More like Heaven?

We are a few months into this adoption process now. It has already been challenging. I hope that in reading this you will be encouraged, and maybe educated as to why we are pursuing international adoption. I plan on sharing with you from the beginning to the end.

Last Thursday night I was at a church for a Christmas Bizarre. I was selling Ornaments and necklaces for the adoption and a lady asked where I was adopting from. "Africa", I said. She looked at me with left side of her upper lip raised and said, "eww". EWW? As if those children had no value. Maybe worse than no value! The thought going through my head was, "you may not like the people around you in Heaven then". It is estimated that white people make up around 27% of the world's population. That probably means we won't be the majority in Heaven! Not only that, God cares for the orphan. That means we should too! "Defend the cause of the weak and fatherless; maintain the rights of the poor and oppressed. Rescue the weak and needy; deliver them from the hand of the wicked." - Psalm 82:3-4. Another response we have heard is "why adopt internationally, why not locally?" I am a proponant of domestic adoption, and I will elaberate on why we are going internationally later.

But I will hit some on the physical side of why that question is ignorant at best. AIDS has now left 15 million children behind as orphans. In Africa they say that when it comes to HIV, everyone is either infected or affected- no one escapes completely (The Hole in Our Gospel). AIDS is not only a medical crisis. I met a homeless mother of three in Uganda infected with AIDS because she was a victim of some sort (in the top picture). She carries on, struggling to feed her children, mostly through backbreaking labor digging up roots to sell in the market. Soon, she will become too sick and week to carry on. Her young children will have to become her caregivers when she becomes too feeble to move. And then, the children will be alone. There are millions like her in Uganda alone! And that's just from AIDS. I haven't even mentioned the problems from starvation (the number one risk to health globally, killing a child every 5 seconds), TB (which has infected over 1/3 of the world's poorest population), malaria (which kills between 1.5 to 2.7 MILLION each year), typhoid, yellow fever, water related diseases (which kills a child every 15 seconds) and so many more deadly PREVENTABLE diseases they are up against. There is an orphan crisis going on! There is NO welfare, no government paid foster system, no foodstamps. NOTHING. The lucky orphans have an aunt or a grandmother to take them in. Grandparents in Africa struggle to care for grandchildren and even great-grandchildren by the millions! Desperately poor themselves, sometimes caring for 12 or more children. But when the grandmothers or aunts die themselves, the children are orphaned once again, leaving young children as the head of their household! Imagine a 7 year old little girl becoming the sole caretaker of her 3 young siblings! This happens!

The woman I mentioned earlier...we were able to admit her 2 young daughters into Sonrise Baby Home. They will be loved, fed, and discipled. This woman will be able to die in peace knowing her children will be ok. A luxury so many mothers don't have in Africa.

The end of all missionary endeavors to "make discipes of all nations" is described in Revelation 5:9 "And they sang a new song, saying, “Worthy are You to take the book and to break its seals; for You were slain, and purchased for God with Your blood men from every tribe and tongue and people and nation." There is one aim in Matthew 28 and Revelation 5: To display the glory of Christ through the ingathering of a hugely diverse and unified redeemed people.

As we follow God down the path of pure religion (James 1:27), we look forward with great anticipation to the day our home looks a little more like heaven.