Jenny will be leaving for Ethiopia in the wee hours Saturday morning. Our Charlie and her sister Barbra will be going with her. It is unsettling not to be with her. But those feelings are mild this time, better for having been there before and having grown so much in our faith and confidence in putting ourselves in His hands. They will be traveling with Greg and Melissa (also active here at KTM), who happen to have been friends of Jenny and Barbra since they were kids. Greg and Melissa will be bringing home an addition to their family as well. God is so good in putting all of this together so the timing worked out like this. We had no control over it, and the odds were essentially zero… or maybe the odds were 100% all along.
Anyway, we appreciate your prayers for all of us. I know my part isn’t as hard as Jenny’s but we have several traveling and three partial families at home - we all need Him through this, even those of us staying here. But I suppose that, in and of itself, isn’t different from any other day.
I gave some thought about whether or not this is an appropriate venue for personal family news (actually about 3 seconds of thought), and I decided that it is a perfect venue. We are trying to build more than a website, trying to raise more than funds. The goal is community, a deep commitment to each other and to others outside our community. We need to get to know each other better.
Our news is that we passed court in Ethiopia yesterday, and are now parents of three more kids, bringing the total count to eight. There is so much to tell about how we got here, so many ways our adoptions have changed, challenged, and blessed us that this will fall far short. These three are siblings, and had been waiting for a family for some time since it is difficult to find families for older sibling groups. Jenny met them at the orphanage when she went to meet and bring home our first two adopted children. Her heart felt an immediate “recognition” of the 12 year old boy in this group when she met him, and came home committed to find him a home. We discovered that he had two siblings, one an older girl who stood out partially for her age but mostly for her gentle, quiet, yet confident manner. We thought doors might be able to open for friends to adopt them, but those options did not work out.
I remember the moment when I knew they were ours very clearly. We were in church, and Jenny gave a prayer request for a home for them, and broke into tears when she recounted how we had learned from our adopted 6 year old that the oldest girl had taught her about Jesus and prayed with her and was a comfort to her in hard times. Immediately, I was overwhelmed with a certain knowledge that these kids were ours. Not a desire to do a good thing for them, not a hope that it could work, not an obligation… I have never known anything with more finality or certainty in all my life. And it happened in an instant. It was powerful and emotional, yet calm and peaceful at the same time.
After that, the process was long and at times “uncertain”. Illinois is reluctant to approve large adopted families for additional kids, another family became interested in these three (and we had peace that what we really wanted for them was a home so we were not unsettled when it seemed the agency would place them there). But they were ours. And now the “official” acknowledgement of that is complete.
International adoption must be undertaken with great care, especially when “demand” for healthy infants is strong (I would be remiss if I did not note that “demand” for older kids, sibling groups, and special needs kids is never strong enough). There are abuses of the system, there is grief and loss in separation from family and culture. Autonomy, equality, and elimination of the poverty that creates orphans and prevents people from caring for orphans within their own culture is the best long-term solution - far better to eliminate the need than to meet the need. But for the kids who need families, who are lacking that love, commitment, and connection - adoption is the only answer. We cannont abandon them. God’s word is so clear on this point. He demands that we care for the poor - both intact families that are at risk, and orphans for whom that window to help has passed. You don’t need to adopt. You do need to give to the point of some level of personal sacrifice. That’s a strong statement, but I’ll stand by it. If you are offended by my presumption to know what you must do, read the Word and tell me how you come to any other conclusion.
Thanks for listening to my ramblings… we are excited, and will soon be making real preparations for travel. We have options for what that travel will look like and I am, frankly, struggling with the decision of who will go to Ethiopia this time. I am still seeking a “moment” like the one I described earlier, but it is not always that easy. We apprecaite your prayers and support.
It took a few blog-liftings to bring this to KTM today, but I thought it was worth posting. It was posted on Facebook by Lifesong for Orphans. Lifesong for Orphans posts some of the best orphan care and adoption articles and links every day on FB. Become a Fan! The blog lifting does not stop there, though. Lifesong got this from the Together for Adoption blog.
Here is what Together for Adoption wrote about this video: Francis Chan wrote this children’s story to illustrate what God ordained the church to be in the world. Since God has called the church to care for orphans, I think “The Big Red Tractor” also applies to the current orphan care movement that is growing within the church.
And, finally, the video:
Both Hands is a great name for this organization, but I keep wanting to call it something else. When you hear more about it, you will know why (in my mind) the alternative name for Both Hands is Extreme Makeover: Widow and Orphan edition!
