Abandoned-Orphaned

Would You Press the Button? (part five)

Competition. It’s the American way, right?

Position pitted against position. People pitted against people. Nation pitted against nation.

Liberals versus conservatives. Right versus left. Protestants versus Catholics. Bloods versus Crips. Yankees versus Red Sox. Coke versus Pepsi. America versus China. It goes on and on and on. We’re bombarded by it from every angle.

It rears its head in all circles – individual, group, community, ethnic, and national. It’s endemic in every type of venture and activity – corporate, social, and athletic. It infects every part of being – physical, mental, emotional, psychological, and spiritual.

Almost everything is turned into a battle for supremacy, a winner/loser scenario. Every traffic light becomes a herald of the race. Every minor disagreement becomes a last stand.

Some contests are healthy. A little rivalry or struggle helps to temper and test us, sometimes entertain us. Without experience with challenge, we are inept in the greater battles.

But we often forget that each victory gained has a necessary opposite outcome: persons who summarily experience failure and the ramifications of defeat.

It’s evident even in the seemingly mundane. When one advertising agency wins a major account from another, people are fired. People lose their homes. Marriages fail.

Yes, everything has its consequences. The pursuit of personal or corporate triumph means that the button is pushed continually.

And as we unfairly use snap decisions and opinions to polarize things, put people and positions into "us versus them" settings, we use such grounds to rationalize such competition. After all, it’s just "the Chinese" or "the liberals" we are competing against, right? By generalizing and sub-humanizing, we feel better about pushing the button.

"Gotta stop those darn Indians and Southeast Asians from taking our jobs and profits!"

As we protect American jobs from going overseas, an unemployed Thai worker makes the excruciating decision to sell his eldest daughter into the sex trade. To not do so would mean that his other three daughters would perish from starvation.

As we place high tariffs on agricultural products from India, a farmer outside of New Delhi cannot meet his obligations to his finance company. Broken and out of options, he and his whole family drink poison.

As we stigmatize those who don’t "buy American," we lessen the ability for the laborer in China to feed his family on $2 per day. He abandons his child at the local orphanage.

We’re one of the richest nations on the planet. We compete to get the newer car and bigger home while people living in cardboard boxes die. We have surplus in excessive abundance. We don’t need to win every economic global battle.

Folks, it’s not supposed to be this way. Don’t buy into the lie. Jesus taught against such thinking.

We have to embrace a more global philanthropic perspective, a more neighborly perspective.

After all, the whole world is simply that...a collection of neighbors.

"The entire law is summed up in a single command: Love your neighbor as yourself." (Galatians 5:14)

To be continued...

Abandoned & Adored

We found her abandoned on our doorstep on a cold, wintry day. Perfect features. Round blue eyes and a pert little nose set in the midst of a healthy complexion. Tiny fingers clutching a small baby bottle brimming with a milky-white liquid. A petite head devoid of baby hair.

Dressed in a pink onesie and matching bonnet, she was lying in a blanket-lined basket.

She was a newborn baby girl seemingly in need of our love and nurture…

...except for the fact that she was made of plastic at a toy factory in China.

I thought that maybe it was a joke, somebody leaving an unwanted infant on the threshold of the orphan-ministry family with the adopted Chinese daughter.

We made the rounds to try to ascertain whether somebody had thought it to be Hannah’s toy baby, returning it to us after finding it left in the cul-de-sac.

Nope.

We then tried to discover if somebody had simply left the baby for Hannah, to be the next child to own and play with her.

Nope.

A mystery.

Hannah has indeed adopted this abandoned baby as her own. For a two year-old, she certainly makes a great mother...pampering ‘baby’ constantly, sleeping with her, and reaching for her as the first waking activity each morning.

Unwanted by one.

Adored by another.

Would You Press the Button? (part four)

In order to solicit comments and opinions regarding the cognitive and emotional struggle that many ordinary people seem to wrestle over when faced with the question, I started a Facebook group a few days ago entitled, "Would you press a button for $1 MILLION if it meant a stranger would die?"

