Julie Gumm - Author

What’s Keeping me Busy? The Haiti Orphan Relief Team!

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The lack of blog posts the last couple of weeks can be attributed to one thing – WORK! In the wake of January’s earthquake, World Orphans has joined the Haiti Orphan Relief Team, an amazing collaboration of disaster response experts and U.S. based orphan care and advocacy organizations. HORT is working to identify, train and resource Haitian churches to be the direct rescue and care mechanism for Haiti’s hundreds of thousands of orphans.

It’s what World Orphans does best – equipping the indigenous church to care for the orphans in their community and it’s been exciting to be part of it.

So my already busy work day was put into overdrive in order to do the HORT web site, set up social media sites, online fundraising, etc. I think my head came extremely close to exploding last Tuesday night but alas, it still sits firmly on my head.

Sunday a team of 11 HORT members left for an initial trip to Haiti to identify churches that we can train, equip and RESOURCE to care for the orphans. You can follow along with the team at the HORT website, Facebook page or Twitter feed.

This was my favorite quote from the team today (from David Leventhal of Hope for Orphans)…

There is nothing, absolutely nothing like getting eyeball to eyeball with a child that has lost everything.

It brings a renewed perspective that you simply cannot get from a book, a sermon or a meeting over coffee.

It will wreck you in the best possible way.

Shoes for Haiti = results

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A few weeks ago I mentioned the shoe drive that Sports Chalet was conducting for Haiti. Our kids small Christian school of about 120 students have been collecting shoes for the past couple weeks.

This Saturday I spent some time bundling and counting the results of their efforts…

220 PAIRS OF SHOES!!

So proud of those kids!

More on adopting orphans from Haiti

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Because of my last post on why now is not the time to adopt from Haiti, I want to keep people apprised as I read about new developments.

First there were some rumors circulating that a large number of orphans were being airlifted to Indiana, but apparently this is not true.

The Christian Alliance for Orphans posted a blog entry answering many of the questions about new adoptions of Haiti and what kind of care orphan refugees might be placed under (i.e. foster care, etc.)

Time magazine just published on article about how the quake is speeding up Haitian adoptions that were ALREADY in progress.

Today Hope for Orphans launched their new blog with a post titled “Responding to the Haiti Crisis (Part 1 of 3): The Question of Adoption” It does a great job of delving into the point that sometimes our first emotional response in a crisis like this needs to be prayed about, researched and talked about. Especially one as serious as bringing a new child into your FOREVER family.

At the end of the article they do provide a link to Bethany Christian Services for those interested in adopting from Haiti. Please be aware though that there is absolutely no way of knowing what is going to happen with Haitian adoptions. If God is really calling you to adopt, pray and seek his wisdom about the when and where? There are thousands of children in the U.S. and abroad that are ready to adopt now. They are just as precious to Him!