According to a message from their founder J.T. Olson, Both Hands began when a friend refused to sponsor him in a Charity Golf Game. The friend denied J.T’s request saying that he wouldn’t sponsor him for the golf game, but the friend did say that if J.T. was doing something like working on a widow’s home to raise funds for the charity, he would be interested in sponsoring that. While I am certain that was not the response J.T. expected, it was certainly a response that provoked some thought. Out of those thoughts, Both Hands was born. From their website http://bothhandsfoundation.org/, “Both Hands is a non-profit organization with a two-fold mission. We serve widows in a very practical way in our communities, while raising funds to help willing families adopt.” Both Hands work with Lifesong for Orphans http://www.lifesongfororphans.org/ to make this innovative fund-raising method a blessing for widows and adoptive families.
Imagine being a widow with limited ability to do home repairs or landscape projects, what a joy it would be to have a team arrive excited and prepared to do just what you need.
Imagine being an adoptive family working hard to save for an adoption. Wouldn’t this type of project be a great way to help and be helped at the same time?
Lifesong explains the program like this, “When adoptive families are accepted into this program, Lifesong and Both Hands helps the family to remove financial barriers to their adoption and help benefit a widow’s home.” In this program, an adoptive family asks for 10 volunteers to work on a widow’s home for one day. Prior to the work day, those volunteers send out sponsorship letters to ask friends to sponsor them in the work on the widow’s home. Those sponsorship funds go to Lifesong who gives these funds in the form of a grant to the adoptive family. These projects raise an average of $10,000 for the adoptive family. What a great way for so many to get involved helping widows and orphans!
Of course, there are many more details in the online manual for this project. http://www.lifesongfororphans.org/bothHands.html There you will find instructions on things like recruiting volunteers, choosing a widow’s home-improvement or landscaping project, finding a superintendent (any retired skilled construction workers among you?), making a project timeline, finding materials, and much more.
Local families, if you are considering a project with Both Hands, let us know! We think there are some of you out there considering this. We would love to help. Also, if you would be interested in being a construction superintendent on this kind of job or if you know of a widow with a project, can you let us know? Maybe we can help connect everyone to make one or more of these projects a go!
Pure and undefiled religion before God and the Father is this: to visit orphans and widows in their trouble, and to keep oneself unspotted from the world. James 1:27
Visiting orphans and widows in their distress. What must a visit be like for those orphans and at-risk children? For me, the only thing that I can think of that could possibly compare is my memories of summer time visits of my California cousins. Our mundane summer days were exchanged for full days of cousin fun. So refreshing. This was my experience as a child who was never alone, never at-risk. Imagine what a visit could mean to a child who is alone and very much at-risk in her society. Could it be the joy of what visitors mean that causes the squeals of delight from the kids when a team arrives at the established care points in Swaziland?
If you have watched the kids approach the Ludlati carepoint,
you can see that these kids aren’t all together certain what these kind of visits are like. The more established care points are the places where the kids know the joy of interacting with new friends. The Ludlati kids have yet to experience the days of games and loving attention. None of them have received letters and pictures from someone far away who cares about them, followed by the chance to meet them face to face at last. Do not underestimate the value of hope and self worth this communicates to the kids! What a change is in store for all of us! What hope will be realized in this community here and there! If you are interested in supporting a child, please click here for the application instructions.
In the fall of 2010, a trip is being planned to visit our Ludlati neighbor kids! We will get to spend time with our Ludlati kids, possibly do some home visits in their area, and visit some other care points as well. Depending upon the timing of the trip, there could be other projects for us as well. This is the first of what we hope to be semi-annual or at the very least annual trips. I am not sure we are going to be able to keep Don away from Swaziland any longer than that! Warning to all who travel. You may want to go more than once!! The kids will definitely want you to come back!
Let’s get together and talk about travel. Tuesday, December 22 from 6:30 - 8:00 pm at First Christian Church (in the Playground area) we will have an important planning meeting about the fall trip and travel in general. We will share information, discuss plans and answer questions. While we have yet to have our official launch of the Ludlati Carepoint, it is never too soon to discuss the upcoming trip. If you want to know more about the trip, are considering travel this year or another year, or want to support others travels, this meeting is for you.
We want the meeting to be as efficient as possible so we encourage you to send any questions you already have ahead of time. Click here to go to the forum thread available for posting questions for the trip meeting (you must be a KTM member to post in the forum) or you can post them in the comments section after this post. You can also send them to .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address).
Hello, all.
We want to tell you how we got here. But, before we do, I want to say that we are really interested in how YOU got here. What has been stirring in your hearts about these issues? Has it been a journey? Are you just getting used to the idea of “doing more”? Who has inspired you and how? If you would like to share, please post to the comments (maybe share a link to your blog if that is easier), submit a blog post for posting or post under Share Your Story in the Known to Me forum.
