A couple of days ago, I wrote about the miraculous story of many Liberian orphans being adopted by families within the same community. Amazingly, we have a little something like that going on where we live. In our little ward, we have four families, including our own, all involved in the various stages of Haiti adoption. I look forward to the day when all these new children join our ward and dramatically shift the demographics of our Primary!

Last Friday, two of these friends came over to my house so we could work on our dossiers together – theirs for Haiti and ours for Ethiopia. Ultimately, we didn’t get a whole lot of paperwork done because we spent a good chunk of our time consoling one friend, JH, who was feeling particularly drained that evening. A ward member had made a hurtful comment about why she’d want to adopt when she “couldn’t even take care of the kids she has” (which was a reference to the fact that JH works, and has been working overtime to save for their adoption), and on top of that, one of the three children they are adopting is gravely ill and in the hospital.

Their sweet baby boy has been in the hospital for a couple of weeks now and has a hole in his lung. We are waiting for word on exactly how this happened, but the prognosis is very poor and his only real hope for treatment and survival is securing a medical visa and being transported to the United States for care. There is a lot of red tape and paperwork involved with applying for such a visa, and we’re all grateful for the dedication of the adoption coordinator and friends who are trying to make the right things happen for this little guy. Right now, we’re holding a special fast with family, friends and members of our ward, and praying for the Lord’s blessings to be upon the baby and the family who so desperately wants him to be safely home with them. We’re also looking into setting up a special fund for his care at a local bank, alerting the community to the family’s needs through the newspaper and looking at options for a fundraiser. My other adopting friend, JT, is working with her physician husband to get a doctor to agree to escort the baby, and with the hospital administrators to get services to be donated. In the end, the Lord’s will will be done, but we want to do everything we possibly can to help this sweet boy reach the family who loves him so much.

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