As my wife and I left church this morning an old friend we have gone to church with for 20 years stopped me and asked a familiar question. Why are most of the adoptions we see comming from overseas and no one is adopting American kids right here at home?
Our ministry is based on James 1:27. “Pure religion and undefiled before God and the Father is this, To visit the fatherless and widows in their affliction, and to keep himself unspotted from the world.” Our focus is on orphans and vulnerable children. We believe that the best thing we can do for a child whose parents are dead or have abandoned them is to place that child for adoption into a loving Christian family and thereby makeing them a son or daughter, changing their condition of orphan forever.
Now, that also applies to children in the womb that are in danger of being aborted, children born to women who are just not ready to be a parent at this time, or children that have been taken from their parents due to abuse or neglect. These apply to children in the USA and around the world.
My friend was correct in wanting children from fostercare in the USA to be adopted. We want that too. It is a complicated system in the USA. So often it is frustrating trying to access children in state foster care where the social workers are mandated to seek Family Reunification as their first priority. We all know that many times the family those children came from is the problem and not the solution. However, there is that occasional situation in which family reunification works. It is long and hard and many times good people are hurt during the process but such is life in reality.
I suggest everyone considering FostAdopt watch the Mark Wahlberg movie “Instant Family” . It is a good look inside the process through State Fostercare. These kids need perminant loving families. Adoption may be their best hope.