The description of this group was a direct copy/paste of my leading entry in this series, with one notable exception: Since the Facebook group question was specifically placed to elicit a response from a variety of people from a diversity of backgrounds, I added the following line:

"TELL THE TRUTH (For example, somebody may rationalize a "yes" by then stating that they would use the money to save more than one life, etc.)"

This resulted in barrage of messages being sent to my Facebook personal inbox. One could only categorize some of them as being "hate mail," judgments laden with harsh comments of disapproval and disappointment. Some of the more temperate comments included:

"How could you Paul, of all people, condone a choice to kill just to help others???"

"Shame on you for rationalizing the murder of innocents!"

Huh? Did I miss something?

Where did I ever say that was my position? I simply wrote that "somebody may rationalize..."

This all serves as a perfect lead in to my pre-planned third observation, another way that we, as human beings, push the button every day. For all of you on Facebook who quickly jumped to a false conclusion, thanks for helping me to illustrate my point.

The fact is that we human beings, on average, are very quick in forming an opinion or position. Typically, and with very little counsel or input, we form conclusions - often incorrect - and classify things into what we view as the relevant box.

Rapid judgments and actions, devoid of the required information and contemplation, leave us pushing the button daily.

People suffer and die accordingly.

To be continued...

Naomi Keilana Myhill

A belated Easter gift...

Naomi Keilana Myhill

Naomi – Hebrew for "pleasant" and "delightful"
Keilana – Hawaiian for "adored"

Monday, March 24, 2:30 AM
7 lbs. 13 ounces; 20 inches

   

Thank you for your prayers!!

Hope Restored

On Easter Sunday, we celebrate the new life and hope that is within us. Jesus’ victory becomes ours and, as we interact with the world around us, we are to be carriers, displayers and tellers of the promise that is found only in Him.

I find it very fitting, then, to receive this e-mail today from an orphan caregiver in Thailand concerning children lost – now found – and the process of seeing hope restored; restored through a faithful servant who understands the amazing power of love.

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Dear Paul...

Wow. I just read through a good bit of your blog..."happened" upon it. Wow.

It really touched my heart, my heart that is so bent towards orphans and those abandoned. I work in Thailand at an orphanage for kids with HIV; 70 kids. Most are healthy as they are on the ARV drugs, and you would never guess that they were HIV by looking at them...well, most of them. Some are symptomatic, but all are able to attend school.

It's what you can't see that breaks my heart. The look in their eyes, the odd behavior, the restlessness. The knowledge that they were sent away, pushed away, given away just because they are HIV. This is what they really have to live with every day. And as they are living longer and getting older, it gets harder and harder. They are able to voice themselves with more clarity and express their emotions with more fire. And as a caregiver, it is hard to know how to deal with some things and I am never able to separate the fact that these kids are hurting deep into their soul. They weren't wanted.

I do many things at the orphanage, but the thing I see myself doing most is just loving the kids. Taking them into my arms and giving them mom love, even when they smell so badly of infection or are covered with scabs. I feel like I have to fill in the gaps, to make up for something lacking, to pour out and out and out. My husband and I are even in the process of adopting an HIV positive orphan boy. His name is Bu and he is 5. He is lovely and I can't wait until he lives with us.

On our campus, we also have housing for "abandoned women"....wives and sisters and mothers who have been rejected by their families and left at the hospital, never to be picked up again. Last Sunday, one woman died, leaving behind her 8 year old son for us to care for, for us to mother in her stead. Somehow, it ended up being me that brought the boy, Boonyarit, back to see his dead mother, her body all shrouded and tied up. As we sat next to her, laying on a mat on the floor, I untied her face. She had just turned 31. But she looked 90. And she weighed about 50 lbs. But Boonyarit and I sat there and talked about her and what she was like and how she loved him and how he made her so happy.

I am no grief counselor or any kind of professional, but I am a mommy. And I thought about this, "if that were me and Boon was one of my boys, what would I want said about me?" So we talked about how she is singing with the angels and dancing with Jesus, because she loved Him. We talked about how glad she was that Boon was with us at the Agape Home now. And then I said, "let's kiss her one more time." So we both did and I tied the white sheet around her face again. He waved bye-bye, Paul. And he smiled at her, his eyes as sparkling as his mom's ever were. And I bit my lip and took a deep breath and I said bye-bye, too. We walked out and the men came in to put her in her coffin, which was just there inside the room.

