Update: March 13, 2007: On Their Behalf...
So we find ourselves on our last evening in Caleb's city. He's sound asleep (for the moment...) and we are getting ready to fly back to Almaty tomorrow. Once in Almaty, we will go through a series of meetings and hopefully catch a plane early Saturday morning bound--eventually!--for Birmingham. A flood of emotions fills our hearts as we prepare to leave. In one sense, our hearts are full of joy as we’ll pack our little guy in his snug snowsuit tomorrow and begin the journey home. Yet in another sense, our hearts are heavy as we write this update. Let us explain...

Words truly cannot describe all that God has taught us on this adoption journey-- about Himself, about us, and about our child. But one of the deepest lessons He has taught us is about them--a group of children numbering in the millions who tonight lie in a crib in a baby house or a bunk in an orphanage with no mom or dad. Whether it is because of financial problems, impoverished conditions, physical disabilities, certain diseases, or just because they’re not wanted, these children have been abandoned. They are known as orphans.

We had read the statistics before... and they are staggering. Over five and a half million orphans in Africa, a number that is rising dramatically as a result of the AIDS crisis that is currently taking the lives of moms and dads across the sub-saharan plain. Three and a half million orphans in Asia, one and a half million in Eastern Europe, four hundred thousand in Latin America, and one hundred and thirty-five thousand children available for adoption in the U.S. foster care system.

As overwhelming as these numbers might be, we have to admit that before this last month they were still just numbers to us…statistics on a page. It's not that we didn't care... here we were going through the adoption process! Yet the numbers still seemed distant, removed from our daily life in suburban Birmingham. But everything changed when we made our first trip to the baby house in Kazakhstan. We saw children playing outside. We walked past their rooms inside. And those numbers on a page came alive in our hearts. We realized that it was Caleb who was sleeping in one of those cribs, and it was Caleb that was included in those numbers.

All of the sudden, the numbers became real... and personal. And God began to teach us an invaluable lesson: "These children called orphans, these children that I care for deeply... they're easier for you to forget until you know their names. And they're easier for you to forget until you see their faces. And they're easier for you to forget until you hold them in your arms. But once you learn his name or see her face or hold him in your arms, you can't help but to realize that every single one of these precious millions of children is infinitely treasured by Me. That’s why I call Myself the Father to the fatherless (Psalm 68:5)."

We certainly won't claim that adoption is for everyone. But at the same time, we can't help but to write this update on behalf of waiting children. We saw their faces day in and day out as we left the baby houses. Children who have no mom or dad to care for them. Children who long to be loved and nurtured. Children who in all probability are destined to end up on the streets of their countries if no one reaches out to them. And whether we can or cannot have biological children, whether we've considered adoption before or we've never even given it a second thought, maybe we do all need to ask the question: Will we at least take the time to learn their names? Will we pause and look, if even just to see their faces? And will we be vulnerable enough to hold them in our arms--at least long enough for them to know that there is One whose heart belongs to them?

"Religion that God our Father accepts as pure and faultless is this: to look after orphans and widows in their distress and to keep oneself from being polluted by the world." James 1:27

We love you and miss you!
--David and Heather

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