Face of a Godless country

Of all the posts I have written this is the most difficult. It is about something so near and dear on my heart, I sometimes feel my heart will surely burst with enormity of it's burden! I hope these words will come from God and not my own mediocre abilities!

I want to start by explaining what I mean by the above title. Please don't think I mean that the people of China are somehow evil or undeserving. We know God loves his lost sheep most of all. So surely he weeps for these forsaken souls. It's so hard to understand China and these sweet children who suffer in silence. The policy of a government, with no God, cannot help but fail. Even if it survives on paper where is its glory, it's humanity???

The boy in the picture above is our beloved son Jilei, taken within days of his abandonment. At four he was found on bench in a hospital, unclaimed. What does he remember of this event? Perhaps we'll never know. But in reading about China I have found the situation more complicated than simple abandonment and adoption. I've read some families desperate to keep their second child will try to hide that child. Should some friend or neighbor notify the authority, the child is taken by officials, who then label the child as abandoned. From there the child is placed in the orphanage, many have no knowledge why they are there. At 14 if unadopted~and sadly most are not~they are aged out of the system, to make their own way in a country prejudiced against the orphaned and without lineage. Even if a family should succeed in hiding the second child, what does the future hold for that child? No education, no documents, no medical care. Abandoned by family, abandoned by country, only through Christ can they find their Eternal Father.

How many children wait in China? No one knows an exact number. This last month over 2,000 children were on the shared list of special needs children. Then most agencies have their own assigned special needs children, and then there are the children with no identified special needs. So what is a special need? Any child over age 6 is, even if the child has no medical or physical condition. In Jilei's case his age and a very minor medical condition make him special needs. His medical problem will be corrected as outpatient and won't effect him in any way after repair.

The picture of Jilei above was used for his "finding ad". Each month in a local legal paper these ads are placed. With Jilei's finding ad were 43 other ads and that was in just Shanghai for one month! Like a pet's lost and find there they are, row upon row of children's faces. Can you imagine the uproar if just one child was found abandoned in your community? But in China it's just another day, another forsaken child.

There are so many ways to help these blessed children, through sponsorship, through gifts to adoption grants (which allowed our last adoption to happen), but also through prayer and the sharing of their story with others. You never know, a friend, of a friend, of a friend, may be thinking of adoption, even if they have never spoken of it. I know we never would have opened the discussion of adoption if not for a newspaper article I nearly threw away! So pass it on and keep them in prayer, not just the little ones, but all those who work so unselfishly to care for them and find them homes. Pray for all the Lost Souls in China and elsewhere in this world, who live without knowing the Eternal Love of our Father in Heaven.

So having said all this I want to post a couple links, if you get a minute to visit them great, if you can find another minute to pass them on, even better! You may never know you helped a special child find their forever family.



www.lwbcommunity.org

www.thestarfishfosterhome.org

www.cornbreadandchopsticks.blogspot.com

www.waitingchildreninchina.blogspot.com

www.nohandsbutours.com

www.rainbowkids.com

www.brittanyshope.org

www.newdaycreations.com/foster/wait.html

www.reecesrainbow.com

And our friends at Bethany and Gift of Adoption, whose links are on the left!

step 3 of 4 done !

So today first thing I found out our Article 5 had been issued by the consulate in China and now we can settle down and wait for the last step before we can go get Will! In about 3-4 weeks we should receive a travel invitation from the Chinese government, at that point travel plans can be made. What a relief it will be to actually have a date to look forward too.

Please keep our situation in prayer as we enter this final phase. Although we have several grants to pay for the actual adoption fees (Thank-you Bethany and Gift of Adoption!), we still have to look forward to another $6,000 or so, to pay for the airfare and 2 week stay in China that the Chinese Government requires. We have absolute confidence the Lord will provide for us as we do His Bidding! We are studying Acts in our Bible Fellowship and last night I was struck with this verse:

"All the Believers were one in heart and mind. No one claimed that any of his possessions was his own, but they shared everything they had." Acts 4:32 NIV

In many ways this is how we feel about adoption. We know we own nothing, that only by God's Grace are we given all the amenities we enjoy each day. We do nothing to deserve any of His Gifts. And should it please Him to share these Gifts with His Children, we consider it a special Joy and Blessing to do so!

Jonny and the big wind

So what does adoption and a tornado have to do with each other? Well, in Jon's case a lot. He really likes this story and I think it goes a long way in explaining how God can use something bad to create something very good.

In the fall of 1998, a tornado went through our property. Amazingly, this storm tore 100 year old oak trees to smithereens and yet didn't touch our house. We could not open the door of the house the debris was as high as our roof in places. These trees were pulled up by there roots as if they were onions. The insurance estimate to clean-up would have been over $10,000. They would have needed front-end loaders and bull dozers to get the mess out. Since the max. insurance would pay was $500, we needed to find other means. I was able to find a lumber company willing to come in and pay us for the wood and with help from our church friends we managed to clean up the rest. The money from the lumber paid for first adoption.

Our local newspaper had an article about a family that had adopted from South Korea, I was surprised to read that travel to Korea was not required, the child could be escorted. With Chris's situation travel seemed impossible, so this made me think. It was only as I went to throw out the paper that I stopped and asked Keith if he had read that article and what did he think. It's hard to believe that if I had gone on and thrown that paper away, how different our life might have been.

We knew we wanted to adopt a child with special needs and our Jonny had plenty. At a certain point our social worker began to talk about children. In those days children with special needs were listed in a big clunky notebook, the pictures were outdated and descriptions old. As we began looking through the book there was one cute little boy who took my attention, not for the reason you might think. No this little boy's special needs and hospitalizations took up a page and half and that was typed! At age two he had spent over half his life in hospitals. I told Keith when it was his turn, that he shouldn't even really look at that little guy, it was that sad! We went that way for three weeks, looking at those kiddos, telling Keith not to read about that little boy, Keith reading it anyway. But that fourth visit we got a call before leaving home, our social worker told me that there was a child the main office wanted us to look at. She said she should have an update on that boy by the time we got there that evening.

It was such a long ride that night. Finally we got there and our worker went to check there fax to see if the update was there. It was and she brought it to us, and who should this child be? You probably guessed, it was the same little boy, I kept refusing. I'm sure my mouth could have caught a herd of flies! But after much thought and prayer we made the leap of Faith that brought our Jonny home. Jon has had several more surgeries and hospitalizations since coming home but I wouldn't trade him for the world! What an experience we've had. Of course Keith loves taking credit for it and I guess he should!