Destination Change...Sort Of

I’m so privileged to get guest post twice in a row!  Here’s the deal though.  Unlike my personal blog, www.tyson-brown.blogspot.com, I get to edit myself, any way I want!  I can have as many run on sentences as I want!  Though it drives my mom crazy, being an English teacher and all, I love a good run-on no comma sentences because I want my readers to try to get it all out in one breathe and I’m hoping you can’t by the end because it gives it emphasis!  (Kind of like the one you just read). 

There are other perks about writing and editing your own blog.  One of those perks is I can pick any adjective I want to describe my subjects.  Now, I’m just learning the rules of guest posting, but from what I understand from my lovely bride who manages this blog is, she gets to proof read my post before posting and has the authority to correct run-on sentences as she sees fit AND she get to interject her own adjectives into my work.  NOW NOW, we got’st to talk about this!  Because what I found out later after having skimmed my post from last week that apparently I used the adjective “precious”.  I have nothing against the word precious but I’m just not a “precious” kind of guy.  That is not a word I throw around often even in my most softhearted moments.  My wife is a “precious” kind of gal and last week while proofing my post she sensed a “precious moment” and invoked her editor’s rights and by inserting the word where she felt I meant to put it.

I want to go on the record now and say, if you see the word “precious” in the following post it did not come from me.  Again, I don’t have anything against precious, it’s just not who I am.

Any of you who follow this blog or Christy or myself on Facebook recently saw where we asked for prayers for the situation in Ethiopia.  We asked and still ask that you continue to pray for the country, the government officials making decisions, the adoptive families in limbo and children that desperately need parents.

I always find it funny how God chooses to speak to us.  While we were praying about this time of transition in Ethiopia, Christy and I decided we should at least explore what our Plan B would be if for some reason they shut the program down in Ethiopia.  After all we are at the very beginning stages of this process.  So as we prayed we continued to feel strongly that our heart was no doubt in Africa.  Problem is when we look at other Africa options through our agency the only other program was Ghana, which is a pilot program.  Pilot meaning they are just recently opening up to adoption and our agency is just beginning the steps of adopting out of this country.  As they say in the description, they are looking for families with a “pioneering spirit”. 

Pioneering spirit, huh, what does that mean?  It means that the first families in and the agency will be learning together.  Like they’ll only take 5 or so families, cut it off there, then go completely through the process with those families as an educational experience before opening up to others.  Call them guinea pigs if you will.  In countries like Ethiopia the agencies, for the most part, know what to expect with the waiting and required paperwork because they’ve done it over and over again – FOR THE MOST PART.  In a pilot program, well, no body is sure of anything until they all jump in together and get their feet wet.  Pioneers if you will!

I wasn’t so sure about all this, that’s kind of hard to sell to someone so new to the whole adoption thing anyway so I almost didn’t make the first phone call to even inquire, but something told me I should.  I was about 30 minutes into our 1-hour conversation with Jynger, the Ghana director for our agency, when I knew this is where we should be.  I actually tried to fight off my giddiness (yes, this is one of my words) because I knew Christy would never go for this.

I heard Jynger tell stories of the rural orphanages she had visited, each with no less than about 80 kids.  Rural as in, no running water, bamboo walls, cooking over open fire rural.   She explained that adoption was not new Ghana in larger more densely populated areas but that in the rural areas it’s been unheard of.  The rural orphanages of Ghana are set up, as basically as places for orphaned kids to stay until they are 18, then they are out on their own.  That’s where our adoption agency comes in.  They’ve been tasked to build relationships with the rural orphanages and to start educating them on the importance of adoption and what it can do for the children.  To go into the rural orphanages and offer hope to children who’ve never had it before.

Much like Ethiopia I heard her stories of children orphaned by poverty, death of parents due to HIV & AIDS and other from sheer abandonment for one reason or another.  In Ghana if a mother abandons her child then decides she wants to reclaim the child she can be imprisoned.  So once a child is abandoned the hope of being reunited with their parents is slim to none.   

I was captivated by her story of going to an orphanage where many of the children had not seen a white woman before.  As she sat under a tree talking to the director she looked around to see that about 50 kids had snuck up on them and were hiding nearby to get a peak of her.  The orphanage director motioned them to come near and they did.  They were all over her; hugging, kissing, pulling, climbing!!  They couldn’t get enough.  She said every orphanage was this way.  Full of kids with an unquenchable love for outsiders and people in general!  She said she had never been to a more welcoming country.

In Ghana many of the adoptable kids will be toddler age and older because in their culture villages take in most of the orphaned babies.  Unlike Ethiopia though, there are no transition homes where kids are able to be given more one on one care as they are being prepped for adoption once they are found to adoptable.  The children of Ghana will come straight from the orphanage.

All this and more Jynger shared with me in our hour talk.

Christy and I met for supper that night and the discussion started – but it didn’t end until the wee hours of the next morning because we had found video online that had come out of one the orphanages our agency is working through.

It was when Christy saw a clip of toddlers sleeping on rugs on the dirt floors of their bamboo walled tin roofed classroom while the older kids were being taught English, that Christy looked at me and said, “This is where we need to be.”  “This is where our daughter is.”  I immediately agreed.

Are we pioneering spirits?  I guess!  How heck do we know the difference between this adoption and any other since this is our first anyway??

So, Ghana, here we come!!!

Again friends and family we need your prayers.

We need your prayers as a family embarking not just on a new experience for us, but also for those who are guiding us.  Pray that our pioneering spirit will not burn out but through trials our marriage and family will continue to draw closer.

We need you to pray for the orphanages, the kids and the directors.  That there will be an understanding of the importance of adoption and the hope it can offer these precious children.  Pray that the daughter God has chosen for us and children for the families after us will have a strong desire to want parents, to desire parents of a different race, and to desire parents from a different part of the world.

Thank you friends, thank you family!  We CANNOT make it on through this journey without you!

Note: Any of you who may adopt in the future.  Don’t put the name of the country in your blog address; you might be called to a different country in the process.  Just a suggestion, after all I’m just a precious little guest poster on this site.

Tyson