Adoption Meeting in Liberia Today

There was a meeting regarding adoptions in Liberia today. Not only did government workers and adoption agency representatives attend, but evidently there were a number of other individuals who were there with varying opinions on whether or not adoptions should be taking place in Liberia.

Since I wasn't there and only have second hand information, it's hard to know exactly how everything went. What I do know is that a second meeting has been scheduled for next week - Wednesday - to continue the discussion. Please pray for this meeting, that God would bring to light the truth and that there would be a unity of thought amongst those who will make the final decisions about adoption in Liberia.

From what I understand about the meeting today, there were people from NGOs who have always had negative opinions about international adoptions, and they were adamant about making their opinions heard. At the same time, there were a number of people who believe that adoption is in the best interest of many orphaned children, and they spoke out as well.

One thing I have seen over and over in Liberia is this truth about Satan at work: He was a murderer from the beginning, not holding to the truth, for there is no truth in him. When he lies, he speaks his native language, for he is a liar and the father of lies. John 8:44

I have been amazed over and over again at how easy it is for a lie to spread in Liberia and appear to many to be truth. The main lie that seems to be at work in regards to adoption is that those who run orphanages and help children in Liberia to be adopted are doing it for some personal gain and that the children are actually being "sold" into something like slavery. It's really hard to fathom how so many people could believe something that is so easy to disprove. Yet, many people do.

Then there are other issues that are real and worth discussing about the adoption process. I don't know how many of these issues are being discussed at this time, but these are some that I have heard being discussed during the past several months:

1. How can adoption workers ensure that adoptive families understand their kids' native culture and continue to embrace it?
2. How can the adoption process be revised to ensure that children are protected, that they are going to be adopted by families who will provide the best care for them?
3. How can adoptive families be best prepared for the health issues their adopted children may be faced with? In addition, how can the government of Liberia work to ensure that life threatening diseases are not being spread unnecessarily to other countries?
4. How can adoptive families help alleviate the fears of birth relatives in Liberia by sending post placement reports through their adoption agencies?

So what can be done at this time? I am waiting to receive an email address of someone who is involved in the decision making process in Liberia. When I receive it, I will post. Families who have adopted from Liberia can email and tell of their own adoption experiences. In addition, one of the agencies in Liberia is trying to get some radio time on a Liberian radio station for adoptive families to call in and discuss their experiences. Hopefully, these two avenues can be used to shed some light on what the kids' lives are like once they are adopted and leave Liberia.

EMBRACE the Children - First Meeting

In a previous post I wrote about our Adoption group at church expanding into a ministry to care for more children. EMBRACE the Children met for the first time this past Sunday.

Here is the mission statement and some of the ideas that came out the meeting (of course, not all of these ideas will come to fruition, and we’ll probably come up with many more in time, but this is a great starting point.)

Mission Statement: To ensure that children in need are protected, provided for and given the opportunity to hear the gospel.

Focus Areas to Accomplish the Mission: We will serve children through orphan care, adoption, foster care and supporting vulnerable families.

Ideas:
Orphan Care: Host an orphan awareness event at the church spotlighting children locally and globally who are in need of permanent families; develop partnerships with the countries of focus through ServeGlobal (outreach ministry) to care for the needs of kids who have been orphaned or are in jeopardy of being orphaned; work with Sunday school classes at church to sponsor a child or orphanage; organize a missions trip to work at an orphanage; create a documentary film that highlights the needs of orphans in a specific orphanage; raise funds with events like yard sales, pancake breakfasts, car washes, etc. to support orphans (other groups in the congregation like the youth group, bible studies or Sunday school classes could help to organize and volunteer at these fundraising events); work with other organizations (i.e. www.ricebowls.org) to get some of the kids’ basic needs met; collect supplies for orphanages and write letters to kids through VBS

Adoption: Coordinate mentor/support families for adoptive families at church who could help with things like spending time with an adoptive family’s children, getting the word out to the community when an adoptive family has a need, listening when the families need to talk about parenting challenges; make an effort to explore adoption possibilities in our ServeGlobal countries of focus and use some of the funds from ServeGlobal to help finance the adoptions; highlight some of the adoption stories of church families in the larger congregation; spotlight the talents of kids who have been adopted in a church service; draw people in from the congregation who are not currently involved in adoption/orphan care.

