Can you believe it was actually one year ago today that we saw Hope for the very first time? So much has happened since then, and the year has flown by! We are so blessed to have her in our lives. We had a big party at the park planned for today, but we canceled it due to the rain forecast. The rain ended up not even coming, so that was a bummer! Grandma brought over a cupcake for Hope, and we sang Happy Birthday to her. She seemed to enjoy it.
Last night, I got to share Hope’s story at a church called Blessed International. It’s an amazing group of people, and it was so encouraging to tell her story again. I always get fired up when I remember all that God did to bring her here. God is so good!
We were surprised to hear from friends this week that we are the cover story for the Shaohannah’s Hope winter newsletter! Our copy just arrived in the mail today.. We scanned it and you can click on the images below to have a look.. 😉
This is the wonderful organization that gave us a generous adoption grant via their “Change for Orphans” campaign. Click here to revisit that story from October 2007.
We have friends in Kansas City who are in the process of adopting a sweet little boy with Downs Syndrome from Eastern Europe. They are hosting an online art sale from today through Saturday to help raise the money needed to complete the adoption. Please take a look at their site… They are amazing people and have so much love to give to this little boy. They just need the funds to make it happen!
Our friends the Bohlenders from Kansas City have a huge heart for adoption. So when they heard that twin girls were just born and were about to be placed in state care they jumped on it and are now in Florida adopting the girls! You can follow their story here: www.rbohlender.blogspot.com
This is the little sweetie our friends the Clifton’s are trying to adopt. She is Hope’s best friend from Bethel and is now three years old. Please pray for this family as they are trying desperately to request her file from China. Usually with adoptions it works the other way around where the paperwork is done by the family first, and then China refers a child. In this case the Clifton’s found out about her last summer and weren’t able to get her off their hearts and have been trying to adopt her ever since!
There are some red-tape type hurdles so please pray for favor with all government officials. They have invested a huge amount of time and money in the process and feel she is destined to be their daughter. So we pray on!
We have learned through our China chat group that there is a family right now that upon arriving in China to pick up their daughter learned that she is in the hospital fighting for her life. Please visit their blog and pray for them as you are able. I can’t imagine what they are going through and they really need our prayer support right now.
A father to the fatherless, a defender of widows,
is God in his holy dwelling.
God sets the lonely in families,
he leads forth the prisoners with singing
There is a little girl named Xiao-Hua at Bethel whom our family met when we were picking up Hope. She has poor vision, and also has some issues with her bones. They thinks she has something called Mandible Osteoperosis, but they need a US doctor to confirm that and do further testing.  A donor has graciously committed to giving $15,000 to send her to the United States for treatment. They also have said that they will give the $15k to any family who is willing to adopt her, so that instead of coming here for treatment, then going back to China, she would be able to stay on with a family who loves her. She is such a precious little girl. We met her while we were in China, and haven’t been able to get her off our hearts. She needs a family! Her deepest desire and prayer is that God would bring her a family, and she talks about it non-stop. If you or anyone you know would be interested in adopting her, please email me! This is an absolute miracle to have someone willing to pay for almost the entire adoption. Please stand with us in prayer that the Lord will bring her a family who will love and cherish her. Thank you!!!
The following article was posted on www.cnn.com today. It was written by Steven Curtis Chapman, who will be live on Larry King tonight. I was deeply moved by this article, and I wanted to post it here.
FRANKLIN, Tennessee (CNN) — According to UNICEF, there are 143 million children in the world who have lost one or both parents.
In America alone, there are half a million children in foster care, and approximately 120,000 of these children are waiting to be adopted. In many countries, children are too often orphaned or abandoned because of poverty, disabilities and disease; every 15 seconds, a child loses a parent because of AIDS. These are staggering facts that can seem overwhelming and discouraging, but I believe that God has a loving plan for each child, and that plan is you and me.
Caring for these children is not the job of governments or institutions; instead, it is the job of families, people and communities. As Christians, our compassion is simply a response to the love that God has already shown us. Mother Teresa would constantly remind those who worked with her that the Bible clearly teaches that whatever we do for the least of these, we do for Jesus. So in a very real sense, caring for orphans is a chance to meet the person of Jesus in “the guise of human suffering.” This is an invitation from the heart of God to know him and to experience his love.
