I am always impressed how some have dedicated their entire lives to compassionate service for others. I am certain there is a cause that will pull at your heartstrings, too. For me, it has always been concern for the plight of innocent children. They often suffer for problems they didn’t create, don’t understand, and are helpless to change. I particularly have a soft spot for children without parents to support them.
Humans need many years of love and support before we can be on our own. The odds are stacked heavily against children who have been abandoned or orphaned at a young age.
When my wife and I discovered that many young Thai girls are sold into sexual slavery at the age of twelve, we were outraged and decided we could do something to help. While we already had two awesome boys and could have more birth children, we began to check into adoption opportunities. We were matched up with a little baby girl who was just turning one. Her mother was only seventeen and, while away at school, got pregnant. Her parents never even knew she had given birth to a daughter.
After eighteen months of legal paperwork, we were able to travel to Thailand and pick her up. By that time, she was two and a half and was speaking Thai well. What an abrupt change for this little girl to be sent to the other side of the world, into a new environment where none of us spoke Thai and she had to learn to speak English.
The first six months were hard for her. She couldn’t communicate with us and, at random times, she would drop to the ground and just start crying. But once she learned English, she began to thrive. She is now a beautiful woman, twenty- eight years old and married to a good man.
Four years later, we felt like there was another little girl out there who we needed to adopt. We found a baby of six months who had been abandoned by her mother at the hospital. Her mother was living on the streets and already had three other children who would beg on the street corners each day. We were able to expedite the process and pick her up after only nine months of legal paperwork.
She just graduated from college and, at twenty-four years old, is both beautiful and smart. We are so proud of both. We are also grateful that we have had the opportunity to raise these two beautiful girls and give them a better chance in life.
Another four years later, we felt a tug on our hearts and adopted a third girl, this time from Kazakhstan. She lived in a forgotten orphanage behind an abandoned mining operation, thirty miles outside of Jezkazgan, Kazakhstan. The town was the most depressing I have ever seen. After eighty years of Soviet rule, the people were dejected and hopeless. None of them smiled.
The orphanage was even more depressing. It consisted of two buildings—the baby house where the kids lived until they turned eight, and the adolescent house at the back of the property where they lived until they were kicked out at age sixteen. When the eight-year-old girls were transferred to the adolescent house, their initiation was to be gang-raped by all the boys in the house.
There were sixteen girls in the adolescent house. Our little girl had just turned eight by the time we got all the legal paperwork done and were able to travel to Kazakhstan, but we didn’t get there in time to save her from this experience. These boys caused a lot of damage to her little female parts. I was both furious and sad.
Once these kids were transferred to the adolescent house, they were assumed to be too old to be adopted. The other girls looked longingly as they knew they would not be rescued. We desperately wanted to bring them all home with us. There was one little nine-year-old girl, Christina, a blonde-haired, blue- eyed Russian girl who I can still picture in my mind’s eye; she haunts my dreams to this day. These kids deserved a better chance in life, and it broke my heart to leave them in that awful place.
Shortly after we left, the adoption program was cancelled when one of the team members from the adoption agency was murdered for the large amount of cash he carried related to the adoptions. God only knows what happened to the other children.
Millions of children around the world face similar plights. I have always thought that if families each adopted one or two of these kids, we could solve this problem so quickly and get them in good homes where they would be safe, loved, and have a chance for a healthy and productive life.
As we each step out of our personal bubbles and look around, we will be surprised that there are others in need everywhere we go. With greater awareness comes more opportunities to show compassion. We don’t need to try to save the whole world tomorrow. Start small and increase your efforts as your time and resources allow.
Compassion is our opportunity for God to work through us.
Therefore, We Shall Show Compassion.