There was money left on my parent’s dresser where they would find it. Someone at bible study had left just the amount we needed to purchase school pictures that week which would have been impossible without the gift. There were grocery deliveries to others by my parents. Sometimes we could not go along as the area wasn’t safe. How about the little fund my grandpa set up for each of his grandkids even though he was not rich? You know I used all few hundred dollars of it to buy my first junky car. When my husband was 19 years old and in college he had an engineer’s load of school and had to work a lot to pay for school plus the debt he accrued during an emergency surgery. Some would say ” Get used to real life, young man.” Instead, a friend living a life of giving, gave him $100.00 a month during the toughest time. So, with these and too many other ‘examples of giving before us and our knowledge of what our Jesus said about giving, we committed to figuring out this life of giving ourselves.
Sometimes we’ve muddled through; sometimes we’ve heard the call. Still always receiving more than we could ever give. It was 6 years ago when we received our first Compassion child. As I tore open the package, I was surprised how her picture took my breath away. There she was in all of her 6yo glory. Her shoes were only half tied. Her collar was folded inside her shirt the wrong way. She reminded me of my own 6yo. I read in her bio that she had been unable until now to attend school as she had to work with her father to collect sticks which they sold for food. I guess she was a little different from my child after all. There before me was her real name, her real eyes and her real situation. It struck me how my world had been too small without her.
“Meeting” this little girl in Ethiopia started us on a “Pray, Research, Discuss, Repeat” cycle that eventually propelled us into the far-away land of China Special Needs adoption. Now our eyes were open to the sea of faces that are the Fatherless. These Fatherless, our Father says, are known to Him. For us, through the adoption of our daugthers, we have come to understand more about our own adoption as God’s sons and daughters. Through our journeys with these children, we have also come to know much more about sacrifice, about loss, about grief, about neglect, about rejection, about compassion, about love. We have found that hard things can be good. And being in over our heads can be a good place to be. And we have really only begun.
You have made known to me the path of life. In your presence is fullness of joy. Psalm 16:11.
In June (2008), my sister Barbra (adoptive mom and orphan advocate) sent me a link to an adoption forum where a new list of children waiting in Ethiopia was being discussed. I sent an e-mail requesting permission to see the children. I don’t even remember my thought process now. I know, though, that I was compelled to do it outside of any real thoughts about our adopting. I mean, we had tried before and it just didn’t seem to work out for us. I looked through the list. Each child as beautiful and precious and worth loving forever as the next, but then a little pair came up that rocked me to my very soul. I am not being dramatic…my thought was “there they are!” Uhm…who is “they”?! I assure you this was not about a pair of darling faces (though they are darling). I had just scrolled through several listings, any of which would melt your heart. It was about being stirred! I showed my practical half…the one that regularly saves me from myself. He was interested, but thoughtful and hesitant. After all…we weren’t adopting.
Funny how things change. As I mentioned, Jim and I were just starting to enjoy going out again and having energy left over for ourselves as our kids grew older…very, very nice. But there was a problem…a constant and growing awareness about preventable sickness, children without protection, starvation, a world so unlike ours that it was hard to accept its reality. Jim went to the Cornerstone Music Festival with our boys over the 4th of July weekend. He called me from one of the seminars. The title I remember had something to do with social justice and BIG changes needed in the area of being the hands and feet of Christ. Jim came home with a deep desire to seek out Jesus’ views on social justice. I had spent the last few years in fairly deep Bible Study and had a desire to know Jesus in new ways that would take me far, far from a “going-through-the-motions” style of religion. Suddenly it was all around us. We read Irresitible Revolution-Living as an Ordinary Radical by Shane Claiborne, Fields of the Fatherless by Tom Davis, and later Red Letters-Living a Faith that Bleeds by Tom Davis, Make Poverty Personal by Ash Barker, and Dangerous Surrender by Kay Warren. How could we have missed what should be a central purpose in our lives? Of course we knew it. We knew we were supposed to love our neighbor, help the poor…whatever. No look again…WE WERE SUPPOSED TO HELP THE POOR, LOVE THEM AS WE LOVE OURSELVES, SEE THEM AS FAMILY, GOOD GRACIOUS…SEE THEM AS OUR LORD JESUS CHRIST, DO FOR THEM LIKE WE WOULD DO FOR HIM. OK, now we were getting it.
Jim and I went out to one of our favorite date spots in Downtown Champaign. Sometimes a girl has to have some sweet potato fries! We were sitting at a booth at “Seven Saints” discussing what we were learning. We had been reading about the huge number of “child headed households” in Ethiopia, Swaziland, and Uganda, as well as many other places in Africa due to the hiv/AIDS crisis. At the same moment we were struck speechless and tearful with the picture of Zeke (our responsible oldest child) trying desperately to keep Charlie and Anna fed and safe. He would be devastated by the weight of it. WOW! Kind of ruins a good meal.
