Abandoned-Orphaned

Innocence Lost

"The chain on the door is to keep the rogues out. Before I put it there, they would break in to steal from us and rape us."

Janet, a thirty two year-old mother, shared this with me matter-of-factly, accepting rape as an inevitable occurrence in the Zulu shanty town we were visiting, an area that police rarely go into. The way in which the information was conveyed was as impacting to me as the information itself. Janet wasn’t crying and crumbling over the fact she has been raped repeatedly. She simply communicated it much like we would communicate going out to the mailbox to pick up our junk solicitations and bills. Just another fact of life, another routine incident.

The rogues are youth and men, often addicted to drugs, who break into the shacks, robbing victims to feed their habits or lust. To be "real men" the witch doctors tell them they must have sex every other day. To get a high, they need funds. Both can be found in poorly-protected tin shanties occupied by widows and orphans. "If they get in, we offer ourselves so that our children aren’t raped," Janet further explained.

There is no surprise that the area we were in was the AIDS and drugs capital of South Africa. Such things go hand in hand. When tied to a tradition of outright male dominance and the cultural requirement for frequent sex, you’re left with a boiling cauldron of abuse and disease. Tin shanties are simply cages that hold prey, incubators that hold diseased victims.

Janet used to have a chair sitting on the flattened dry mud she calls her front porch. After she put the chains on the rusty front door, she discovered that she had to move the chair inside also. The rogues would use it to get up onto her roof, pry back the tin sheets and drop in through the ceiling to rape her. I heard the sounds in my head: the sound of men lumbering up the side of the shack, the sound of heavy footsteps on the tin surface overhead, the sound of crowbars dragging across the thin corrugated barrier, the sound of metal against metal and nails popping, the sound of creaking sheets bending against the will of determined predators. The sound of screaming.

Janet is HIV positive, no doubt infected by one of her attackers or perhaps the husband that left her for another woman. Her 8ft. by 8ft. shack has two decorations – a teddy bear stuffed high into a corner, and the memorial program for her mother’s funeral held by a clothes peg to a metal edge of the shanty siding. A teddy bear and a funeral program. Innocence and loss. Innocence lost.

Today is World AIDS Day. According to an AP report this morning, "South Africa has an estimated 5.5 million people living with the HIV virus — the highest total of any country in the world and more than one-sixth of the global total. About 1,000 South Africans die each day of the disease and complications like tuberculosis. Even more become infected because prevention messages haven't worked."

Please remember the infected and affected world today. Mothers like Janet.

Continuum of Care (hand in hand)

An attention to the child continuum of care goes hand in hand with an attention to holism.

An indigenous church that is engaged in all aspects of the continuum is inherently taking a holistic approach that seeks the integrated physical, mental, emotional and spiritual well-being of the child.

Jonathon’s parents, David and Sarah, are dying of AIDS in the Kibera slum of Nairobi. A local church has been visiting them for months, providing antiretroviral drugs (ARV’s), other medications and meals, as well as school fees and tutoring sessions for eight year-old Jonathon. Various church volunteers help to bathe, feed and pray for the ailing family with regular visits each week. David and Sarah really look forward to the company since the members of the church are now the only people that come by to visit. Others in the community have long since stayed away, scared by the evil ‘stigma and spirits’ of HIV/AIDS.

David and Sarah’s fragile bodies were far too damaged during a prolonged period without access to ARV’s and proper care and nutrition. Their deaths are imminent.

The church is working to preserve family stories and memories for Jonathon. A book has been compiled with narratives on how David and Sarah met, fell in love and got married. Other pages chronicle broader family and clan history and give an account of their move from the village ten years ago. Additional entries tell of how Jonathon was given his name and of a younger sister that died when he was four years old. Jonathon’s young life is described in detail and his parents include letters to him, imparting blessings and giving him instructions for a life worthy of the family name and heritage. Interspersed between the pages are the few fading photos that the family possesses.

The book is placed into a keepsake box, along with what meager items the family treasures – a small wood carving of an elephant that Jonathon chose on a visit to the Rift Valley, his first t-shirt emblazoned with Tweety Bird, Sarah’s heart-shaped locket (the only piece of precious-metal jewelry she has ever owned), and the broken spectacles of their daughter who had also succumbed to the ravages of AIDS.

As a result of all their home visits, and the thorough process of establishing a memory book for Jonathon, the church has an intimate knowledge of his past and potential. They know his parents well; know their hopes and dreams for him.

Jonathon has no extended family in the slum. Relatives in their village of origin either scattered long ago or have no desire to welcome the son of AIDS victims into their families.

For Jonathon, the church’s family-style home is his only hope.

