Bring Me Hope Orphan Summer Camps

I am honored to have Nicole guest post on my blog today to share about a special way to care for orphans!  If you feel so called, please consider becoming a camp sponsor to give one of the precious Chinese orphans the opportunity to go to camp!  Let then know that someone cares and loves them, and that they ARE important!

                                                                    

I knew that traveling to China to be part of the Bring Me Hope summer camps would change my life, but I had no idea how deeply and permanently it would wreck my heart. 

It was only five days that I spent with those three orphans, but I still remember it like yesterday.  We ate our meals together, sang the silly camps songs, hiked the Great Wall and pasted and glued our hearts out at craft time.  As they opened up and shared their stories, I felt myself coming undone from the inside out.  How do you not when a gorgeous, twelve-year-old girl tells you that she was orphaned after her parents died in a murder/suicide?!  

Shock.  Then heartbreak.  Then the tears.  

Fast forward six years.  My trips to China have continued, my new dream in life is to get to 30 years old so I can bring our own son or daughter home.  From that first week at camp, I saw what a difference five days at a summer camp could make in the lives of chinese orphans, as well as their foreign camp buddies; I never wanted to stop being a part of this mission. Bring Me Hope is dedicated to improving the lives and futures of Chinese orphans. It begins at summer camp and continues with year-round programs to meet the ongoing needs of orphans in China.

We are currently in the middle of four weeks of summer camps in five chinese cities.  A great need right now is raising the rest of the camp sponsorships to make the fourth week of camp possible.  As a sponsor, you will become part of the team that makes camp happen for the kids. Sponsorships of $125 or more will receive a phone call and letter from one of the children attending camp.

Your camp sponsorship will provide Chinese orphans with a safe place to experience healing, be assured of their value, and be given opportunities to explore fun, new things like swimming, art, music and field trips. Camp also connects orphans with people who can advocate for them year-round. 

We would love to invite you to partner with us.  Would you help make these last weeks of camp happen with a camp sponsorship?!  {You can do this on our website here}  We also hope you would consider about joining us at the 2014 camps.  It is an adventure that will change your life.  Most of all, please pray with us that these children's lives could be changed through the power of love and family.

“We learned that orphans are easier to ignore before you know their names. They are easier to ignore before you see their faces. It is easier to pretend they are not real before you hold them in your arms. But once you do, everything changes.” -David Platt

                                                                    

Visiting Orphans

Have you heard of Visiting Orphans?  It is a 501(c)3 non-profit mission sending agency established in 2005 as a way to fulfill the biblical mandate given in James 1:27 to "visit orphans and widows in their distress". They are dedicated to building relationships and working toward long-term change in those they visit and in those they send.  Visiting Orphans currently sends short-term mission trips to visit orphans in 12 countries including: China, Costa Rica, Ecuador, El Salvador, Ethiopia, Haiti, Honduras, India, Kenya, Ukraine, Uganda and Rwanda.

My very dear bloggy and IRL friend, Kelly from My Overthinking, is co-leading a Visiting Orphans team to China in March also!  Will you please take a few moments to watch this video and learn all about what Visiting Orphans does?

Orphan Sunday at our church

My heart is so full after this Sunday's Orphan Sunday service.  I am honored to be part of an amazing congregation who shares God's heart for the fatherless.  The service was also a wonderful reminder that we are ALL adopted into God's Heavenly family.  That is a true blessing and the best truth I can think of.  I am so thankful for the church staff, the volunteers, the adoptive families of our church, and the worship band that totally rocked the praise music.  So many people helped to make Orphan Sunday what it was.  God was glorified and I know He will continue to do BIG THINGS with this day.  Trusting in Him to lead the way for our church.

