{adoption} - Adoption Awareness Month
9:53 AM
This is not my photo. It was taken from the internet of an orphanage in Korea.
NATIONAL ADOPTION AWARENESS MONTH
There are 153,000,000 orphans in this world. We want to make that less.
If you are interested in opening your eyes to what is really going on in other countries and care for orphans watch Bulgaria's Abandoned Children .
Here is a little section from an article by Russell Moore:
Author of “Adopted for Life”
“The creepiest sound I have ever heard was nothing at all. My wife, Maria, and I stood in
the hallway of an orphanage somewhere in the former Soviet Union, on the first of two
trips required for our petition to adopt. Orphanage staff led us down a hallway to greet
the two 1-year-olds we hoped would become our sons. The horror wasn't the squalor and
the stench, although we at times stifled the urge to vomit and weep. The horror was the
quiet of it all. The place was more silent than a funeral home by night.
I stopped and pulled on Maria's elbow. "Why is it so quiet? The place is filled with
babies." Both of us compared the stillness with the buzz and punctuated squeals that
came from our church nursery back home. Here, if we listened carefully enough, we
could hear babies rocking themselves back and forth, the crib slats gently bumping
against the walls. These children did not cry, because infants eventually learn to stop
crying if no one ever responds to their calls for food, for comfort, for love. No one ever
responded to these children. So they stopped.
The silence continued as we entered the boys' room. Little Sergei (now Timothy) smiled
at us, dancing up and down while holding the side of his crib. Little Maxim (now
Benjamin) stood straight at attention, regal and czar-like. But neither boy made a sound.
We read them books filled with words they couldn't understand, about saying goodnight
to the moon and cows jumping over the same. But there were no cries, no squeals, no
groans. Every day we left at the appointed time in the same way we had entered: in
silence.
On the last day of the trip, Maria and I arrived at the moment we had dreaded since the
minute we received our adoption referral. We had to tell the boys goodbye, as by law we
had to return to the United States and wait for the legal paperwork to be completed before
returning to pick them up for good. After hugging and kissing them, we walked out into
the quiet hallway as Maria shook with tears. And that's when we heard the scream.”
Russell Moore’s book is phenomenal and I encourage everyone to read it whether you are
adopting or not! Click here if you would like to read the rest of the article!
Wow! What a journey our adoption has been so far! We started back in May with emails
and phone calls with Americans for International Aid & Adoption (AIAA). According
to them, we were thinking we could be bringing home a child by Christmas 2015.
We thought that was a remarkably short waiting time compared to many other adoption
stories.
But here we are...we just finished our homestudy which went incredibly well.
Our social worker thinks we are a great candidate for an adoption. We have spent
countless times in prayer over our child and this process. We have prayed that
things would go smoothly and quickly. And God has answered those prayers! We
got a call last week saying that it is VERY likely we could have a referral before THIS
Christmas!! Now let me clarify, a referral does not mean we will have a child in hand,
a referral means that we are given all the information the agency has on the child
selected for us. We then, after consulting an international adoption doctor, can
choose to accept or decline. When we accept, from that point forward in
our mind that child is OURS. We will have pictures & videos sent to us of him/her. And we will
begin the attachment to this child.
So getting this phone call that we could have a referral was extremely exciting
but extremely nerve racking. We now have to come up with $30,000 before this
Christmas!! When we accept a referral we are required to pay the agency that
money! And then 5 months later we will have to come up with probably another
$8,000 for traveling expense. I am sharing this with you all because we cannot
do this on our own!!! We couldn’t have been able to do it on our own before they
changed the timeline, but now more than ever we NEED your help! We need to raise
a lot of money in a very SHORT period of time!!
We've started a fundraiser called Big Beards for a Baby to raise the funds we will need to
bring this sweet one home! Our goal is $30,000 and this will go towards all the costs that
this adoption will involve. Thank you for supporting us financially and through prayer! Our
God is so faithful & we know He will supply all of our needs!
Please feel free to share this website with anyone else that would like to support our
adoption!
The Barkers
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