But he knows these people, has played with them, prayed with them. They are his friends. The family that is taking him in has visited his parents on many occasions and helped him with his homework. He is comfortable with them. He watched them nurture his parents. He will watch them give his parents a decent and dignified burial.

The pain will still be initially unbearable. But most of the deep and long psychological scars will be averted.

Jonathon will never have to wonder about who his parents were and struggle with being a person without a history, dropped off on the doorstep on an institutional orphanage.

He will be more whole.

...Because the church engaged him and his family at the entry point of the continuum of care.

Continuum of Care (introduction)

I wrote the following entry, and a few that follow, at 4:00 AM as a storm rained down on a tin roof overlooking a courtyard in Bujumbura, Burundi last year. I’m not sure why it took me so long to post them, perhaps because they fall more into a ministry philosophy category than one of in-field reporting. Regardless, we have developed this model considerably further since I penned these initial thoughts based on our discussions. I look forward to sharing more with you on that later...

Continuum of Care (introduction)

True holistic or ‘whole’ ministry not only means providing for all the functional needs of the individual, but possessing all the potential solutions available for that individual. It entails having all the options at your disposal to meet the needs according to a ‘continuum of care.’ Where an individual’s needs and circumstances fall on that spectrum dictates the prospective approaches and solutions. For the potential orphan, it involves first trying to prevent orphaning, second, rescuing the child after orphaning.

More specifically, the rescue and care of abandoned and orphaned children should follow a progressive continuum of options that all involve the coordination and direct involvement of the local indigenous church located in the community.

PREVENTION/DELAY

Prevention involvement should primarily focus on keeping dying families or guardians alive for as long as possible, or by supporting high-risk struggling, impoverished, or single-parent families. In other words, the goal should be to avert orphaning and abandonment, or to at least significantly delay it.

Indigenous churches, as they engage their communities, conduct home care visits and provide much-needed medicines, food and other assistance for this purpose. Naturally, they also have significant additional ministry opportunities into these families as a result.

TRANSITION/RESIDENTIAL PLACEMENT

If orphaning is still imminent, the church already has a history with and familiarity of these children due to its prevention and delay involvement. Requisite trust has been built with the families and the kids. The church prepares the family for death through counsel and practical programs that help to safeguard memories, family heritage and continuity. Meanwhile, the church looks to see what extended family options currently exist or helps to convince and support otherwise uncommitted relatives to step up and take in these children. Again, this provides further inlets for the church to reach and minister to families. The church is given witnessing avenues beyond just the interest in the children.

If these first two options don’t exist or have failed, then the church turns to its own congregation – first to see if church members can raise and care for the children as their own (adoption) or as an intermediate step until another family is found (foster care). The church therefore serves as an integral community-based solution.

If the church’s capacity has already reached its upper limits, then a church-based residential care solution is needed in order to keeps kids off of the streets, herded into institutions, preyed upon by traffickers, or being exploited as domestic slaves in other community homes.

Group residential care, however, still has to be designed to provide a family environment, albeit a large one of fifteen children or so. Church families, that may have existing kids of their own, are recruited to care for these additional children in church-based homes with full funding provided for food, clothing, education and other critical needs. It’s a long-term obligation - a lifelong commitment - to what, in essence, equates to a group adoption.

In these large family settings, widows can complement the live-in care provision. Formerly disenfranchised and ostracized, many of these ladies need a home themselves and a renewed sense of purpose and belonging. They know loss and pain and are therefore uniquely qualified to counsel and comfort children who have lost their parents.

Volunteers from the church body are also on hand to provide assistance, mentoring, and skills development for the children in the group home.

RESCUE

There exist many young children already struggling on the streets and in garbage dumps and brothels. The indigenous church still goes through the necessary steps to find and support extended families for their rescue. But, absent that, these children also need to be incorporated into families within homes overseen and run by the church.

TRANSITION/REHABILITATION

Many orphan care ministries speak in terms of ‘transition’ or ‘reintegration’ concerning children that age-out of the system. For the children in World Orphans’ church-based homes, these words carry less meaning. Under our current ministry model, our children remain fully integrated in their communities and daily experience what healthy families look like. There is no big disconnection between the environment of their upbringing and the next season of life in the ‘real world,’ only the normal anxieties typically associated with making it on your own.

What’s more, these children never graduate from a home, much like we would never graduate from our own families. The families are told that their care for the children is not a 5, 10 or 15-year commitment. It’s a 65-year commitment! These kids are now part of families, families that they will still visit; families that they will celebrate life’s achievements and milestones with; families that will gather together for reunions and holidays.

