“Defend the weak and the fatherless; uphold the cause of the poor and the oppressed.” –Psalm 82:3
I have a heart for people, but I have a special place in my heart for children. Kids are so impressionable. How a child is raised can make or break them. They are not in control of their situations, and they have to place all their trust in other people. Loving a child can make such a huge difference in his or her life, just as big a difference as meeting basic needs…maybe even bigger.
There are 153 million orphans in the world. This does not include the 150 million children living on the street or the 1.2 million children who are trafficked or the thousands of children who are forced to be soldiers. 95% of orphans are over the age of 5 and 50% are over the age of 10. Only 10% of the orphans in the world live in the “developed world.”
I have wanted to adopt for almost as long as I can remember wanting kids. I am blessed to attend a church where so many people have adopted and where orphans are celebrated once a year on Orphan Sunday but also throughout the year. As you can see, there are so many kids in the world without a family. These kids are stuck in an orphanage, and if they’re in an undeveloped country they most likely aren’t getting the care they need. They are forgotten. Or they are bounced from foster home to foster home. Neither situation is ideal. These children often don’t receive the love they so desperately need, the love they so desperately crave. In Romans 8:14-17, it says that God adopted me as His daughter, and every day He lets me know that I am loved. As Christians, it is up to us to love orphans. It is up to us to show them they are wanted. And that is what I plan to do on this Race and on into the future.
One thing I’ll be doing while I’m on the World Race is working with orphans, whether in an orphanage or on the street. Sub-Saharan Africa has the most orphans in the world (56 million) and South Asia has the second most (40.8 million). Ghana and the Ivory Coast are located in Sub-Saharan Africa and India and Nepal are located in South Asia. These are some of the countries I will be working in. Working with orphans is the ministry I am most excited for. I thrilled to be able to show the love of Jesus to everyone I meet, but I am most thrilled to show orphans, children who are so often unloved, that the God of the universe loves them and so do I.
I have a heart for people, but I have a special place in my heart for children.
