One Small Thing for One Great Purpose

He probably has no idea how much he's given us.  There is a gray and yellow set of tea cups and saucers in my china cabinet, which he handed me on a subway in Kiev.  He bought them for us with money he should have used for himself.  Sasha gave us chocolates also.  But he did more.  He let us in.  He gave us his trust.

And he gave us an opportunity to trust in a God who asks more of us than we have resources to give... A God who wants the "yes" from us and will supply all we need to give in response. 


For two years I've wrestled with the Lord about my desire to have control over how things go in my life.  I have asked God to take me out of my comfort zone, and still I've clung to the familiar and the comfortable. I've asked God for a heart for the orphan, and He's given this to me, and I didn't really know when I asked for it, how much this type of heart can hurt.  Or how much this heart is transformed by a love that is focused outward. And upward.

For two years, I've known Sasha in letters and photos and through stories told by the adults who care for him at Sunshine Center, people who now I call sisters in Christ and dear friends.

Last year, many dear friends across the country loved on the Sunshine kids with gifts and letters at Christmas.  Some of these friends have been broken in their hearts for the child they chose and have kept on giving.

I don't think Sasha knows that he is really who God used to begin such a sweet pouring out of grace. 

The Lord used our friends again last summer to provide all that we needed to fund a trip to Sunshine, and our sweet friends sent us with suitcases filled with gifts for the kids and all the staff who work so hard and so faithfully, so often unnoticed by eyes other than the Lord's.

Selden played a version of soccer-basketball with Sasha and Zamir one afternoon.  We visited a Ilja in the hospital.  Oksana and Olia and Misha swung me so high on a bench swing that I was shrieking, and we were laughing, and Misha was making silly noises like our Eli does.

And so often we would see our own children in these kids. 

I washed dishes with Aleksandra, and I made hamburger patties with Olia and Oksana and some other girls.  Kanishko helped Selden roast marshmallows for s'mores.  Manoz never stopped smiling, not even once. Katia came quietly to me before we left and gave me a small bear.  Valik, in his camo pajamas, ran into the room we sat in with Ilia, having tea and talking about how she felt about moving to the States, and he hugged me over and over.  Then he gave me a little stuffed monkey.

How can kids we travelled acoss continents to serve be the ones giving so freely?

How is it that I am receiving so much more than I feel I am giving?

Or is that just the way it is, when we give in Jesus' name, that it is really we ourselves who continue to be filled to overflowing, so that the giving is not an emptying at all?  

When we receive from a God of limitless resources, why do I continue to be surprised by the capacity He has to do still more?

It is the time of year again when I am putting together the Facebook group "Sunshine Christmas 2011" for the gift giving project, and this year there are significantly more children who are listed.  Please pray with me that each child will be chosen by someone and will be blessed, even as I know each of those generous hearts who give will be blessed even more.

If you would like to be part of what God is doing to remind kids who have had very difficult circumstances to face so far in their lives that they are remembered, that they are loved, that they have been chosen to receive something special, that they are prayed for... please come on over and join us.

Please share this project with your friends as well.  I would like to personally invite you to be part of loving the orphan, part of doing one small thing for one great cause:  that Jesus Christ would be glorified!

(And please pray for our family at this time as well. We are updating our adoption home study, for what is now a third time.  I'm not sure at all what the Lord has planned, but when He shows us His will, we will be ready.)

Substance of Things Hoped For

We've been back for almost three weeks, I think, and I haven't really posted anything about our trip to Ukraine.  Please let me say I'm sorry about that.  So many of you gave your time, bought gifts, made generous donations, prayed faithfully, and I promised to keep you posted, and I haven't done well with that at all.  And it's not because I haven't thought of it.  I've actually thought of little else.  It's just that I haven't been able to sit and write without crying.

There is no way that I could have ever known how deeply personal, how intensely emotional and how heart-stoppingly overwhelming this whole experience would have been.  I knew it would be unforgettable.  I knew I would cry when I first met Sasha.  I knew that when my eyes fell on his face in a crowd of people, I would mark that instant as a gift from my Father in heaven.  I knew our friends Oksana and Ania would be amazing.  And I knew it would be excrutiating to leave all of these people behind and return home.  But I didn't know how much this week would level my heart and bring me to a screeching halt and render me wordless (wonder of wonders).  I didn't know I would feel like I was leaving home and saying goodbye to my children both times I boarded the plane.  Truly, I could not even speak of this week without floods of tears (on airplanes, in airports, even a week later in the grocery store parking lot!).  So I just haven't known how to put all this into words.

But I need to try.

You have all been part of what God did in our family while we were in Ukraine.  So I will begin to try to put into words the indescribable goodness of God we experienced in our trip to Sunshine.

This exact moment, it was a gift from the hand of God.  Each of our moments are.  But this one, it's one I can mark to the second.  Capture in a photo.  Keep tucked in my heart. A perfectly ordinary-looking moment containing the invisible substance of an answered prayer.  