This whole time I had this picture in my head and on my computer of that one little pair. I also had this desire in my heart. It went something like this. “Lord, I know that I can do for the “Least of These” by giving. I can give until it is uncomfortable. We are set on changing our life style to do that. We can even go and work in the “Fields of the Fatherless”. Maybe it is selfish Lord, but I want to look into the eyes of a little one (or pair of little ones) and see you Jesus, I want to be the one to rock them to sleep, I want to zip up their little coats against the cold, and fill their tummy’s when they are hungry, I want to be there when they cry in the night, or when they grieve the loss of their first family. I want to be the one!
Within a couple of days of our moment at “Seven Saints” my sweet, amazing, husband and I were sitting on the couch after the children were in bed and he very matter of factly said, ” I think we should adopt, but I think we should adopt just one. A little girl around Anna’s age.” Hot Dog! I tried to keep my heart from bursting from my chest as I said, “Uh, do you know that you just said that we could adopt!!!” By this time we knew we would adopt from Ethiopia. Our hearts were drawn to its beautiful people and we would be so proud to have a connection to such a lovely culture, and the food is fantastic. Many of you know, I am all about the food! We looked over the financial information for one (wow… a lot, but Jim felt like he knew where it would come from…though many who start this know only that the Lord will provide.). We settled on the agency that my little pair was with just because after talking to several they just felt right, and then we began our homestudy. This was August.
The homestudy moved along, and I continued to think of our little pair. I had the financial agreement for two and on the advice of everyone we had our homestudy made for two because you always should go for more just in case. Amazingly, while I prayed about it a lot, I really felt at peace about the whole thing. I remember distinctly driving to Walmart one day. They were on my heart and I started formulating a plan for mentioning them to Jim. I thought since they were still on my heart maybe we (I mean Jim) were missing something, and here’s the truth of it…maybe the Creator of the Universe needed me to get this done. I had one of those rare moments where the Spirit speaks so directly and instantly to your spirit that you just have to laugh. The flavor was, “If I need to communicate something to that man’s heart, don’t you think I can and will.” It was good because I think He was laughing too. Ten-four! I gotcha!
By the end of September we were waiting on paper work, but were largely past the homestudy. We were waiting on a new list of waiting kids wondering if our daughter would be on it, but it took a lot longer than we thought for it to come out. One Sunday morning Jim told me that we needed to stay home from church so that he could have some extended prayer time. A few days before he had asked me for the financials on two children so I kind of knew what this was about. I also knew that the financial obligation required by our agency for the care and process of two children was a STRETCH for us. This is not an easy thing for my very fiscally responsible, head of the household to surrender. He came in after a few hours praying out behind the shed, surrounded by fields, and asked who we needed to contact to let them know that we wanted that little pair. HOORAY! There were tears, but only ones that I could see through to type because I wasn’t going to let a second pass. I e-mailed our case worker and held my breath until she replied that she was delighted and yes, they were still available. Oh, I knew they would be because I knew they were ours, but so nice to hear all the same.
One thing that was heavy on our minds during our consideration process was the financial aspect. We knew that our God is our source and our provider. We also knew that the money spent to adopt one or two children could help many. Adoption is not the answer to the problem of extreme poverty. Adoption is only a tiny part of the big answer, but for the chidren already in orphanages it is the only answer. Still, we believe STRONGLY that while all followers of Jesus are called on to pour ourselves out on behalf of the widow, the orphan, and the extreme poor, we are not all called to adopt. We wrestled with this. If we just gave the money…we would help so many. In our case, we felt firmly impressed that by adopting we would actually give more to the cause than if we just gave. Not only had God placed the desire to parent these two children on our hearts, but he had planned that their little presence would stir something in others. Also, by bringing home these little ones and them becoming part of us we are permanently tied to the others who will never come home. We can’t forget, we can’t turn away. It is personal now. What if we hadn’t gone to get them? It motivates us to continue to work toward ending the poverty and sickness that leads to the need for adoption.
For us, Known To Me is our effort to come to the aid of those kids that we believe are ours, our responsibility, but beyond our power to bring home. I saw them, felt their hurt and need for love and family… and left them behind. While in Africa, I saw poverty of a scope and magnitude that I was completely unprepared for. In spite of my research and attempt at awareness, I had completely underestimated it. I also saw the beauty of a culture that values relationships over things, generosity over greed, and kindness over selfishness. We can also build a community here that reflects the best of the culture I saw there. Our hope is that relationships, generosity, and kindness become hallmarks of our group.
Ludlati Carepoint Support Level 41 Kids Funded; 42 Kids To Go
About - KnownToMe
We have begun to ask ourselves...What would we do if our neighbor was starving right before our eyes? Would we not help? Today, their plight is not hidden from us. It is known. We believe there is a clear mandate that we must care for societies most vulnerable members, the widow, the orphan, those in extreme poverty. If you are stirred to a similar belief, if you know there is more that you must do, Known To Me will make you aware of specific needs and opportunities to help.
