vika has a loving family!

You all remember the lov-e-ly Miss Vika whom I posted earlier. Well, GREAT news! Vika has a family!!!! Thank you, Lord!  And thank all of you for your prayers and for sharing about Vika.

You really must check out this link and see it with your own eyes: http://www.reecesrainbow.org/myfamilyfoundme.html

Bookmark the Reece’s Rainbow My Family Found Me Page and check back often to see which kids have committed families.

If you want to see how many commitments have been made on Reece’s Rainbow since we committed to Zoya at the beginning of June, click on over and scroll down until you see sweet Zoe (31).  EVERY CHILD ABOVE Zoe has received a family within the LAST 4 months!!!!    This page is so exciting to have bookmarked.   There is no day so dull that can’t be brightened by knowing that a little one is going HOME.

Speaking of little ones….check out this ultra-cutie sweetheart, Candace.

 

Candace’s advocate created a blog to drum up support and help find her a family.  It is A Family for Candace. Check it out to see more pictures of this sweetie princess!

I am so moved by Candace’s face, eyes and mannerisms.  I watched a video of her on an adoption website from her country and she reminds me so much of my very own Hattie!  She also reminds me of so many of Hattie’s friends.  She was pretending with a tea set in the video…just like a little princess!  A couple that went to visit just loved Candace and think she will do really well in a family.  She is engaging and has a TON of personality.  It really shows in her face, don’t you think?  Please share this info and pray Candace home!

I forgot to mention that Candace is HIV+.  When I first joined the Reece’s Rainbow yahoo!group (a must do for any RR advocate!)  I remember thinking that there was no way I could bring home a child who was HIV+.  Since that time, I’ve educated myself and have come to know many families with kids who are HIV+.  Would I bring Candace home?  ABSOLUTELY!  If you feel like you may not know enough about HIV to make a decision on adopting a child with HIV, please visit  Project Hopeful.  I highly recommend that everyone visit this site regardless of your interest in adoption…so much to learn that needs to be known.   Another site, Positively Orphaned, is also full of useful info!

 

A note on advocacy: A simple blog can be made for any waiting child on RR.  What a great family project for Thanksgiving! Show thankfulness for your family by helping someone else find theirs!  Make a blog together to advocate for an orphan! Several blog sites are super-easy to use…it’s fool-proof, really.   If you have any questions about advocacy, contact me at amyimboden@gmail.com .   And if you get a blog up, please share!

a homecoming video of two kiddos

Here is a video link of a family that just got home with two more sweeties from Eastern Europe.  This family takes the normal, standard idea of what people call “family” and just blows it away!!!  Their blog is Urban Goes Country – check it out!

adoption is redemption

I came across this once again as I was cleaning the kitchen last night and it brought me to tears, once again. It is a blog post made by our friend, Derek Loux, to the Loux family blog on December 12, 2008 when he and Renee were in Ukraine adopting their three boys with special needs – to add to the six girls they had at that time.   We received a copy of it at Derek’s memorial service in January.   If there is something worth reading today….it is this.  Thank you, Derek, for living a life that exemplified Christ.  Thank you, Renee, for continuing to redeem lives of the forgotten.   Thank you both for showing us that life can be so much more through faith – that God is more present than we could ever imagine.

REDEMPTION

Renee and I are sitting in the office of a telephone company in Novagrad Valenski, Ukraine; using wireless internet. We are in the middle of adopting three special needs boys from an orphanage here. Two of the boys have Down Syndrome. Roman is high functioning, energetic, and happy; Dimitri has serious mental retardation, failure to thrive, and though he is five years old, he is the size of a 1 yr old. He has sores on his face, a distinct smell of death on him, and yells out if we try to do anything with him other than hold him. Because he has less ability to respond and learn, he naturally gets less attention and care from the orphanage workers in this world of limited resources. The harsh reality of the “survival of the fittest” principle is a life and death struggle that this little boy is losing fast. Our third boy Sasha, is a brilliant six year old who has Spina Bifida (the condition our son Josiah died from in 1996). He is like a learning sponge that can’t get enough! He is happy and alert and thirsty for knowledge and experience. So with two of our boys we get an immediate return on any investment we make. With Dimitri, there’s not much immediate gratification. In fact, it’s unknown when and if there will be a return at all. This is the kind of situation that makes the carnal, fallen, human reasoning think, “Why try? What’s the point? What will this produce? What good will this do? Why not select a boy who has more “potential”? This looks like a lost cause”.

Two days ago we drove for hours into the Ukrainian countryside to the village where Dimitri was born. We met with officials there and signed papers and answered their questions. We also went and saw Dimitri’s house. The day had been long, we were still recovering from jet lag, I was beginning to really miss my six daughters at home and all the familiar things our fragile human hearts entangle themselves with in feeble attempts to feel secure. Sitting in the dark on our very long drive back to Novograd that night, the Holy Spirit began to whisper to my heart, and new understanding about redemption began to take shape.

I was thinking, “Man, adopting this little boy has been so much work. This is exhausting, expensive, uncomfortable … and it doesn’t feel very rewarding right now.” What am I doing in some little Soviet car in the dark, in the middle of rural Ukraine in frozen December, as the driver dodges cats and potholes? What if Dimitri doesn’t improve at all? What if we get “nothing” out of this? … Ahhh, there it was; that dark, fallen, unreedemed, selfish human love, rooted in the tree of the knowledge of “good and evil”. The love the Greeks called “erao” love. The love where we treat someone as precious and treasured for what we can get out of it. This is unlike “agapeo” love, the God kind of love that treats someone as treasured and precious for their good, not for my good. It’s when I love a person in order to meet their needs, having no expectation of them meeting any of my needs. At a whole new level, God is working His kind of love into my weak heart, and He’s using little Dimitri to do it.