Things die and things are left behind. Dreams die. Mommies die. Hope dies. The will to live dies....but this is not the end of the story. Dreams can come alive again, I can be a mommy. Hope can be restored. And the desire to live life to the fullest can spark again.

God cares about lost things. And He cares about children who have been lost...lost in a political system, lost in the shuffle, lost to someone's memory.

Thank you, Paul, for being a finder.

Ellen C.

Would You Press the Button? (part three)

We press that button in other ways also.

As we dwell within our entertainment-oriented, pleasure-seeking, self-indulgent domain, we ignore the plight of the world’s masses. As we give time and attention to the things that bring us materialistic or experiential satisfaction, we become apathetic to the mega-issues of our day.

We spend evenings absorbed by NBC, HBO and PPV, while people die in Darfur and the Congo. We fill our schedules with all manner of pleasurable activities and leisure occasions, while children are being raped for profit in Cambodia. We watch hundreds of hours of sporting events each year, while an emaciated worker is held in continual debt bondage to a brick kiln in India.

Where is our sense of outrage?

It has been numbed and replaced by the selfish pursuits of all that our culture has to offer.

Entertainment and material that "moth and rust will destroy" have been prioritized over giving time, attention and resources to our neighbors around the world.

Each time we tune into the next pointless TV show, instead of volunteering at a non-profit ministry, we are pushing the button.

Each time we splurge on trivialities and frivolities, instead of giving those funds to save a life in the developing world, we are pushing the button. We are choosing our pleasure over somebody else’s existence or well-being.

The 2006 American Time Use Survey, conducted by the Bureau of Labor Statistics of the U.S. Department of Labor, revealed that:

On an "average day" in 2006, persons in the US, age 15 and over, slept about 8.6 hours, spent 5.1 hours doing leisure and sports activities, worked for 3.8 hours, and spent 1.8 hours doing household activities. The remaining 4.7 hours were spent doing a variety of other activities, including eating and drinking, attending school, and shopping. Watching TV was the leisure activity that occupied the most time, accounting for about half of leisure time, on average, for both men and women.

Obviously, an "average day" factors in weekends and the reality that some activities are only done by a subset of the population. It is therefore designed to represent "adult society as a whole." Given that clarification, doesn’t it appear that our society can give more time and attention to the problems of the world, if only by replacing a few hours of TV per week?

We obviously devote a lot of our schedule to shopping. We live in a country that spends over $3 Billion on fine fragrances at department stores each year (not including Internet purchases and regular perfumes); a country that disperses over $250 million annually on just mascara alone; a country that will pay $15 billion this year for pet food, four times the amount spent on baby food. We dish out further billions on pet toys and accessories.

Time we invest in watching reruns and purchasing fancy fragrances could be used to save lives. Money we spend on pampering pets could be used to rescue the street child that nurses off of a stray dog in Bombay.

We’ve got it all wrong.

We keep pressing the button.

To be continued...

Would You Press the Button? (part two)

I see the button as an allegory, a metaphor of sorts.

The fact of the matter is that we press that button every day.

As we go about our daily lives of comfort and excess, without consideration of how our choices and actions might impact others, we adversely affect ‘strangers’ the world over.

When we buy a new bathroom rug because the last one is apparently out of style, we keep an eight year-old boy, Rajan, chained to a loom in Nepal.

When we pick up a latte from our favorite barista, we fuel a conglomerate that forces Juan, a poor Costa Rican coffee grower, to sell at prices far below what would allow him to afford that same cup of coffee for himself.

When we buy the latest fancy T-Shirt with gold embossing at XYZ Casuals, we rob Ajay from ever leaving the cotton plantation that holds him and his sisters in perpetual bondage in South India.

When we go on an exotic spa vacation to Southeast Asia, we entrap Isra, a fifteen year-old Thai girl from the impoverished hill tribes, in a world of daily violation and exploitation.

When we visit that adult Website that our teachers warned us about, we enable pornographers to imprison a scared teenage girl, Imana, in a Burundian hotel room for three days, robbing her of her innocence and privacy.

