My son's home

Today was an exhausting day! I rode the four hour one way trip to Nimba with roads that are far less then pefect! Pot holes everywhere! But it was so worth it!

I made a promise to the parents who came with Toben's biological parents that I would some day go to Nimba to see where they lived. Today I made good on that promise. Nimba is in the interior. It is away from Monrovia, so the poverty increases. This is where a lot of the kids that we have brought home came from.

The first stop was the home of 7 of the children. Grandparents, parents, aunts, uncles, cousins and friends all came out to see the pictures. When I showed them to an older lady, she didn't hardly see them before she started dancing and praising the Lord! It was amazing! She was so excited to see her grandchildren and how they were doing! She started saying, "I sell my children? I will never see them again? Look here!" She had been chastised for placing her children for adoption. As the common mindset here in Liberia is that 'adoption' means the children will be sold in slavery or taken for their organs or sent to Iraq for war. A big part of what God has allowed me to do this trip is to use the media to educate people on what adoption is! She was so excited to have proof to her naysayers that her grandchildren were happy and alive, and thriving!

We went to a couple of other homes. One of the mother's had cooked lunch for us. So I ate field rice with meat & cabbage stew. I really ate the stew! However, it was so hot that I had to eat mainly rice with a little stew! I'm not fully Liberian yet, evidently!

Next we went to Toben's village. It was off the road just a litte, surrounded by greenery. And in this little expanse in the greenery is a grass hut kitchen and eight to ten mud huts with grass roofs. There is no water well, no bathroom, no shower, no school, no access to medical care. But there are children everywhere, most only with shirts on as pants are a luxury here. The girls nursing babies look to be not much more than 13 or 14. Each one had a baby on her hip or at her breast. I just sat in the "kitchen" watching it all as they went to get Toben's birth mom from the farm where she was working. I was trying to take it all in, but the more I looked around, the harder it was. It was as if I had no where to file in my American brain what I was looking at! Eventhough this is my fifth trip to Liberia, the poverty and way of life of so many Liberians just doesn't compute. I can't imagine that a place like this really exists in 2009! But it does!

I hear Toben's mom saying, "Welcome, welcome!" as she comes down the path. As soon as she emerges from the brush, I get up and go around the group of people. When she locks eyes with me, she throws the bucket she was carrying on her head to the ground and breaks into a dead run! She nearly nocked me down as we embraced. Then her laughter turned to sobs as she said over and over, "Thank you, Father! Thank you, Father!" The faith of these people still amazes me! It shines a light on my lack of faith as I live a life of luxury and want to stop each time it gets hard! But hard is a daily reality for this lady just to survive! She saw the album I brought her of Toben, and she just wept! It was such a sweet moment! I saw Toben's 12X12 mud hut that he called home before he came to Addy's Hope. I met the children that were born around the time he was. I could not grasp that if Toben was not in my home right now, this is where he would be! Walking around, probably with no clothes, dirty, hungry, smiling (as all the children are so happy!), but sentenced to a life of poverty and hardship simpling because of where he was born!

So there we were! Two moms, a world apart, sharing the love of a little boy! It was a magical moment really! Something that trying to explain would just ruin.

The whole day was kind of that way! I don't stop and think enough about the lives that we have touched. Pastor Paul, our staff Pastor, has reminded me so many times this week that we have changed the lives of 37 so far! There are another 59 waiting in our home. Then at each place we stopped, they asked us to please take children with us today! They longed for more children to be removed from the circumstances that so many are in, with no help from the government or any other organization. UNICEF is not helping them, yet they are against adoption. Save the Children are not helping them, yet they are against adoption. I am not against what they do. I still believe it will take all of us! But until they can feed and educate and clothe and provide shelter for ALL children, then adoption should be one of the options available!

I was reminded today that only but by the grace of God was I born in America and have the freedoms, joys and abundance that I am blessed to enjoy. Toben's mom didn't choose to be born into a country that was in the middle of civil war with bullet riddled houses and light posts, no infrastructure and no education system. It could have just as easily been me! But since I am the one with the abundance, then I have an obligation to do something to help those without. And because of that, I have to keep going! I have to keep fighting the battles and caring for the children! God used today to cement in me the calling He has on my life! It may get tough, but quitting is not an option!