Wednesday, March 2, 2011

Still here

We are still here. We have all been sick for the last 2 weeks, so I haven't been on here much.  We are still waiting on our travel dates. I am expecting them to come sometime next week. It won't be long and we will be going to get our little girl. I am both excited and nervous about it. Mostly excited, but just a little nervous because we are taking our children with us and I don't know how they will do on the flight. And I just learned that the town we are going to only has a grocery store, nothing else. Hmmm, it may be a very long trip, but we will make the best of it and enjoy it.

This week I have been working on going through all of Malika's old clothes to see what I have for Priscilla and what I need. I am very surprised at how many clothes have stains on it. Now, why in the world would I have saved all those stained clothes?

I wrote that yesterday, if it takes me this long to write one post, I wonder how long it will take me when I have more children. :)

Yesterday, I was reading a blog about an 11 year old little girl who raised $30,000 in ONE WEEK! to bring home an orphan. Can you believe it? Just one week! And she was only 11. Now she is raising money again for another child. I just think this is so amazing. She wrote a blog post about it on her mom's site and said she cries when she thinks of this little girl, who is 5 and will be sent to a mental institution. Her sister is 5 ( who was also adopted) and she can't imagine her being in a mental institution. I just can't believe all that she has done at only 11 years old. Most children I know at that age are more consumed with their own life than those around them. I'm not judging those kids, I was that way too. I just know that I want my children to be like this little girl. I want them to know there is a whole other world out there, and it isn't all about the here and the now.

I laid awake in bed last night just thinking about our little girl. I am just so excited we will be bringing her home soon. I also was thinking about the awfulness of a child going to a mental institution. I read this excerpt from another blog about what it is like when a child leaves their baby orphanage for the mental institution :

 One morning a child wakes up in the only home they have ever known, a baby house, or orphanage for children from birth to age four or five. The child is dressed by their caregivers for the last time, put on a bus and driven out in the countryside to a hidden mental institution for children and adults. I have heard that sometimes they shave their heads when they arrive so that they do not have to deal with their hair. The child is placed in a room with lots of other kids all the way up to teenagers and even adults. There are no toys, no books, no baby dolls, no toy trucks or trains, no TV, NOTHING. There is probably one caregiver for every 20-30 children. Sometimes the children are tied to their beds so that no one has to supervise them. No one really talks to them and no one shows them any affection at all. Their only interaction is usually with the other special needs children who have varying degrees of needs from very mild CP to profound mental delays. Whatever they knew when they arrived at the institution they quickly lose. They begin to rock back and forth to give themselves some sort of stimulation. Some children claw at their own skin and eyes. Many will die from a lack of nutrition, medical care, neglect, human touch and love.


I have just been haunted with these images in my head. I imagined my children having to go. It would have been a very real thing for Priscilla in two years. I am so grateful that they won't have to go. I am so glad that we are able to rescue her before this would have become a reality. But, it is still a very real future and daily life for many other children. There are 163 million orphans in the world! 163 MILLION!! We are saving one, but what of the others. 


What can you do? Don't just sit there and do nothing. There is so much to be done. Pray that God will show you. 




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