Below was the one and only picture I snapped during the service, but it really was such a powerful moment.  Our "Children of God" music video was finishing up and the band members had just revealed their "adopted" t-shirts too.  They performed the song live while the video played on the screens.  I love that you can also see the shoe demonstration laying at the front of the stage ... I led a group that brought up a total of 240 pairs of shoes throughout the service to represent the 240 children that were orphaned around the world just during the hour of the service.  Powerful stuff.  HERE is the message that our children's minister delivered (click on the Orphan Sunday message from 3/17/13).  She did a fantastic job explaining our adoption into God's family using scripture, as well as explaining that God calls us to care for orphans of the world.  She talked about a few ways to care for orphans that do not include adoption, and as a result, the congregation sponsored 18 new children through Compassion after the services!

If you have any questions about how we did our Orphan Sunday service, please shoot me an email - I'm happy to help in any way I can.  We also did an interview video with four of the church's adoptive families (us included) that included a very emotional clip from a little girl who was old enough to remember her time at her adoption center.

Defend the cause of the fatherless

Today is Orphan Sunday.

It's a day when churches around the world recognize the terrible orphan crisis the world faces ... all of the children that will go to bed hungry tonight, without someone to hug them or kiss them goodnight.  Many of these children will die from disease or starvation. The number of children living in these wretched conditions is unfathomable to us because of the comfortable American bubble we live in.  It is so easy to ignore.  But Jesus does not want us to ignore them.  It is written throughout the Bible that we are to defend the cause of the fatherless:

"Defend the cause of the weak and fatherless; maintain the rights of the poor and oppressed." Psalm 82:3

"Pure and undefiled religion in the sight of our God and Father is this: to visit orphans and widows in their distress, and to keep oneself unsustained by the world." James 1:27

"Learn to do good; seek justice, correct oppression; bring justice to the fatherless, plead the widow's cause." Isaiah 1:17

"And the King will answer them, 'Truly I say to you, as you did it to one of the least of these my brothers, you did it to me.'" Matthew 25:40

I could go on ... there are countless other verses throughout the Bible that teach it is our responsibility.

Orphan care does not always equal adoption.  Although a part of the way our family cares for orphans is through adoption, it does not look the same for everyone.  Here are several ways you can get involved in orphan and widow care that don't involve adoption (in no particular order):

1. Pray for orphans around the world.

2. Make a donation to one of the many organizations that care for orphans.

3. Sponsor an orphan.  If you need help with an organization to work with, please shoot me an email at livingouthislove@yahoo.com.

4. Host an orphan in your home for several weeks through organizations like New Horizons or Welcoming Angels.

5. Support a local adoptive family through prayer or by helping with babysitting or taking them meals.

6. Find a local group home to volunteer your time with.

7. When shopping or buying gifts, shop with a purpose by patronizing organizations or businesses that donate a portion of income to orphan care.

8. Visit orphans around the world with Visiting Orphans.

9. Consider becoming a Safe Family for emergency help to families in need to prevent more children from becoming orphans.

10. Support a local foster program with needed donations.

11. Become a foster parent.

If you aren't already, would you please prayerfully consider how you can help orphans too? Even if it is in the simple act of prayer, everything is helpful.  As Christians, we are all called to care for the fatherless, let's show orphans that we really do care.

"We love because He first loved us." 1 John 4:19

(Come find me on Facebook!  And if you have been blessed by my blog, would you mind taking just a few seconds of your time and click on the 2 links below?  You don't need to do anything except click each button once (you can click once a day!).  Each click is a "vote" that allows my blog to be seen by other homeschool and adoptive families so I can help them too!  Thank you so much for blessing me with your help, may God bless your day!)

Numbers

I think in American society, we get so used to seeing numbers and statistics every. single. day. that we are completely immune to it.  I hesitate to share statistics often because I really wonder how much good they actually do ... I used to be one of those people that totally glazed over when seeing the overwhelming numbers.  But now that I have seen the face of adoption with my own eyes in my own family ... well I cannot turn off the statistics anymore.  They are staggering.

I have already shared these slides on my {orphan care} page, but here some interesting statistics about adoption.  Thanks to Adoption Journey for putting this together! (You can click on the images to see them bigger)