World Adoption Day 2017 -

{Joel "Charlie", AnnaBeth "Grey", Noah "Riggs", Ben (they kept the name!) & Sarah: ALL adopted!}

I remember walking away from my dear team leader as she was mid-sentence, thinking I was going to be sick from the story she was telling me softly, and stumbling onto the bus, sinking down in the seat to weep harshly. It was as though the evil of the world opened up and I saw the orphan crisis for all the darkness it holds, and it broke me in ways I didn't know could break. 

"Jesus", I whispered against the cold glass, "Don't let it be true." But it was. 

The truth is that there are 15 million children who are orphans or have been abandoned. 

Weeping is the right response, because God the Father weeps over them too. When we came home, I had all these pictures and stories and nowhere to go. "Just wait", my team leader said to comfort us, knowing what was coming. Then a few months later, their files were released. I had e-mails stacked on e-mails and would drop everything in the middle of drives or plans to stand in a friend's bedroom for 30 mins to talk to adoptive parents on the phone and pray over them. 

Then I saw "our China babies" finally in their parents arms after the long wait. I watched videos of them meeting each other, crying and laughing in the arms of the ones who loved them so deeply. And I finally fully understood how great of a gift we'd carried with us. 

How great of a gift advocating was, how great of a gift meeting orphans was, how great of a gift going was, and how great of a gift being a little part of the telling of these children's lives was.

And I wept. 

Because God had known all along. God had seen, God had heard all our prayers, and God had planned each son or daughter for each family JUST SO. Truly His ways are perfect and He does what He does best, putting the lonely in families and bringing them together, and using us in the middle to rejoice at His love. 

He is Abba; Father to the Fatherless, He is the One Who calls us togo, and He is the One Who will One Day bring every orphan safely Home. What an honor to be a part of advocating for the orphans in our world; truly the best privilege of my lifetime and my future. 

- JM -

Want to be a part of sending me again to China? Click this link!!