There are children we serve, however, that can be deemed as in need of transition. These are children in countries that raise their orphans in state institutions, or in countries where circumstances placed them into large privately-run orphanages. They also include latter-stage children that have been on the streets or rescued from other dire circumstances. These kids need comprehensive help through well-designed intervention programs that prepare them for the next stage of life.

In many cases, these children are immediately placed at the mercy of evil forces that prey upon them as soon as they are released from institutional care. If the church doesn’t step in at that point, the kids are soon immersed into a world of drugs, prostitution, slavery, or forced military conscription. Their lives are typically harsh...and short.

To avoid this highly-vulnerable period following institutional release, World Orphans is establishing transition homes, again owned and run by indigenous churches, that take in children before malevolent parties have a chance to grab them. This residential care format provides the necessary training (including social and skills development) to allow the children to better integrate into broader society at a later date.

SELF-SUSTAINABILITY

Whether it’s a child leaving a primary or transitional home, or directly aging out of an institutional orphanage, there is a further opportunity and responsibility for an indigenous church. Much like we would help our own children with ‘next steps’ resourcing and care, so is it with children from any type of residential care program. They need assistance to take the first strides of self sufficiency. That may come in the form of additional training or higher education, but can often mean a simple micro-loan to establish them in a trade, small business, or other income-generating scenario.

Why go this extra mile?

Because it could mean the difference between stopping or perpetuating the vicious cycle of orphaning and abandonment. It’s not just the specific child (now young adult) in question, but also their future offspring. The child needs to have every chance to be successful and self supporting so that they don’t, in turn, abandon children or fall to the ills that take and destroy lives after children are born.

World Orphans Weekly! - Eunice's Story

Meet Eunice.

She is a young girl living alone with her grandmother in the slums of Nairobi, Kenya. Her grandmother is living with HIV/AIDS. There are no other relatives to help. No neighbors with the capacity to care.

Who will care for Eunice and her grandmother in a community where thousands face these same challenges?

What will happen when Eunice’s grandmother passes away?

Will Eunice become another orphan statistic?

Who will care when others will not or cannot?

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.

............................................................................................

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.

A Generation That Gets It?

A February 10th edition of ABC’s World News reported:

This weekend at a concert and a rally in New York City, a huge gathering of Christian youth came together to decry the coarsening of culture.

"What should be done to stop glamorizing the things that are destroying my friends, your friends - like drugs, alcohol and sex?" cried a young evangelical.

The top three issues these young evangelical Christians said they most want the presidential candidates to address are Internet pornography, media glamorization of sex and drugs, and children orphaned by AIDS.

It looks like our young evangelicals have a pretty clear grasp of ‘true religion,’ the corresponding parts of James 1:27.

"Religion that God our Father accepts as pure and faultless is this: to look after orphans and widows in their distress (including the millions of children orphaned by AIDS) and to keep oneself from being polluted by the world (including Internet pornography, drugs, fornication and other impurities propagated by Hollywood.)"

World Orphans Weekly! - Kenya Crashing

Dear Friend of the Fatherless,

Most of you know that we frequently face dangerous situations as we travel the globe to initiate and facilitate the work of World Orphans. I’ve been plopped into the middle of scenes of aggression on many occasions. Add in unstable political circumstances, potential muggings, high-risk kidnap scenarios, religious tensions, and general civil conflict, and you have a rather potent mix for unrest and violence.

It’s never bothered me. It’s simply part of the risk and call to the Church and children.

I have to admit, though, that on the heels of my trip to Rwanda, the news of the rape, mutilations and killings in Kenya – especially in places of worship - had me a bit unsettled. A country of relative stability over its four decades of independence, Kenya took me by surprise.

Kenya is a country I love and visit often. World Orphans has funded over 90 church-based homes there that rescue and care for thousands of abandoned and orphaned children. Our in-country regional representative is based there. Key mission agency partners are based there. The capital city, Nairobi, along with Addis Ababa in Ethiopia, acts as our main entry point for ministry and teams into the region.

I’m in Hawaii right now, a world away from the terrors of night and the machetes that fly by day. I sense from light and diminishing news interest, that the general population is again numb to the issues and concerns of corruption and social turmoil in Africa, just like in 1994.

I’d like you to connect further with this country I love. Below are a few entries I’ve written over the last year alone regarding Kenya. I invite you to read, learn...and pray and act as if you yourselves were suffering.

RECENT UNREST

More Violence; More Orphans – Another church filled with women and children is set ablaze

Rape as a Weapon – Young boys and girls are not immune to such hatred

Kenya Violence in Photos – one, two, three, four.

