Vietnam, Guatemala, Cambodia ...Ethiopia. Hearts of loving parents reach out to help children without homes. My heart aches with the desire for it to be "that easy." But these parents becomes a business to some, or a loophole to others, and corruption grows. Babies are taken from their mothers, paper trails are lost, money is exchanged, and the true orphans suffer and wait.Adoptions from Ethiopia have swelled from a few hundren in 2004 to over 1700 last year. Noah is among that number. I couldn't help but think that as I read the statistics from the US Immigration web sight. So is each individual child who was brought to the states. Not to mention Australia, France, England, etc. Unfortunately, the number of "abandonments" has also gone up and Ethiopian officials are rightfully concerned. Assuredly there are many more issues and details that I will never know.
So things are taking a little longer nowadays in the Ethiopian adoption world. But I have great respect for the officials who are doing their job to assure that the children who leave the country really do need homes. May God be with them in their efforts. My prayers are with all of those working for the children.
But most of all, my prayers are with the children.
So when this song came onto my Pandora station, I couldn't hold back tears. I find myself battling anger towards those who exploit children and sadness that it isn't easier to help these suffering children. God help us all to do our part.
Can you feel the hearts of the children aching for home, for something of their very own. Reaching hands with nothing to hold on to but hope for another day...
Crying Jesus helf me to feel the love again in my own land.
But if unknown roads lead away from home
Give me loving arms away from harm.
5 comments:
You said it better than I ever could. Thank you for sharing the thoughts and the love for these sweet blessings.
Very powerful post. Thank you!
My understanding is that the abandonment investigations only effect 5 orphanages in the capital city. I know our agency is not having any trouble with abandoment cases and things are not slowing down at all, in fact the speed is increasing.
That is my understanding as well, however, it is happing and that is where the sadness and concern lies with me. The fact is, agnecies and orphanages have to deal with PAPs who pressure them to "keep up the referral time" and unfortunately, I have heard of agencies in other countries getting desperate and finding other means to get babies.
Corruption even being mentioned in Ethiopia is enough of a concern for me because it is at the cost of the ones who truely need homes AND at the cost of the ones who perhaps could stay with their families.
Consider yourself blessed, as I do, to have found an ethical agency who works with ethical standards both in the states and Ethiopia.
I agree, we have a great agency. Our kid were not abandoned, so we dont have to worry about that part of it. We know who and where the Mom is, so she will appear in court. Part of the reason our agency is okay, is their orphanage is not in Adidas Ababa, so they dont get many abandoned kids, and since the alert was only for the capital city we were okay. But we were scared, and even our agency stopped referring kids for about 2 weeks, because no one knew. But they are seeing a huge amount of kids that the parents are just giving up, and that hurts almost as bad.
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