On the drive home that night, the Lord whispered in my ear, “This is Redemption. Derek, do you know how far I travelled to get you and bring you back? I had to be separated from my Son, in order to get you, just like you are separated from your children in order to get these boys. Do you know how expensive it was for Me to purchase you? It cost me everything. Do you know how broken, sick, damaged, twisted, dirty, smelly, and hopeless you were? And at the end of it all, you had nothing to give me or add to me. I did it for you. I emptied myself and became nothing so that you could have it all. This is redemption.

My friends, adoption is redemption. It’s costly, exhausting, expensive, and outrageous. Buying back lives costs so much. When God set out to redeem us, it killed Him. And when He redeems us, we can’t even really appreciate or comprehend it, just like Dimitri will never comprehend or fully appreciate what is about to happen to him … but … he will live in the fruit of it. As his Daddy, I will never expect him to understand all of this or even to thank me. I just want to watch him live in the benefits of my love and experience the joys of being an heir in my family. This is how our heavenly “Papa” feels towards us.

Today, settle your busy heart down and rest in the benefits of redemption. Enjoy the fruits of His goodness, and stop trying to “pay Him back”. You’ll never get close you goofy little kid.

no greater joy mom

This incredible mom, Adeye,

who has an incredible blog, “No Greater Joy Mom”,

posted an incredibly moving post

about that room where her precious Hailee lay waiting for her, sedated, for 5 years.

Please read about that room and the children who are still waiting there – sedated and without cuddles of any kind.

Day and night, day after day, year after year, these sweetums are kept in pajamas and sedated with ADULT sedatives. They are not allowed the love, cuddles, stimulation and help they desperately need to thrive even when American medical groups come with assistance. They are the kids in THAT room.

Please click on over to learn about these precious, undernourished and forgotten children.

If you are thinking that something somehow desperately needs to be done, perhaps it’s time to be part of the solution.  We can sit back, be comfortable and go through life noticing the pain around us, or we can refuse to be what our society refers to as “successful” or “normal” and strive to be made the fool by doing what truly satisfies – making huge waves that boldly state evil cannot have it’s run of this place. If you feel that you can only muster up a small splash for now, no worries.  Small splash-makers become huge wave-makers over time.

this makes my day

I have to. I have to post this. Here is a blog for a family of 8 who are in E. Europe adopting 4 kids. One of the boys, Denis, is one of my faves. When I first saw a picture of Denis, he was laying in a crib looking rather listless. On this blog, you can see and hear him laughing with his new fam! It is the sweetest, most free-loving, joyful giggle ever! How many kids like Denis are waiting to be given the gift of kisses and giggles?

http://r7thheaven.blogspot.com/

be the change

“You must be the change you wish to see in the world.”
-Mahatma Gandhi

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.

Once our eyes are opened we cannot pretend we do not know what to do. God, who weighs our hearts and keeps our souls knows we know and holds us responsible to act. Proverbs 24:12

If you aren’t in over your head, how do you know how tall you are? - T.S. Elliot/Barlow

and it’s not okay

After some eye-opening research, we knew for certain that we couldn’t stand by while sweet, precious children who deserve full, beautiful lives are being sent to fail in mental institutions.

I’m reminded from time to time of an old Shawn Colvin lyric from “Satin Sheets”:

“Hallelujah – What’s it to ya’?
Praise the Lord and pass the mescaline.”

Many people ask what caused us to take action to physically rescue one orphan from life in a mental institution.  Sure, there’s compassion.   After all, who wouldn’t feel sad upon finding out that children in Eastern European orphanages with special needs who aren’t adopted by the age of 4 are sent to a mental institution where there is little hope and a slim chance of attention, care and survival?  Who wouldn’t be surprised to know that the medical communities suggest that parents place their children with special needs (Down Syndrome, FAS, club foot, cleft lip, vision or hearing impaired, CP, limb deformities) in an orphanage because there is no place for them in society? Who wouldn’t feel heartbroken to learn that typical children in older orphanages are released to care for themselves at the age of 16 with little or no survival skills causing many to turn down less honorable paths of living?

Feeling sad, surprised, heartbroken – Who wouldn’t?

One day, while researching these mental institutions, I found this website (not kid-friendly).  It may be written for dramatic effect, but the images are real and the story is true.  It broke me.  It wrecked me.  I shared it with Marc and his natural response was action.  One day things will be different.  One day there will be a place for these children in society.  But that day is not this day.  Those children and many others are waiting for normal, self-focused folk like you and me to stop passing the mescaline that numbs heartbreak, and be moved to save.

If one of my own children were in that kind of abandoned and neglected situation by some unthinkable mix-up, I would fight with life and limb to get to them and bring them home.   These sweet, forgotten children don’t have parents fighting to save them, so we decided to do for as many of them as we could what we would do for our own children.

“Like cages full of birds, their houses are full of deceit;  they have become rich and powerful and have grown fat and sleek.

Their evil deeds have no limit; they do not plead the case of the fatherless to win it, they do not defend the rights of the poor.”  – Jer. 5:27-28

We are pleading to win it.  Again, here is the link for the straw that broke this camel’s back.  Google “Serbian mental institutions”.  Look for research papers.  It’s all right there.  And it’s not okay.