Rwanda

When I was a little girl, I once caught a glimpse of a news broadcast about orphans in Russia.  My heart was forever changed.  I knew that somehow, someday, I would do something about it.  After college, I moved to Wheaton and began pursuing a Master's Degree in Teaching English as a Second Language. The plan was for me to graduate and head to China to work in an orphanage there. I made a friend that knew Mandarin and she tutored me in Chinese.  I wrote papers on the orphan crisis in China.  I watched videos about adoption and researched various orphanages.  I cried about the kids there without families and I prayed that I'd be able to help.

Then something happened.  I fell in love with a guy that wanted to be a pastor.  It became pretty clear that God wasn't calling me to go work in an orphanage (as good and wonderful as that is) but that He was calling me to serve my husband here in the U.S. and build our lives in our local church. And I have not regretted that change in my plans for one second.  But I have wondered what would become of the passion in my heart to serve children without parents.


James 1:27 says, "Religion that is pure and undefiled before God, the Father, is this: to visit orphans and widows in their affliction, and to keep oneself unstained from the world."  I don't think that James meant that ALL Christians must adopt or that ALL Christians must open their home to a widow.  I don't think that James meant that ALL Christians must go work in an orphanage.  But I do think that God has a heart for orphans and that He wants us to have a heart for them too.

What does that look like?  Loving orphans can take a variety of forms.  For us, it looks like praying and planning to adopt a baby from Rwanda.