Nine years ago, my wife and my eldest daughter, Emily, traveled to Haiti on a mission trip. Having been exposed to extreme poverty for the first time, Emily returned home with a determined passion to make a difference in the lives of at-risk children.
Only 12 years old, Emily went on an all-out campaign to persuade us to adopt. She bought a book on international adoption with her Christmas money and would read it to us regularly. She began fervently praying and writing letters to Mary Beth and me, encouraging us to consider giving a waiting child a home. Emily knew God was leading us in the direction of adoption; however, Mary Beth and I were not yet convinced.
Larry King Live
Steven Curtis Chapman tells Larry King how a tragic accident helped restore his faith.
My wife and I had always supported the idea of adoption, and as Christians, we understood the importance of loving and caring for others. But what I had not yet grasped was that adoption is a physical picture of what Jesus has done for me. I did nothing to deserve God’s love; in fact, I was living as an orphan, without hope. Yet God chose to pursue a relationship with me, and through the death of his son Jesus, I was adopted into God’s family.
My wife and I began moving toward adoption with fear and trembling and asking all the questions people ask. I remember Mary Beth crying herself to sleep at night saying, “What are we doing? I can’t do this.” However, God kept reassuring us that this was the direction he was leading us. It was a huge journey of faith for us.
In May of 2000, we found ourselves in a hotel room in China’s Hunan province, welcoming the newest member of our family, Shaohannah Hope. From that moment, we began our journey into the world of adoption, orphan care and Shaohannah’s Hope.
We went on to adopt Stevey Joy and Maria. Recently, our youngest daughter, Maria, passed from life on this earth and is now safely in the arms of Jesus. We have been completely overwhelmed by the love and support of so many during this time of deep, deep sadness. Through all that we’ve experienced, one thing we still know is true: God’s heart is for the orphan.
In our travels to Latin America, Africa and Asia, we have visited many different orphanages. If you look past the surroundings and into the eyes of the children, they all have the same look. They seem to convey, “I don’t think this is what I was made for. Where do I belong?”
These children are crying out for the hope of a family, for the hope of community, for the hope of a permanent love. Our mission, and the mission of our adoption charity, Shaohannah’s Hope, is to show hope to these children and to mobilize people, families and communities to be living examples of God’s love for them.
We started Shaohannah’s Hope in order to connect willing families with waiting children, but the reality is that there are many orphans who cannot be adopted. Even though we may not be able to bring them into our homes, we still have the opportunity to show them the hope we have.
If only 7 percent of the 2 billion Christians in the world would care for a single orphan in distress, there would effectively be no more orphans. If everybody would be willing to simply do something to care for one of these precious treasures, I think we would be amazed by just how much we could change the world.
We can each do something, whether it is donating, adopting, fostering, mentoring, visiting orphans or supporting families that have taken in orphans. You can change the world for an orphan
Today was a special day in our adoption journey. We were invited to share our story with the amazing college group of the ‘Home of Christians’ church in Hacienda Heights, Ca. Our friend Randy invited us and he is a pastor there. This is a predominantly Chinese group, and we were very well received.
After sharing our story with them, we learned that this group has about 40 college aged missionaries who are going to China this summer to love the poor and orphans. These missionaries gathered around us and prayed for us. Then they took an offering for us and it turned out that this group of mostly college students contributed $981 to our adoption fund! It was such an honor to receive this gift! We also received a special item in the offering basket, a fortune cookie that read, “You are a person of imaginative yet honest intentions.” 😉
After that we got to talk with some from the group individually for a while, and then we were privileged to witness this Home of loving Christians live out their faith. Randy asked them to caravan across town with him to love on a grieving local church that recently lost four young men due to a car accident, and is praying for one who survived. We joined them as they gathered around this other group to pray with them and show their support.
It was obvious to us that these young people are radical nation changers who generously supported what God is doing in our lives and by doing so they supported the generation of nation changers to come that God is currently placing into loving homes.
