You know sometimes we just aren't prepared to deal with something we read or see or feel, and we just put it aside. This is how I felt when I read the story below. I needed to put it aside. It is soul-wretching. Then I started to think about how Satan must rejoice everytime someone puts it "aside". It's too hard...There's too many...What can I do...I'm already doing...
There is a popular Bible verse circulated in the adoption world.
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once our eyes are opened, we can't pretend we don't know what to do. God, who weighs our hearts and keeps our souls, knows that we know, and holds us responsible to act... Proverbs 24:12
It's a hard verse. It hung over me before we said "yes" to adoption. God had placed it on my heart, and I just couldn't put it aside.
Now, I ask you to read the article below. It's not to guilt anyone into adoption. It's to get people to pray for these children! The Bible tells us...
The prayer of a righteous man is powerful and effective. James 5:16
Here is a story from All God's Children International, our adoption agency. (I couldn't figure out how to link, so I copied it over.)
Rwanda's Orphans…Waiting For Life To Unfold
We know that poverty means first of all to be hungry for bread, to need clothing, and to not have a home. But there is a far greater kind of poverty. It means being unwanted, unloved, and neglected. It means having no one to call your own." Mother Teresa
On my trip to Rwanda God has blessed me with an amazing privilege – to enter a Catholic orphanage, a legacy of Mother Teresa. Her work, which started in the slums of Calcutta, continues to spread all over the world, and I'm standing possibly where she once may have stood. Photos of this saintly women line the walls, giving her the honor she deserves for the millions of lives she brought hope to.
As we wait, one nun after another glances our way until one appears and cautiously agrees to show us around. As we walk down the steps, this gentle soul becomes very talkative. She is Indian and visiting from Calcutta. I'm glad she speaks wonderful English. Even though she is young, she is full of wisdom and compassion for both the orphans and the mentally handicapped adults whom she cares for personally. She first takes us to a room that we could only peek into because "the very little babies catch diseases too easily from Muzungos (white people)." Inside the rather dark and quiet room are three or four nuns watching over 20 to 25 babies.
THE FIELDS OF THE FATHERLESS
Our gentle guide then hurries us down a long, cement hallway to another room, much larger than the first. I'm shocked to see more than a hundred metal cribs, pushed together in clusters here and there. The silence is startling – not one baby is crying. Then I'm relieved to see that only half the cribs are filled. But in some of them little bare feet stick out through the bars… the cribs are too small. They appear as little prisons for the silent, big eyed, charcoal black babies that should have been someone's bundle of joy.
The stillness of the room causes my heart to freeze. Why are the babies so quiet? As I watch several nuns silently changing diapers or adding a bottle to a crib, I realize that our escort is talking to me. "What? What did you say?" I ask.
She began again. "All of these babies are orphans. True orphans. No father, no mother. They come to us sometimes in the middle of the night with umbilical cords still attached, naked, filthy from being birthed into a pit latrine hole (usually 20 feet deep), and they are left at our gate in plastic bags. Sometimes the person who found them in the latrine has put the newborn in a plastic bag and leaves the child in the road in the middle of the night because they don't want to be noticed by neighbors. The sector official gets up in the early morning to see if there are any bags on the road, and if so, he brings them to the metal gate. That is how we get most of our children."
Prostitutes, especially child prostitutes, and overburdened widows are desperate to get rid of their babies. They feel they have no other way. They are starving themselves. Some of their other children are beggars on the street. They live without hope in mud huts.
We have been in the room for only a few minutes when I find myself just standing and staring – at the rashes and open sores on a baby's skin (due to the bacteria and insects in the latrine), and at the broken legs of another baby (because of the birth fall down the deep pit). Orphaned, deformed, and with no arms to give comfort for her pain. Her world is cold, lifeless metal bars.
DOES ANYONE KNOW?
The impact of what I'm seeing and hearing now registers in tears. When I realize that I'm crying, my throat begins to clamp and I can no longer breathe in this airless room. I thought that men – the ones who had stifled life and dreams and hopes with the Rwandan genocide killings in 1994 – were the tormentors of these people. Hope is still gone for many Rwandans. I am now listening to this young woman tell me how thousands of mothers choose to dispose of their child, and in many cases the child dies alone in a bag.
I slowly look around the room. There are too many babies. My eyes and hands fall to the nearest one. I touch his frail fingers. My touch startles him. Did this little one come in a plastic bag only a few months ago? I didn't know this existed in our world. Does anyone know… and if we do will we care?
ANGELS OF LIGHT
Now we are ushered into the sunlight and end up under an awning where children are sitting. I hear clamor. Laughing and energetic children, 3 and 4 years old, are singing. They are about to eat, though it is only 10:30 in the morning. Sometimes the children take up to two hours to eat we're told, and the nuns (so few in number) are serving food literally heaped on the plates. They have all day.
One animated little girl in a dirty gray dress is too adorable as she stands on her chair, crawls over the back, and then proceeds to announce something while standing on the table. She is gently placed back in her seat and encouraged to eat her lunch. But she stands again on her chair with a mischievous smile and even more loudly proclaims something for all to hear.
These sounds of joy, in contrast to the baby room only 20 feet behind me, are remarkable. I make the connection – these wonderful women of God nurture and transform lifeless, lost babies that someone thought unwanted refuse into happy, healthy children. God bless these angels of light whom He has sent. This is their calling, their life. Most assuredly, their reward is in heaven.
HOPE IN THE DARKNESS
Although the children are unclean and not at all well dressed, and it is clear there must not be enough clothing for the 55 children I count at the long table, the miracle is that they are happy! They get to play outside and bang drums and run around. My frozen heart begins to melt as I see God's presence in their smiles, the nuns' gentleness, and the photos of Jesus on the outdoor brick walls. The love of Jesus shines in the darkest corners of earth. I believe it is His way to show hope. Hope grows in the most desperate of places.
There are 130 children in this orphanage, and all are waiting. They don't know they are waiting – right now they are a mass of humanity just longing for life to unfold. Like a rose bud. The petals are fragile, but each uniquely beautiful. They are too young for dreams or opinions or even the knowledge of a family. They know caring, yet I don't think they understand love. They only know to reach for the hands of the nuns, but most will never be embraced by the arms of a mother.
REMEMBERING ALWAYS…
Every inconvenience of my life is now shallow. Every disappointment is mute. Today, my Father in heaven has shown me some of His children who have been suffering. He has them in His hand right now, but He wants to bring them home and into the lives of caring, loving families waiting to reach out with hope's embrace. They need the touch they have been deprived of. They need love. They deserve so much. My plea comes from the bottom of a mother's heart, a grandmother's heart. Most affectionately I send it to the families that are considering adopting a child: HERE THEY ARE. Please help them find their way home.
Remember always the words of the Lord in John 14:18, words from His heart that we must never forget to speak on His behalf to the children who wait: "I will not leave you as orphans; I will come to you… ." We need to take these words and live them out as the Father leads us. We all must come to them in any way we can.