When we choose to adopt a child from a country with a less-than-reputable child-placement program, we cause Esmeralda to reluctantly give up her new baby girl in Latin America.

When we select that rare hardwood for our kitchen cabinets because it nicely matches the existing wallpaper and is much grander than the neighbor’s remodel, we help to eradicate the ecosystem that sustains Daniel and his family in Brazil.

When we choose to get an organ transplant in Eastern Europe because the wait is too long in the United States, we cause the abduction of Serge, a street child in Moldova, and the subsequent harvesting of his kidneys.

Whether it’s the big and profound (organ transplants, Internet pornography, and international adoptions), or the seemingly trite and trivial (cups of coffee, T-shirts, kitchen cabinets, vacations, and bathroom rugs), we constantly enslave, maim and kill our neighbors around the planet.

What’s unsettling is that the facts are out there and are readily available. They can be researched with relative ease. But we simply don’t have the time and inclination to do so.

We’re just much too busy...and comfortable.

We keep pressing the button.

To be continued...

Would You Press the Button? (part one)

Would you press a button for $1 MILLION if it meant a stranger would die?

This is the premise of the soon-to-be-released movie, The Box, inspired by Richard Matheson’s 1970 short story, "Button, Button." Matheson’s tale subsequently became the subject of a 1986 episode of the Twilight Zone.

I have not read the short story nor seen the Twilight Zone rendition. And I’ve certainly not put eyes on any advance viewing of the movie. I want to specifically dwell upon this question for a moment, before being influenced or tarnished by any theatrical representations of it, the promotions and reviews thereof, or knowledge of the story’s conclusion.

The scene is set as follows (by Warner Bros.):

Norma and Arthur Lewis, a suburban couple with a young child, receive a simple wooden box as a gift, which bears fatal and irrevocable consequences. A mysterious stranger delivers the message that the box promises to bestow upon its owner $1 million with the press of a button. But, pressing this button will simultaneously cause the death of another human being somewhere in the world...someone they don't know. With just 24 hours to have the box in their possession, Norma and Arthur find themselves in the crosshairs of a startling moral dilemma and must face the true nature of their humanity.

What would you do?

Consider the same question at higher amounts also - $2 Million, $5 million, $10 million.

Does that scenario change your answer?

To be continued...

The Orphan Archetype

During the long airplane journey between Hong Kong and San Francisco, I watched three movies on the in-flight personal video system.

In the first, Martian Child, a troubled young orphan, Dennis, deals with abandonment issues by pretending to be from another planet. David, a Sci-Fi writer who decides to become a foster parent, picks up Dennis from the local children’s home. They soon form a special bond, overcome the pains of the past, and become a family.

The second, August Rush, tells the story of a musically-gifted 11 year-old boy, Evan, who runs away from his orphanage on a quest to find his parents, who don’t even know he’s alive. Music brings them together as events orchestrate to bring harmony and completion.

The third, Juno, concerns a high school teenager who, upon learning she is pregnant, decides to give her baby up for adoption to a couple she finds in the Pennysaver. Despite difficulties regarding the target adoptees, an inopportune child becomes the blessing of a mother who had long yearned for him.

Within hours of being home, I was tasked with watching my children as Lisa attended a baby shower for our imminent new arrival. I joined my kiddos downstairs while they were glued to Lilo & Stitch, an animated movie on the Disney Channel. A young Hawaiian orphan girl, Lilo, adopts an unusual pet, Stitch, who turns out to be a lost and parentless alien. Trials and misadventures eventually shape them into a unique family.

At the movie’s completion, my children asked me to dial up a pre-recorded viewing of Meet the Robinsons, a story of a young orphan, Lewis, a 12 year-old genius who fails to get adopted because of his constant desire to recall a glimpse of his birth mother on the day of his abandonment. Lewis, along with his orphanage roommate, Goober, battle each other in the time continuum in a futuristic tale of realizing one’s worth, potential and, yes, family.