Foster Care: Develop a foster care prayer email list for children seeking permanency; share video profiles of kids who are available for adoption through the foster care system as a way for people to get to know them; host a childcare night at church for adoptive or foster care parents; host a “Fun Day” for foster care families where they can connect with other families and provide a place for kids who have been separated from siblings to see each other; partner with churches who are hosting foster care classes; put up a bulletin board at church with photos of kids in foster care who are waiting to be adopted.

Vulnerable Families: Partner with Jackson Park Ministries (ministry that helps families who have been out of work to get back on their feet) to care for families in need of support, support single parents in the church with childcare nights and mentorships for their kids, support moms who choose to parent rather than have their children adopted.

Ideas to cross over all areas: fundraising to provide funds to care for children in all focus areas, involved Sunday school classes and Bible study groups, combine EMBRACE’s efforts with the efforts of other orphan care ministries at other churches, provide opportunities for the congregation to be educated about the needs of children through quarterly events like a picnic.


On a very exciting note...one of our ideas is already going to be put into action this summer. The church has agreed to host a “Serve Africa” event to raise awareness about the way that Church at Charlotte is beginning to work in the lives of vulnerable and orphaned children in Africa through our ServeGlobal initiative. Countries like Ethiopia, Liberia, Cameroon and Malawi will be featured at the event. This will be a whole family event in the gym and will include lunch. We will put together AIDS caregiver kits which will be distributed by World Vision to give to caregivers of families who are affected by AIDS; we'll write letters and have kids draw pictures to send to our 300 sponsored children in Ethiopia; there will be opportunities for kids to make small crafts and write letters to send to children in several countries who have been orphaned; we'll have kids from Liberia singing and dancing and maybe even braiding hair; and we'll have photos, video and more info. available to let people know how they can get involved in helping in these countries.

I'm looking forward to seeing what God is going to do with so many of His people!

Kids Kamp

This past weekend I got to be a counselor at Kids Kamp (a weekend for 3rd-5th graders through our church). It was my second year going with Kayla and was great fun.

It's a great opportunity to get the know the kids my kids are growing up with and to encourage them to get to know Jesus better. (It's also fun to have a weekend to be a crazy kid again and not have to cook any meals!)

Here are some links to videos of the weekend for those who want a peak:

http://www.godtube.com/view_video.php?viewkey=68b6e0c684e65e4fa023

http://www.godtube.com/view_video.php?viewkey=97e5ed8ee23258bbbf79

http://www.godtube.com/view_video.php?viewkey=5387c73c7d22ef3441bc

Meeting on Liberian Adoptions

It looks like the adoption meeting may actually be on Friday at 11am in Liberia. I will post when I understand more...

Please Pray...Meeting Tomorrow about Liberian Adoptions

Please pray...

I just found out that representatives from each of the adoption agencies that are working in Liberia have been invited to a meeting tomorrow at 11am (Liberia time) regarding the changes in the adoption procedures for Liberia. The Ministry of Health will be there. It sounds like recommendations have gone through the lower and upper legislatures of the Liberian government, and now is when they will present them to the adoption agencies.

I don't have a good sense for what this will mean in terms of when new adoptions will be able to proceed. I don't know if the changes are final or if this is just another meeting to discuss possible changes. I will post if/when I receive more info.

Book Recommendations

Whether or not you are adopting from Africa, these are some good books to help understand some of the culture, customs, political upheaval, and needs of the people who live there. There are so many books to read (and I keep discovering more and more), but what I like about these books is the individual stories that are not "polished":

Blue Clay People by William Powers: I've recommended this one before. It's a must read if you are in anyway interested in Liberia. Written by an NGO (aid worker) who lived in Liberia for two years.

A Long Way Gone by Ishmael Beah: The memoir of a boy soldier from Sierre Leone.

God Grew Tired of Us by John Bul Dau: A memoir of one of the Lost Boys of Sudan. (The Lost Boys of Sudan is a group of about 25,000thousand children who traveled around the Sudan, Ethiopia and Kenya during the 1980's and 1990's seeking safety from the civil war going on in their country of Sudan. About 3,800 of the boys eventually came to the US as refugees.)

