Just doing it

There are many great projects going on around Africa, Zambia specifically. 

The neat part is that we have friends and acquaintances involved in many of these works. 

I know everyone seems to have “their cause”. Here,  there,  everywhere.

Just look through your hundred (or for many of you 500!)  friends on facebook and you will know how varied peoples interests and lives are. From my vantage point, it can be funny, strange, quirky, sometimes a bit disturbing to the really inspiring and meaningful. 

We know people here that are working with orphans.

Helping widows to provide for their household.

Giving solar lights to rural communities and villages

Doing AIDS research

Working in medical clinics

Working with the CDC

Teaching Farming to those in poverty

Training pastors

Literacy programs

Translation work

Running retreat centers 

and,  just living. 

Most of the ones we know are tied in with a group, an organization, NGO or church that is funding them. Some projects have millions of dollars funneling into this country others just a few thousands a year, but the majority of them have some backing that has helped ease them into the work that they are doing and its helping them to do it, including grants, sponsors, even celebrities from the States that have helped promote and fund their particular project...

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The christmas package that was sent for the kids this year was late. And it was a BIG disappointment. I made trip after trip to the post office both nearby and downtown. It should have been here before christmas, but it wasn’t. So, on christmas eve morning I was waiting in the post office checking on it again. I tried every angle on different occasions to get the package, asking sweetly, being patient, being pushy, waiting, offering to help, offering to make a cake in appreciation if we could just get the package before christmas, but I wasn’t successful. So on christmas eve I was sitting in the post office and stared chatting with a lady who also was waiting on a package. She was an African-American from Chicago that lives here and has a home for little girls. She told me a little bit about it and when I found out it was very near, between our house and the kids school I got excited. She said to come by anytime and bring Grace so the kids could play. I took her number for later. I didn’t get my package that day but I did meet her. 

After the holidays and things settled down I took Grace out to see their home. 

She doesn’t call it an orphanage or mention that to the kids, its just home. 

When new girls are brought in, the sisters just receive them without question and love them and treat them as part of their family. The most inspiring and encouraging thing to me was that this woman, is just doing it. 

There’s no fanfare, no pretense, not even a sign marking out their “home”. 

She just saw a need and stepped up to do something about it. And she’s doing it. 

14 girls from the ages of 1 to 10 that were abandoned and thrown away have been given love and a home. When asked if  she was interested in these kids being adopted out, she said no, they are her kids. Stories of abuse and  even witchcraft - one child she took in actually saw her sister being sacrificed in a fire for witchcraft. 

When she explained her approach to things it almost seemed simplistic. Take care of the kids, love them and be a family to them. 

The amazing thing to me is that she isn’t getting all this money to do what she is doing. People give gifts and one time charitable donations but nothing that can be counted on or anticipated. A friend of hers had a house built recently that was too big for their family so she is letting them use it for free until they can build their own place. She has no car but still wants to give the kids some normalcy to life and likes to take them all to church and to the mall just to walk around occasionally. So when she has any extra money they hire a bus and take the kids out on Sunday. 

I think so often before we take a risk, or step out of our comfort zone we want, well more honestly it is that we NEED the assurance that this is all going to turn out right. We want to see the beginning point, the end point how we get there, what the costs will be and whether or not we will be able to foresee everything before we jump in. And I am all for planning and being responsible but sometimes I think God brings people across our path to encourage us to keep the faith and to look ahead. 

It reminds me of a friend of ours in the compound (shanty town). He sold his house to move into an even smaller place with his own 7 kids, so that he could have extra money to care for those even more impoverished and without family in his community. So he started up a program caring for those and then started a school as well. 

He’s not getting money anywhere to do it. In fact he asks teachers to teach who have a desire on their heart to help but he can’t hardly pay them anything at all. Maybe a bag of mealie, or rice or $20  every now and then. He just saw something that needed to be done, felt that desire and burden on his heart and did it. 

I was encouraged and uplifted being there chatting with her, the aunties, seeing all the girls, listening to Grace laugh and play with them, telling them all she wanted a group hug as we were leaving, and that we will be back soon. 

The one auntie that does all the cooking really wanted to learn how to make more things. So I was explaining how to make macaroni and cheese and pizza and lasagna. She stopped me at the lasagna and said she had been wanting for so long to have someone to teach her how to make it. So in a few weeks time I hope to go visit and do something as simple as make lasagna, which if I have learned anything from living here in Zambia, it is that the simple everyday things that we take for granted can be a means of blessing someone else. 

So, even a delayed package that my kids were hoping would be here in time for christmas, can be used for good. Which reminds me of all the behind the scenes workings and connections and ways that God uses to work in us and other people. And that no one needs an organization or a church or a group to back them and fund them and support them to do what is on their heart. They only need desire, love/passion, and a drive to just do it. The rest are details. 

Adoption Realism

I just read an article a friend posted from the New York Times on adoption. I have had many thoughts on the issue lately, so as I read through I pulled out a few parts that were particularly helpful that I will add on at the end of this post. 