The final TV dose came in the form of a Batman episode where Bruce Wayne (aka the Caped Crusader) revisits "Crime Alley," the spot where his parents were shot to death by a thug when he was a young boy. The new orphan is comforted by a middle-aged lady, Leslie, who becomes a mother-figure to Bruce, and confidant regarding his secret identity.

So...

What’s up?

None of this was planned.

Completely random.

Within a 24-hour period, I was exposed to six separate productions concerning orphans and adoption.

What’s more, I even had the chance to watch December Boys on the trans-Pacific flight also, a movie about four Australian orphaned boys who get the opportunity to leave their orphanage for a holiday trip to the beach during Christmastime. There, they experience many ‘firsts’ and are introduced to the possibility of adoption for one of the boys.

How did United Airlines’ March 2008 movie lineup come to include no less than four films concerning orphans and adoption? How did I then immediately stumble into three more broadcast stories about orphans upon my return home?

The fact is, we human beings have a deep fascination with the orphan archetype in film and literature.

I can think of over a dozen more examples, that have been translated into film, where the orphan becomes whole, or achieves the role of the champion, the superhero; where we elevate and celebrate the least among us.

The Superheroes: Spiderman, Batman, Superman – all orphans.

Major literary figures: Oliver Twist, David Copperfield, Huckleberry Fin, Tom Sawyer, Jane Eyre, Heidi, Harry Potter, Quasimodo, Frodo Baggins, Rapunzel, Mowgli, Tarzan, King Arthur – all orphans.

The classic Disney characters: Bambi, Snow White, Cinderella – all orphans.

And my favorite orphan of the big screen - Luke Skywalker. Gotta love him. The dude rocks!

Is it our own sense of disconnection represented by these fictional characters...an innate need of the masses to be united with the Father of us all?

Is it our love of rooting for the underdog...a desire to see the lowliest overcoming great obstacles to find success and happiness?

Or both?

We know that the whole creation has been groaning as in the pains of childbirth right up to the present time. Not only so, but we ourselves, who have the firstfruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly as we wait eagerly for our adoption as sons, the redemption of our bodies. (Romans 8:22-23)

Then he said to them, "Whoever welcomes this little child in my name welcomes me; and whoever welcomes me welcomes the one who sent me. For he who is least among you all - he is the greatest." (Luke 9:48)

A Sense of Urgency

Our fourth stop to view church-based school programs being conducted amongst the ethnic Vietnamese living on the waterways in Cambodia, took us across the Mekong from the capital city of Phnom Penh. Here, set in the current against a small chiseled cliff on the opposite bank, sits a small community of boats and barges within eyeshot of the metropolis that preys upon its children.

As I was sharing and praying with the young students, two of our group spoke with the teachers. When asked how often children in the community are sold to traffickers, the response was an affirmation of steady frequency. The teachers then pointed out the two oldest girls in the classroom, aged 12 or 13, and stated that, "If they don’t get jobs and provide income for their families soon, they will probably be sold."

These same girls smiling for my camera lens in a school setting could very soon be forced to pose for pornographic photos as men repeatedly take advantage of them, up to twenty times per day.

Our minds went into action. The need for sound research and approach collided with an immediate sense of urgency. This is typically the case with such scenarios. One has to figure out the right culturally-relevant strategy and implementation steps through the local indigenous churches, but also acknowledge that, as each day passes, more and more children are placed in imminent danger. (Please view my related, ‘Green Lights’ post regarding this delicate balance.)

And so this is my promise:

We’re quickly going to assess trade-skill development programs that also provide immediate income opportunities for these older children as an alternative to being sold into prostitution. These programs will include capital equipment needs and micro-finance initiatives to then place fully-trained girls into positions of self-sustainability. As we evaluate the market opportunities for the goods these girls can produce, we will also open up western markets to them through inventive Internet-based tools.

After all, World Orphans not only seeks to respond to orphaning and abandonment, but prevent them.

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If you are interested in contributing to this pilot program that will be executed using trusted, experienced partners, please send donations to World Orphans and write "Child Sex-Trade Prevention" in the memo line of your check.

World Orphans
1840 Woodmoor Dr., Suite 100
Monument, CO 80132
1-888-ORPHANS
719-487-1700

All contributions are tax deductible and eternally significant.