Not on Our Watch: The Mission to End Genocide in Darfur and Beyond by Don Cheadle and John Pendergast: Explains the situation in Darfur, Sudan and ways to be involved in ending the genocide. Fairly complex in its explanation of the political landscape of Sudan, but an interesting look at how Don Cheadle (star of Hotel Rawanda) became an activist after shooting the film.

There is No Me Without You: One Woman's Odyssey to Rescue the Children of Her Country by Melissa Fay Greene: This is the story of Haregewoin Teferra, an Ethiopian woman, who began taking in orphans after the death of her daughter. It chronicles her story as well as the story of AIDS in Africa.

The Bread of Life

The last couple of months I’ve been doing something that would probably be pretty easy for most people, but for me it’s just not. I have been fasting from breakfast until dinner on Tuesdays. I’ve hesitated to blog about it, feeling that it might reduce something that’s been between me and God to just another false spiritual practice. But I’ve been learning such cool, unexpected lessons, that I can’t resist sharing how good God is any longer. Hopefully that’s what will come through here…
So to start, let me just say that I hate the idea of fasting. It stirs up in me all kinds of negative emotions that stem from the following:
1.I have hypoglycemia, which is basically a lot like diabetes except not so damaging to the body and is the opposite problem with sugar. I burn sugar really fast, and then I get all shaky and irritable and can’t think straight until I think I might pass out. (Yes, you should feel bad for my husband, who sometimes has to gently say, “I think we need to get you food” at the risk of getting his head chewed off.) The solution is to eat small, frequent meals that are low in sugar and simple carbohydrates, something I’ve learned to do so that I hardly ever have a problem. (A lot of people have some degree of hypoglycemia, the down side is that it will eventually turn into diabetes unless a person stabilizes her blood sugar levels with diet and exercise. So that’s what I’ve tried to do for a number of years.)
2.I’ve always seen fasting as a way to express to God how really serious I am about a certain aspect of life. In the past I’ve fasted when I really, really wanted something or wanted something to change. You hear people say, “Let’s fast and pray about this,” which I’ve always taken to mean, “This is a really big deal, let’s show God how big of a deal we think it is.”
Because of the hypoglycemia and the idea that fasting is somehow a way to force God to move in the way I want, I have avoided the spiritual discipline except for a handful of times in my life. And yet, I’ve always still recognized that it is a biblical, valid discipline that I need to understand better.
For about a year now, since I learned that my children did not have enough food in Liberia and were going hungry, sometimes for a couple of days at a time, the idea of hunger has been bouncing around in my brain, without a real good place to land. When I began to grasp that the majority of the people in the world go hungry on a consistent basis and that many people starve to death, including children, it became hard not to wrestle with my place in all of this.
Over the past 9 months or so, part of “my place” has been to raise awareness and financial support for the orphanage where my children lived. It’s been a tough year there, so much so that I’ve received calls several times to let me know that they are again close to being without food.
It’s one thing to know that somewhere in the world, children are starving. It’s an all together different thing to think about your child going to bed hungry and then to talk to other families whose children are still at the orphanage, children I have met and hugged, and know that they are still there, still hungry, still waiting for someone to care for them in this most basic of ways.
So, several months ago, I began to wonder if I should start fasting on a regular basis. Would God see that I was willing to give up more than my time, my money, my prayers to see that the children were fed? But a month or two went by with me still struggling through the issues I mentioned above until I finally thought, “I’m just going to do it. What do I have to lose?”
It was about that time when my study of the book of John lead me to Jesus’ conversation with the people about being the bread of life. It’s a very cool chapter. Jesus has just fed the five thousand and walked on water and now the crowds are looking for Him, basically because they know he can provide food for them.
25When they found him on the other side of the lake, they asked him, "Rabbi, when did you get here?"
26Jesus answered, "I tell you the truth, you are looking for me, not because you saw miraculous signs but because you ate the loaves and had your fill. 27Do not work for food that spoils, but for food that endures to eternal life, which the Son of Man will give you.
Jesus wants the people to believe in Him and they want proof…specifically, they want Him to make their lives cushy be pulling a miracle along the lines of Moses’ manna raining from the sky on a daily basis.
