Darren and I are heading back to Eastern Europe in June for “ONE MORE”!
We believe that every child deserves family. The orphan crisis is overwhelming, unless you look at the “one”. So we will be returning to help families with their ‘one’. Not everyone is called to adopt an orphan, nor may be equipped to do so, but everyone is called to help others in need. We are doing the best we can to help provide these children with what they need most… family. You can help us make this happen.
“When I grew up in the orphanage it was Christians who came and built nicer buildings. Christians who bought us beds, clothing and provided money monthly for food. It was a Christian, who wrote a letter in a shoebox, who first told me I was loved. It was the Christians who met all my physical and material needs in that orphanage.
But it was also Christians who neglected my biggest need. Children in orphanages don’t need more money, nicer buildings or better clothes. I am not an orphan because I lost my home or provisions. I am an orphan because I lost my parents. I needed a mom and a dad. I needed a family. Christians treated all my temporary symptoms of need but never cured my long term disease of being orphan. I am still an orphan.”
– A quote by a 30yr old orphan, who aged out of an orphanage where he had lived his whole life. Spoken at the CAFO Summit 2013
This last year we started a 501c3 non-profit called Lost Sparrows. You can find Lost Sparrows, here
This whole process has been realized after writing this post – Orphans Die. I promised to be their voice and I am now shouting from the rooftops. Would you join me?
We are raising our trip funds and could use all the help we can get. Our tickets and expenses are just at $7,000. This will include tickets, food and speaking in Bosnia and Bulgaria. Here is our two-day training agenda for Bosnia.
We will hopefully also be meeting with local church leaders in Bulgaria to begin the process of identifying and preparing christian families and their churches to get involved in foster care. The goal would be to get the orphans out of the orphanages and into a family as soon as possible.
After this, I will be joining One Heart Bulgaria and will spend an additional week traveling Bulgaria providing training in maternity clinics, family clinics, and discussing future collaborations. It is imperative that we support families in keeping their children. This can be done through small clinics who are counseling families and helping young mothers.
Personally, I will be training staff on infant-mental health, assessments and screenings of children for developmental delays, interventions and possible autism screening. I also will be providing help with infant feeding and positioning and assisting in infant resuscitation training. I will be accompanying a neurosurgeon and a neonatal specialist.
If you would like to support us on this trip, please go to Lost Sparrows. You can go with us to help “the one”.
