Christmas Carnival, bring the family, raise funds for adoption...

On November 26, friends of ours, Daniel and Amanda Preston are putting on a Christmas carnival to raise funds for adoption for ABBA CANADA. This is the ministry that we raise funds through as well. They also disperse the adoption grants.

The carnival will be on Saturday, November 26 from 11am - 4pm at Southgate Church, #120 - 5501 204th St. Langley. Admission is by donation and game tickets are $1 each. Hotdog/drink combo tickets are $3 each. All money raised will go to the general fund at Abba Canada to fund adoption grants.

There will be lots of games and fun, so bring the whole family and help us provide for families waiting to adopt!

Is this real?

Today worldwide:

400,000,000 abandoned children
100,000,000 street children
18,000,000 child refugees
15,000,000 trafficked children
2,000,000 prostituted children, raped on average 20/day
300,000 child soldiers
215,000,000 child labourers
(Stats from UN and UNICEF reports)

Your voice is needed. Your action is powerful.

These stats make me want to sit down and cry and give up on the world. How about you? They make me angry. They hurt even more when you have children of your own. Somehow it hits home a little more knowing these children were born into this world just like my little girl was.

I heard these stats during a seminar put on by World Orphans this weekend at the Together for Adoption conference in Phoenix. This seminar challenged me, but even more than that, it inspired me. The work being done by this ministry is incredible! Go to their site and check out what they are doing.

World Orphans makes a difference in the human trafficking crisis by “stepping in to prevent, delay and rescue orphaned children, and breaking these cycles to change more than just the number of orphans.” They pointed out that all of the stats at the beginning of this post have one common link, the orphan. The orphan is found among all of these tragic numbers.

They believe in adoption, but only about 1% of the world’s orphaned children are or ever will be eligible for adoption. The 1% is why Above and Beyond Orphan Ministry exists. For the other 99%, organizations like World Orphans work indigenously with local churches to build partnerships where the local church can work in their own communities. The local church can work with families to prevent them from abandoning their children. They can work alongside orphanages, so that when children age out, they know where to turn so that traffickers will not intercept them outside the orphanage doors.

The presenter told a story of an orphanage where human traffickers would wait outside the orphanage when they knew a child was aging out, so they could pick them up, trick them and sell them. So the churches started coming in vans to intercept the child before the traffickers could. After a while, the traffickers began showing up in self-made “church vans” to trick the aged out children. In this case, World Orphans worked with the local church to build relationships with the child before they aged out, so that they would know who to trust when they aged out.

Creative solutions for complex problems. It’s what we need and we love to tell the stories of those who are seeking God and finding a way to make a difference!

Part 3, The Human Experiment...

As promised, here are the final thoughts on the Washington Times article. This is our third entry, so if you haven’t read the last two, please go back and read Part 1 and Part 2 to get the background. Here are some closing thoughts on the whole matter.

The plan behind limiting international adoptions, in one sense, is to combat human trafficking, child exploitation and corrupt situations. The unfortunate part of this is that it will take years to truly see the impact, if any, of this. In this time many futures will be lost. There will be many casualties along the way and many children will live and die with no family to call their own. Ten or twenty years down the road, we may look back and say, “we tried the approach of shutting down international adoption and here we are today, human trafficking is still happening, the world is still corrupt and children are still being abandoned by birth parents that can’t care for them for various reasons.” Is this experiment ok? Are we ok with this global experiment that will put millions of lives on the line? Think of your own children, each one with such beauty and promise, such destiny. Would you be ok putting them on the line for this experiment? Of course not! The Father sees these children through the same lens. How much time will this experiment take and how many lives will be lost?

One final quote from the article that stood out was:

“Those placed later will do far better than they would in the absence of placement ---international adoption has been shown to overcome even very significant deficits caused by early deprivation, with the age of placement overwhelmingly predictive of the chance for a normal life."

The research and evidence exists to demonstrate the positive effects of adoption. There are so many individual lives that have been given a life and a story through adoption. We must think about individuals. Research the stories, look into the facts and take time to engage with these issues. A child can be rescued and they can go on to lead a normal and beautiful life. Our hope and prayer is that you would engage in these issues. Don’t stand silently.

Bill Hybels wrote a book called “Holy Discontent” and it addressed the fact that we have something inside of us that make us burn with anger or frustration towards injustice. His point in the book was that instead of running from and taking these things off of our minds so they don’t cause us tension, that we run towards them and tackle them. He suggests that our “holy discontent” is there for a reason and will drive us to action, to seek God and make a difference.

One of my favourite preachers says “we are put here to transform cultures.” The Church, the great sleeping giant will awaken and transform the culture. The Church is the largest entity on the planet; the largest gathering of volunteer power that exists. Could a Church of awakened passionate “culture transformers” impact the world? You better believe it could! Let’s lead the way and let’s stir others. Of course, this ministry is raising money to provide grants to help families adopt, but it’s so much more than that aspect. Our volunteer network provides practical help for adoptive families. We have resources to walk families through adoption. You don’t need to invest your time and resources here, but would you do it somewhere? There is so much good stuff happening out there, but “the labourers are few.” (Luke 10:2) 

111 families initiate the adoption process from 1-day event!

On Saturday, Sep. 24, 2011 we attended a one-day adoption conference in Redmond, Washington. The conference was called “Wait No More” and was hosted by Focus on the Family. There were about 630 people in attendance. The point of the conference was to raise awareness of the over 1,000 children in the Washington State foster care system, waiting for adoption. They brought in people from the Washington Foster Care System to share stories and facts and they also had three very moving testimonies from two adopted children and a sibling of an adopted child.

We were interested to check out the conference because it sounded like an interesting idea to maybe host in the Lower Mainland someday. Although the conference was open to anyone to attend, because it was hosted by Focus on the Family, they were focusing on the Churches response to the foster care need. One of the points they made, that really stuck with us, was that there are currently over 1,000 children waiting in the Washington State foster care system and over 5,000 churches in Washington alone. That point really hit home for us. They went on to point out that if one family out of every five churches were to adopt a foster child, there wouldn’t be any more waiting children in Washington! When put in that light, it doesn’t sound like that big of a mountain. There are churches in Washington that have over 5,000 people in attendance on any given Sunday.

We left the conference feeling encouraged and dreaming for what might happen in BC. The current number of children waiting in the foster care system in BC right now is around 600. How many churches are in BC? I'm sure there's more than 600! We'll have to get back to you about the ratio for BC churches.

About a week later we received a follow up email that said that as a result of that conference, 111 families initiated the process of adoption from foster care! That’s really exciting!

We are aware that not every one of those families will end up adopting and we’re also aware that one can’t adopt on a whim or what sounds like a good idea, but we’ve sat through a short version of a ministry presentation and even after leaving that, you are very aware of the real challenges and struggles that will be a part of the journey. So rest assured, these families will go through the process and they will be made aware of all of the angles and things to expect throughout their adoption journey. The process is long and these families will have time to digest the information and make informed decisions.

But today, let’s rejoice that 111 families’ hearts were touched enough to take the first step. Even if 111 families don’t bring a child into their home, 111 families in Washington will think differently about adoption and the part they can play to bring other children home into their forever family.