Hmm, as I’m studying this, I’m getting uncomfortable because honestly, isn’t this me far too often? “God, if you’re really who you say you are, then you need to come through for me right now. If you’re God, than make my life easy.”
Here’s Jesus’ response:
32Jesus said to them, "I tell you the truth, it is not Moses who has given you the bread from heaven, but it is my Father who gives you the true bread from heaven. 33For the bread of God is he who comes down from heaven and gives life to the world."
34"Sir," they said, "from now on give us this bread."
35Then Jesus declared, "I am the bread of life. He who comes to me will never go hungry, and he who believes in me will never be thirsty.
But the people grumble about this because it’s not the answer they want. They don’t want God to sustain them. They want food.
Jesus goes on to say:
47I tell you the truth, he who believes has everlasting life. 48I am the bread of life. 49Your forefathers ate the manna in the desert, yet they died. 50But here is the bread that comes down from heaven, which a man may eat and not die. 51I am the living bread that came down from heaven. If anyone eats of this bread, he will live forever. This bread is my flesh, which I will give for the life of the world."
And here’s how it ends:
66From this time many of his disciples turned back and no longer followed him.
67"You do not want to leave too, do you?" Jesus asked the Twelve.
68Simon Peter answered him, "Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life. 69We believe and know that you are the Holy One of God."
Studying this passage was a lightbulb experience for me. It was as if the Holy Spirit was very clearly saying to me, “You want to fast to force a miracle from God. But that’s not how I work. If you’re going to fast, fast because you understand that I am the one who sustains you. I am your bread of life. Not food.”
Over and over during the past year I have felt God reminding me to remain in Him, not to put my hope in anything else, no matter how important that something else seems. This was one more reminder for me.
So I started fasting…as a physical way to remember on a weekly basis that Jesus is the one who sustains me. I really thought that was the whole lesson, but God has an amazing way of tacking on so many lessons when He reveals Himself. Here are some of the lessons I’ve been learning:
1.It is hard to trust Jesus to sustain me. (I know this seems pretty obvious, but it still surprises me every time I realize it.) Whenever Tuesday morning rolls around, I consider skipping a week. I know I’m not under any law that says I need to, so I don’t have to fast. So each week, I’m tempted to find my life in being comfortable and eating when I’m hungry.
2.When I have a need that isn’t met, I get scared easily. Each Tuesday between 11am-12pm I get really hungry, and I start to freak out that I’m going to have a hypoglycemic reaction and not be able to make it through the fast. But here is the bigger lesson, Jesus sustains me when my needs aren’t being met. Each week, when I decide just to keep going with the fast, my stomach eventually settles down and I don’t die. I know this must seem very funny. We are talking one meal here, not anywhere near starvation, but I wonder how many things in my life are like this…little issues that freak me out and tempt me not to trust Jesus. It seems that if I can learn to trust him with the little freak out moments on a consistent basis, then the bigger turn-my-world-upside-down events will be easier to face.
3.As I see Jesus sustain me week after week, each week it becomes a little easier to trust Him to get me through that day. So this ongoing fasting is becoming sort of a stone of remembrance for me when I get to situations that make me want to freak out. When I feel that familiar panic, my very slow to remember self eventually goes, “Wait a minute, Jesus has come through each week of fasting, I bet I can trust Him with this too.”
4.It’s a good thing to wait for the things I need. Psalm 131:2 But I have stilled and quieted my soul; like a weaned child with its mother, like a weaned child is my soul within me.
5.Being hungry sucks. It really does. Being hungry once a week does make me more thankful that I have a choice about when I will eat and not eat. It also continually reminds me that I need to keep working, keep praying, keep remembering the people who are close to God’s heart that go without enough food every day.
6.I don’t need food like I need Jesus.
7.When I am weak, He is strong. I am really bad at fasting. I am really bad at raising awareness of the needs in Liberia and even worse at raising money. And yet, during the last couple of months, God has given me such a sweet joy each Tuesday (even though I’ve been hungry). He’s also brought in money for the orphanages that ACFI runs in amounts that I could never have attempted to raise on my own.
So the bottom line lesson that keeps being impressed upon me week after week is GOD IS GOOD, REALLY, REALLY GOOD. I don’t need to earn His goodness, or force Him to be good. He just is…good.