Since it’s a bazillion degrees outside (okay, maybe just 113), I’m trying to keep my mind off the heat by thinking about the fun and exciting things happening this fall. A major one is the annual Together for Adoption Conference being held HERE in Phoenix, October 21-22nd. Yay!
First, just to clear it up, this is NOT just about what most people think of when they hear the word “adoption”. It’s about the gospel and what it says about God as our Redeemer and adoptive father. It’s about how we answer the call to care for the orphan (and that can take MANY different forms). It’s about facing fears and overcoming them with knowledge.
And it’s about people. One of the most incredible things about these gatherings is the people. It’s electrifying to be in a building with over a thousand like-minded people who want to make a difference in the global orphan crisis.
I’ll be live blogging the conference as one of their featured bloggers, conducting my breakout on Creative Fundraising for Your Adoption, and attending as many great breakout sessions as I can.
Hopefully I’ll also be catching up with some online peeps. Looking forward to connecting again with some of the amazing women I got to meet and hang with last year – Kristen, Jody, Jamie, Angel…Mary are you coming? I hope some of my readers are there – if you plan on coming let me know so we can be sure to meet.
If you’re beginning to hear the cry of the orphan but just aren’t sure where you fit in, come and ask God to show you his place for you in this battle.
My post about last year’s T4A Conference:
Since I am a Christian and I am adopted, I will share with you what my loving God wants for me and “orphans”.
First of all, God wants orphans and widows cared for. In most cases, an “orphan” actually still has a mother or father but his/her parents are poor and unable to care for him/her so the child ends up in an orphanage. The parents typically visit regularly as they love their child.
These false “orphans”, and the number is astounding need to be helped by Christians to be reunited with their families. They need financial help, not to be wisked off to another country and call other people “Mom and Dad”.
What already adopted people need:
The church to stop marketing adoption. Our heavenly Father does not want children to be acquired and sold for profit. The adoption industry makes 6 BILLION dollars a year off of the pain and suffering of separating children from their parents.
The church to support adoptees rights to have their original birth certificates and not the falsified ones we are forced to carry around that list our adoptive parents as our biological parents. We are NOT owned by anyone. Birth certificates should be exactly that: documenting the BIRTH of a person. The adoption process today turns the voiceless child into a “blank slate” and then allows the new parents to paint a new identity onto him/her. This is an act of ownership, not of any Godly love.
We need our medical history. My children could die from a preventable disease but because I am adopted and my birth records are sealed, I cannot find my father. Therefore, I cannot prevent diseases he may have passed onto me and my children through his genes.
We need our ethnicity. I don’t even know what I am. I know I am part Irish and German because I know my natural mother, but 50% of my existence is blank? Is that humane?
I could go on and on and on…
I urge you to investigate for yourself how many ACTUAL orphans there are in the world and then I challenge you to help the non-orphans and their families to reunite by helping them out of poverty. I urge you to help people in your own country who are treated like 2nd class citizens simply because they were adopted. You have your birth certificate, I want MINE.