I think one thing the “adoption culture” that has become prominent in churches and social justice forums needs is a dose of realism. Not a wet blanket thrown on any spark of compassion, but realism. 

I am convinced that any child adopted out of a home, (not directly from birth) whether it be from relatives, foster care, off the street, abandoned or from an orphanage at any age has “special needs”.  There is no magic age, if you get them before 2... then you should have no real problems, or under 5 but not older... There can be so many misconceptions in our own minds of what it will be like, what it should be like, what we will feel versus what we actually feel on any given day. 

We read lots of books, watch dvds, attend seminars but nothing actually can prepare you. SO my advice is go in with your eyes OPEN to the fact that it will be hard. And that it certainly is not for everyone, by any means. It will be worth it, but it will be hard. And go in humbly. Realizing you might think you know all there is to know about adopting or raising kids or orphan care, social justice, etc. but you don’t. And not just a ‘yeah I don’t’  and on to the next thing, but a really and truly, I don’t. 

5 years ago the books I was reading were either all fluffy and “it will be so wonderful”, you are actively doing what God has done for you, you will almost be like a hero, an image of the firefighter running out of the burning building carrying this sweet little innocent baby OR its awful and terrible and so many kids can have so many issues that it scares you to death, and you feel powerless and paralyzed with fear.

Its neither. Its hard. Hardest thing you might ever do, and thats the parenting, living... life. It’s not the process to get the child thats hard and agonizing, but it can be the fears they experience, the fight, the constant need for attention, the unsettledness that they feel behind every motive or action, the attachment issues, the things that just don’t seem to go away no matter how much attention and love is shown, the wondering you yourself might think ...is this normal? Remember when life was more ‘normal’... 

The quote below speaks of over romanticizing it. Its not the tear- jerking “coming home” videos you see of love and hope and families united. Its the tears of frustration, impatience, anger, hopelessness that fall when the cameras are off,- the ‘how can I handle this’ that makes it hard. 

But in the end what drives you is that every child deserves to be loved. to be wanted. to have a family. Every Single One. And even if the feelings of love ebb and flow and the warm fuzzys are not there, it is the unconditional love that says no matter what, you are my child. I will love you when you are ‘acting’ good and when you are ‘acting’ bad. When you are conforming to my  “idea” of what you ought to be and when you are just being you. It’s the love that God has for me regardless of how I am. Its the love I need not just with my adopted child, but with my bio children, my spouse. it’s the love this world needs to see and its the love that has to start right here in my own heart.

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If you want the article in full here is the link. It’s not an endorsement / agreement of any thoughts or opinions just a,  hey check this out if interested: (http://www.nytimes.com/2013/11/17/magazine/god-called-them-to-adopt-and-adopt-and-adopt.html?pagewanted=1&_r=2 )

“Of the dozens of evangelical and conservative Christian parents I spoke to, many said that church sermons, Christian radio shows or other Christian campaigns, including Focus on the Family’s national foster-to-adopt program, pushed them to adopt. Some Christian leaders and other critics, however, worry that all this promotion overshadows the hardest and most important part of adoption: parenting these kids. Michael Monroe, along with his wife, Amy, runs Tapestry Adoption and Foster Care Ministry in Irving, Tex., one of the country’s largest Christian adoption ministries. “It’s a disservice when we overromanticize adoption,” he told me. Though many evangelical leaders claim there is a “biblical mandate” to adopt, Monroe disagrees. “Just because my preacher preached a great sermon doesn’t mean my response should be to adopt,” he said. “We are called by the Bible to care for the people of the world, but we don’t all pack up and become missionaries.”

As for Maureen, she is not convinced that any amount of training could have prepared her for what was to come. “Project 1.27 told us it would be hard.” She knew that while all adopted children have suffered loss, children in foster care often have particularly troubled backgrounds and mild to severe mental-health problems. “I thought, I’m just going to love these kids to death, and it will be fine,” Maureen told me. “I had no idea.”

Most upsetting were Ernesto’s outbursts of anger. Almost every dinner seemed to revolve around his screaming fits. He hit Maureen and grabbed her hair with both hands so that she couldn’t move. He threw a car seat at a babysitter. And he bit one of Maureen’s daughters when she tried to hug him. This was a new land of parenting.

In workshops, books and DVDs — including a series done in conjunction with Michael and Amy Monroe that Project 1.27 uses in parent trainings — Purvis pushes people to think about their preconceptions about parenting adopted children: Don’t expect kids to be happy that they have been adopted; do anticipate trauma responses — withdrawing or lashing out — that could last for months or years. 

“When I first went into this, I had this idea that everyone should be doing this,” Maureen told me, referring to foster-care adoption. “But if you are going to do it, you better be darn well sure you can handle it.” She and (her husband) Christian have been invited to talk at Project 1.27 trainings. “We try not to scare people away, but I do say, this is really hard stuff,” she said. Following a training last year, one mother sent Maureen an email thanking her for her honesty. She said she and her husband decided they were not ready to be foster parents.”