Oh, goodness…let me first start with an apology. Because of my focus this week on MY child (and my emotional instability upon losing her to the world outside our city), I didn’t get the post ready that I intended – the one that would introduce you to a truly beautiful and heroic young woman whom you most certainly need to know. I promise I will do that. There is also the distinct possibility that I will include an exciting announcement. Next week.
In the mean time, I would love for you to read this amazing and, yes, painful blog post from the Home for Good Foundation. It’s important that you see this before you meet Judy. So, please read. Please don’t back away from the tough stuff…knowing it just might give you all the passion and ingenuity you need to help fix it. So, here’s a story that keeps me up at night:
March 10, 2008
When friends from our home church returned from Africa after adopting two teenage girls, they reported having seen several men hanging around the orphanage gates. A social worker at the orphanage told them the men are predators who wait for the young girls to be released from the orphanage when they age out, which could be anywhere from age 15 to 18 depending on space in the orphanage. This is the beginning of the pipeline for approximately half of the supply of children for human trafficking and the sex slave trade.The director of a well known American adoption agency, told me that he has personally witnessed the predators at the gates of European orphanages, already armed with the names of the girls and the dates they are scheduled to be released.
A pastor who adopted from Russia reported observing two fancy black limousines arriving at the orphanage while he was there. The finely dressed men had come to pick up a strikingly beautiful teenage girl from the orphanage. He couldn’t help but wonder why they would kiss the orphanage director as they left. Was it their thanksfor this incredibly valuable prize they had just been given? Millions of girls like her have been lured into sexual slavery with lucrative job offers from finely dressed men just like these.
So many people have given so sacrifically of their time, their love and their finances to care for these children for as long as 18 years. Its a shame that so many of them will go from the institution directly, shortly or even eventually into the waiting arms of predators and slave traders. But that’s exactly what happens to most orphans and foster children today if they are not adopted.
www.howtoadopt.org/TheGreatNeed/ Paragraph 5
Does this information surprise you? Make you frustrated? Angry? Passionate?
Perfect.
With Great Hope for Change,
Bo
Yes, Bo . . . very tough stuff.
Between your blog, and Brent’s, and what I’m seeing for myself, I don’t know how I can handle more passion. Today, I was praying that God would direct my heart, without worry and fear, in the positive way He wants it to go.
This “Tuesday’s Child” idea is so good . . . and Tuesday keeps coming pretty often, doesn’t it? And even in times when our momma-heart is filled with our own kids’ needs (like your Tori leaving, or for us . . . when I’m thinking of Patrick off in the Marines, Josh and Christi back in college, and Daniel just getting his driver’s licence, dadada…) these “other kids” still need us.
Thanks for the weekly focus, even when it’s hard to swallow.
Love you!
Ann
Crying, I know about this information all to well and there is a part of me that just wants to hide myself from it all. How can this be so? It is just sickening. I will continue to ponder and pray how in the world I can possible rescue them all…My God will do the rest!
Love you,
Tracy