PAST INDICATIONS

Demolition – An angry Muslim mob levels a church-based children’s home on Christmas Eve

Evil in their Hearts. Hate in their Eyes – Encircled by radicals at the site of destruction

THE SLUMS – FLASHPOINTS OF UNREST

The Breeding and Killing Grounds of the Orphan – Enter their world of desperation

The Testing of Job – Your husband is dead. Your seven children have all died of AIDS. You are caring for your orphaned granddaughter. You have HIV/AIDS yourself. Where is the hope?

Starfish – A little orphan girl reminds us of the hope and task

Red Handprints – The measure of a man?

Three Infant Boys – Will they survive to my next visit?

Women and Children First – In this sad reality, women are nothing more than possessions

Mud Caskets and Mansions – Better to live in squalor with Jesus, than in luxury without Him

Discarded Children – Children of the dumps in Kibera slum

Threads: Two Boys. Two Worlds – An intimate reminder in the Mathare slum

Stronger – How do the slums of Nairobi affect a person?

OTHER RELEVANT KENYA REFLECTIONS

Corruption – A root cause of the current crisis. A daily reality in Kenya

Namesake – Marked for death, this abandoned child defied the odds

The Lion's Share – Many African rulers ‘rape’ their nations for personal and tribal gain

Until They All Have Homes,

Paul Myhill
President/CEO

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

All contributions are tax deductible and eternally significant.

World AIDS Day

Please remember the 33 millon infected, the hundreds of millions affected, and the tens of millions orphaned and abandoned as a result of this deadly scourge.

Global AIDS Summit

Tomorrow, we all leave for Southern California to participate in the 2007 Global Summit on AIDS and the Church.

For those of you attending, you can catch our speaking engagements during the following sessions:

Pre-Summit Session
HIV and Orphan Care
Wednesday, November 28
9:00 A.M – 1:00 P.M. 

• Dennis Rainey - President, CEO, Founder of FamilyLife
• Paul Pennington - Executive Director, Hope for Orphans, FamilyLife
• Jason Weber - Outreach Project Manager, Hope for Orphans, FamilyLife
• Paul Myhill - President and CEO, World Orphans
• Mike Vinson - Executive Vice President and COO, World Orphans
• J. Scott Brown - Executive Vice President, The Gladney Center for Adoption
• Susan Hillis - MS, PhD, Captain, United States Public Health Service, Epidemiologist, Division of Reproductive Health, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention
• Angela Wakhweya - Senior Technical Officer in the Orphans and other Vulnerable Children Unit, Prevention and Mitigation Division, Family Health International
• Lynn Young - MSW, Child Welfare Social Worker with Orange County Social Services
• Jennifer Delaney - Executive Director, Global Action for Children
• Karyn Purvis - PhD, Developmental Psychologist, Adoption Researcher, Director, TCU Institute of Child Development
• Debbie Hill - MD, Pediatrician

General Summit Workshop 
Orphans and Advocacy
Thursday, November 29
8:30 A.M - 10:00 A.M. (TENT 2)

• Karyn Purvis
• J.Scott Brown
• Paul Pennington
• Jason Weber
• Angela Wakhweya
• Jennifer Delaney
• Paul Myhill, World Orphans
• Mike Vinson, World Orphans

General Summit Dinner Panel
Orphan Care
Thursday, November 29
6:00 P.M. – 7:00 P.M.

• Panel Discussion with Paul Myhill and three other orphan care ministry leaders

In addition, World Orphans will also have a booth in the exhibit hall.

We would greatly appreciate your prayers. Hope to see you there!

30,000

The United Nations and World Health Organization report that 10.5 million children – all under the age of five - die each year from "easily-preventable" conditions in the developing world. Malnutrition and unclean water are common or complicating factors in most of these deaths, but pneumonia, diarrhea, malaria, measles, HIV/AIDS, pregnancy issues, and a whole host of related items, get the official credit on the death certificate.

Poverty and lack of access to decent healthcare are mitigating factors. Unavailable or unaffordable $1 vaccinations take their toll in a world where half the population - over 3 billion people - tries to survive on less than two dollars a day.

The UN/WHO annual child mortality number equates to 28,800 children dying each and every day - almost ten times the tragedy of 9/11...each and every day!

And these are just the children under the age of five!

Image if you increased that range to six years old? Seven years old? Eight years old?

Regardless, at least another 1,200 children under five (conservatively bringing the total to over 30,000 children) perish daily because of infanticide or sex-selective abortion. We can go on and on, but 30,000 is already significant enough a number.

30,000 little lives. 30,000 souls. 30,000 hopes and dreams.

30,000. Think about that number today. Pray about that number today.