It was not until the earthquake of 2010 that we considered adoption again. The earthquake happened in January of 2010 and our mission team was there in March of 2010. We had many Haitians coming into our clinic that were really in bad shape. One mother stood before me in the clinic with her four children around her, and she asked if I would take one of the children back with me. She told me her husband had died in the earthquake, she could not feed all of her children, and she would have to let one child starve or give it away. I sadly told her I could not take her child, but I did give her as much food I had in my daily snack pack and gave her as many vitamins and medication as I could. This scene occurred time and time again. My heart was very heavy.
Roberta, the director of the orphanage, had people living in tents in her compound and she told me that if we were ready to try adopting again that there was a baby that had lost his mother that we might be interested. His story brought me to tears. His mother was 16 years old and was coming to their nutrition center daily to be fed. She was a smart young lady and Roberta was helping educate her. She stopped coming one day. Roberta went out to her mother to find her and was told that this young lady was sent to the Dominican Republic to work. That was code for "she was sold into prostitution" by her own mother. This lady has was selfish and down right cruel. Roberta was heart broken that this had happened. She could have helped her and taken care of her. Right before the earthquake she came back to the orphanage and just showed up on the doorstep with a small boy named Davidson. She was 19 years old. She was told by the doctors when he was born to never feed him her own milk because she was "sick". He was healthy, though. She, not soon after, developed congestive heart failure. Her mother would not take her to the doctor but put voodoo fetishes around her for healing. Roberta went to the girl and asked her if she wanted to go the hospital, and she did because she was really sick. She left her there at the hospital that night and when she went back to see her she had died. Davidson was at the orphanage and he had only that grandmother left. I fell in love with him immediately.
When I got back home my wife and I sat down, talked about this, prayed and decided it was time again. We started to get to work on the paperwork again. It was not until that summer that I heard that the grandmother found out about the adoption and came and got him and took him from the orphanage. She proceeded to tell us that she would not let us adopt him unless we gave her money. We informed her this was illegal and could not do this. Our dialogue with her continued all this year until we went back in March of 2011. She agreed at that time to let us adopt him and we got all of the paperwork ready in the summer of 2011 and completed an agreement with Chris Nungester at HIS Home for Children to do the adoption for us, and then we got word that she would only give the child over to Roberta if we helped her repair her house. This continued for the rest of this year, we could adopt the child - we couldn't unless we gave her money. Finally, March 2012 during our mission trip and told her that she either give the child to the orphanage and let us adopt him or we were finished. She told me no and I was crushed. I came back to the US to talk with my wife and family and we had some decisions to make.
All of this time I was trying to control who we were adopting, but maybe it was time for us to let God find a child for us. I never could understand why God allowed Paul David to die. It made no sense. Now, I could not figure out why this was not working out for us. Maybe we were being told to "wait on the Lord" and let him take control of the situation. Maybe he had a child he wanted us to help. But that is a story for the next post.
No comments:
Post a Comment