After that we had lunch with Randy and his beautiful family. Randy and Kim went to college together and we hadn’t seen Randy and his family in many years. It was great to see them again and catch up! Thank you Randy and Home of Christians for your love and support!
Yesterday we also were able to sell two items that another kind family donated to us a while back, and that brought in $900!, so altogether the weekend brought us $1,881 closer to our goal for our trip to get Hope! 😉
We have some exciting news! Our friends, the Cliftons, have decided to pursue adoption of Hope’s best friend at Bethel! God has done so many amazing things to reveal to them that this is their daughter. Normally, in the adoption process, the way it works is that you locate a child on an agency’s list, and pursue adoption that way. This would be a totally different process, where we would have to request this specific child’s file. We have been told that it can be complicated, and its not an easy task. So please please please pray that we find this little girl’s file. We have been told that it can be at ANY agency in the world. We have contacted every agency in the United States, and so far, nobody has her file. We did hear some news that her file may actually be in the process of being made, which would be good news…we just need to get more specifics, and we need the FAVOR of God to breathe on this process, and locate her for us.
They are starting in the same boat we did with needing to raise all the money. They had the most encouraging thing happen to them a few days ago. They heard a clinking sound on their roof, and looked up, and a gold coin fell through the roof onto the floor. The coin had a picture of an angel on both sides. It was totally amazing, and we feel like it is a sign that God’s provision is coming for this family.
Please, please, please, keep this family in your prayers! We are so excited that God is setting the lonely in families!!! Hooray! 🙂
Zhi Wei (Jer Way) is a special little boy who lives at Bethel Foster home in China. We have all been praying for him to be adopted and were excited to get the good news recently that he has been placed and there is a family that intends to adopt him!
Back in October we sent Hope a tactile book that we made for her. We sent it during the time that Bethel was moving to a new location, so it was eventually returned to us, so we sent it again and they just received it a couple days ago. We’ve been corresponding recently with Sarah at Bethel about Hope and we’ve been waiting to hear if she has had a chance to read the book to her.. Here was Sarah’s reply: 🙂
“I wanted to let you know I have tried twice now to show Li Hao the book. She won’t even let me show it to her! I think there are a couple things playing into it. One is that every morning the nannies sit with the kids and read to them and have the kids touch the books to feel the Braille. They do it like this rigid routine that must be done and I think the kids are resentful of it a bit. The stories and poems are also way beyond their level of understanding. Also, whenever Li Hao is with me she either wants to eat snacks or be tickled or give me kisses. She doesn’t seem to want to do anything else with me. I feel so bad, but I am going to keep working on it with her and keep talking to her and saying her brother and sisters names and things so she gets used to it.”
We’ve been corresponding with Sarah about Hope’s background too, since she didn’t know about Hope’s history (the little that we know at least). Here are some more wonderful and encouraging words that Sarah had to say in reply:
“God has totally had his hand on bringing Li Hao into your family. I love adoption stories so much. I hear them and totally know that God cares for each little kid who is lonely and abandoned. I was talking to Tom about Li Hao’s story and we were both heart broken and sad at the thought of her abandoned under a bridge at eight months old. Then we kind of stopped and thought about the story. God saw Li Hao under that bridge. She wasn’t abandoned by Him. He was already preparing her family-a place where she wold grow up and know Him. It was so awesome to step back and see God in the story. Without Him it is tragic. With Him it becomes a beautiful redemption. He’s so good at doing that!
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A few more tidbits for you on her: She loves to stand in the middle of a room and just spin and spin in circles. It is so cute! When she hugs and kisses she does it really hard with all this pent up emotion. I have to keep telling her to “xiao xin” be careful, and am teaching her the world gentle in English and showing her “gentle” hugs and kisses. I got her to say “da da” once, but so far haven’t gotten her to repeat it. I know that she is understanding what the ayis are telling her and she obeys when they direct her to do things. It will be interesting to see how she does in speech after going home with you guys. You are going to have to send me updates OK? I was thinking about that and how much I’ll miss knowing how she is doing even though I’ll be SO thrilled and thankful that she is finally with you.Â
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All for now. Love, Sarah”
