relinquished. 

When you see poverty, as we did, you understand a bit more

how this happens.  As much as my heart feels called
to care for orphans, my head tells me to also support ministries
like Redeemer's House, who work to prevent a few
more children from becoming orphans.

Thank you, Radford family, for giving us this opportunity. 
It was a game changer. 

Orphan Care VIPs: Haiti at Home

It isn't often that superheros join you for breakfast.

Last weekend, a "Mami and Papi" to 49 slept in our guest room. 

These VIPs are close to our hearts.
We spent a week with them in Haiti last year
and we are forever challenged by their lives. 

Orphan care is not a goal or grand idea. 
It is what they do, and how they live.  Every day. 

Our global hearted church hosted Smith, Katia, Dan and Stevie,

and we were blessed to get to spend some extra time with them. 

Several years ago, Dan (father of an adopted son from Haiti) travelled to Haiti on a mission trip.  Forever altered, he went back again and again to serve street kids.  On one of those trips, Smith was his driver.  That driver became a friend, a Christian and then the director of an orphanage.  He and Katia now run a guest house for mission teams, and are the parents to many at the
Gift of God orphanage.   

After a few trips, Dan felt led to start the orphanage.  This man's faith is deep, wide and something to be learned from. He prays, waits to hear from the Lord and moves forward with expectation.  He makes moves, trusting that the money and logistics will be provided.
To orphan care, he says, "Yes."

Smith and Katia serve and parent with joy and faith. 

Their burden is heavy, yet they smile and consider each day,
each child a gift.  They work not within their own power. 
If they did, each day would be too much.  They'd fail. 

Rather, it is not their strength that sustains them, it is the Lord's. 

We want to live like that.  Parent like that.  We want our kids to see that, be around that and learn that.  And so, this visit was a gift.

Giants of faith, humble servants chilling on the deck. 
Chef for many sharing cooking secrets in the kitchen. 

These are people to learn from, to emulate and to snag recipes from. 

When they are near, a wise person stays (rete) and listens (koute). 

(Love this post from Livesay Haiti blog.) 

On that Sunday morning, one of our teaching pastors gave a talk on orphan care.  Following that, Smith and Katia shared their story through a beautiful translated video.  Give it a watch? 
It is wise to listen when these people speak.