Down by the Riverside (p3)

Parentless children is a global crisis with over 140 million orphans world wide.

One day, I received an email from a woman in our church about a little girl available for adoption in Ethiopia.  At that time my wife, Barbara, and I had four children.  Two boys and two girls--a complete symmetrical family.  As I skimmed the email I prayed that God would provide a home for this child and then deleted the email.  A while later the lady asked Barbara what she thought about the email.  Busted!  I told my wife that I thought our family was finished so I didn't see the need to forward the message to her.  I was wrong.

We entered the process of international adoption.  We were prepared for a long road but as we encountered one delay after another we began to wonder if the Lord was at work.  We prayed and sensed that perhaps we were to be open to adopting more than one child from Ethiopia.  After all, how could we travel half-way around the world to a country with 500,000 orphans and only bring back one!

We told our agency that if they could find another child we would be open.  They identified a little boy and we were off to Ethiopia...

After all, how could we be in a country with half a million orphans and not do all we could?

Do you know how many orphans there are in America?

Comments

[Cory]

According to http://www.census.gov/prod/2008pubs/p70-114.pdf

"In 2004, 5.5 million children lived
with at least one stepparent. In
addition, 2.9 million lived with no
parents; this figure included
308,000 children living with one or
more foster parents. Over half (56
percent) of the children living with
no parents were living with grandparents.
This proportion also varied
by race and Hispanic origin—61
percent of Black children, 57 percent
of White non-Hispanic children,
and 43 percent of Hispanic children
lived with grandparents, of those
who had no parents present"

Do you have those same numbers?

As we approach our two year mark of our "gotcha day" or "move in day" or whatever you prefer to call it (June 2nd!) of our adopted child, I can honestly look back and say that we wondered throughout the process and afterwards if the difficulty of the process was somehow related to the degree, or seemingly lack thereof, in which God was orchestrating the adoption. In other words, was something THIS HARD supposed to happen or were we pursuing something other than God's plan? However, I now believe that the difficulties that can be and are often encountered with adoptions (domestic and international) are simply opportunities for us to realize that, just like bio-kids, adopting and raising a child is meant to be too hard to do without support. It was a wonderful way to connect on a very deep and sustaining way with family and friends who supported us and were absolutely God's gift to us through the rockier phases.

Yay for you and your family and your related organizations for keeping the adoption issue on the front burner.

[Bob Agard]

The two children you have adopted from Ethiopia are marvelous, as are your other four children.