And I recall that "Faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things unseen." (Hebrews 11:1) This moment.  This walking out the doors of an airport amidst throngs of strangers and also amidst long prayed-over friends.  This is the substance of things hoped for in my heart.  This is what faith looks like...

"to give you HOPE and a future...."

This is how it all starts for me.  I'm watching this clip, shared by a friend on Facebook, and I am ashamed at what I do not know.  Every misconception that exists about HIV, I am guilty of assuming true.  And it's humbling, this heart for the orphan that has missed out entirely on such a large group of orphans to love, simply out of ignorance.  But this family hits my heart at its center, and the truth that requires bravery and releases hope is powerful.

Over a course of months, I read lots about Project HOPEFUL, and I often sit and wipe tears from my face as I scan the faces of children who need a mom and dad... children who need to know the Father who is their Defender and the One who hears their cry.  The Father who has promised to them, "'I know the plans I have for you,' says the LORD, 'plans for good and not for evil, to give you hope and a future.'" Jeremiah 29:11. I think of my Savior, his heart for "the least of these," and it's hard for me to sit in my house in America with my healthy children and my kitchen filled with food and the goodnight stories read in the rocking chair and not wonder, "who could this world possibly consider as less than the orphan living with HIV?"  And there are so many we call "least."  

The list of who we consider to be least grows.  It includes these little ones living with HIV, who we don't stop to consider, because we are afraid and don't know the hope that exists.  And it includes the foster children in our country whose hearts are wounded.  It includes little babies in America born with skin too dark for some waiting parents to bring them home.  It includes children who have nothing left on this earth but the brothers and sisters they have come to depend on for every sense of safety, but they are too many in number, so we break them up so it is easier on us.  And it includes boys like my Sasha, young men with promise and humor and dreams, who age-out of care and yet still are at ages where care and support and structure is needed.  

I am thankful for a Lord who shows us how to love "the least of these," and who reminds us that how we treat them is, in fact, how we are treating him.  He says, "And whoever welcomes a little child in my name welcomes me." Matthew 18:5. 

After learning a lot about Project HOPEFUL and having spent the past year and a half praying about where exactly the Lord would use me to serve in orphan care, I'm very excited to now be the Maine Associate for Project HOPEFUL.  This week I'll be learning more in a training about the variety of ways I'll be able to serve families in our own state, and I have been blessed with a very unexpected and absolutely amazing opportunity to link our trip to Ukraine to the ministry of Project HOPEFUL!

Friday morning, I enjoy a long and wonderful phone call to Traci Heim, who is Project HOPEFUL's Ukraine contact and the FIG Director (Family In the Gap Program, which helps in a variety of ways to link families here with kids in other countries who need support and love and prayer and family).  As we chase busy toddlers thoughout our homes (I automatically feel a friend-connection with anyone who understands that it's ok for me to give my 2-year old several popsicles in a row in order to manage a full phone call...), we have a two-hour conversation about Ukraine and the kids there who we love so much. This is a great news clip about her family:

Our mission in Ukraine has at its center a boy who is our son according to our hearts.  You all know our Sasha.  He is part of our family, and his photos are on our wall in our family gallery, all around my computer desk.  Our kids consider him family, and I have grieved his absense from our home tremendously over the past year, although I know God's story is not finished.  So we are thrilled to see him in only a few weeks!

As I talk to Traci, she shares a need she sees.  She tells me that Project HOPEFUL seeks to help older children and sibling groups as well as children living with HIV. We both know that in Ukraine, orphans age-out of orphanages at 16, and most often they are left on their own.  She has a vision that Project HOPEFUL can come alongside organizations who would care for these kids, offering support and linking families in the States with teens who need to know the love of family and of Christ and to be safe.  I tell her about Sunshine, about Sasha having someone to go to his trade school parent nights and about his letters sharing that he is learning to manage his time and money, and I tell her that I am so thankful he is safe and loved and provided for as he transitions to aduldhoood.

We are now adding a new element to our trip, as we connect our mission with that of Project HOPEFUL. Specifically, we are exploring the "how's" of linking up support to kids in Ukraine who need to be safe and loved and guided through learning a trade and being ready to transition to adulthood safely and successfully.  I watch as God is weaving together a relationship between our countries based on loving the orphan, and I see that even in what I thought was a closed door, God's faithfulness is opening a door of opportunity to serve Him alongside a team of people scattered across different countries but joined by His heart for "the least of these" and faith in the One who gives "hope and a future."

We've added a Donate button at the top right of our blog page, which will allow you to donate specifically to this mission in a tax deductible way through Project HOPEFUL, should you be led to do so.

{I'd like to say thank you to Project HOPEFUL for being used to share and expand the vision we have of orphan care in Ukraine!  It's been a desire of my heart to see more kids have the blessings of family and safety that Sasha has received, and I'm honored to be part of a team of people seeking to come alongside those in orphan care ministry overseas.}

{I'd like to also say thank you to Kathi Lipp for writing The Me Project: 21 Days to Living the Life You've Always Wanted and for your friendship - your words have been an encouragement to me to make steps in the direction of the dreams God has given me.}