Join Nightlight Christian Adoptions and Children in HIS Image Program for a Chili Dinner & Concert on February 19, 2010. The concert will be held at Woodruff Road Presbyterian Church in Simpsonville, SC from 6:00 p.m. – 8:30 p.m.

Lori Sealy’s music will delight children and adults alike. Lori is an adult adoptee and a background singer. Becky Edmondson is an adoptive mom.

All children are special. The Children in HIS Image program helps families adopting children who are waiting for loving homes. Come learn about the children and their needs.

Registration details at the Nightlight Event page.

[Post updated with changed venue 1/27/2010]

According to UNICEF, before the earthquake hit Haiti, there were 380,000 orphans—some living in orphanages—most others living on the streets. Many children could not even get into orphanages, as often there was little room and resources to provide for them, until a sponsoring adoptive family could be found. That number may have now tripled to one million. Because of the great crisis, the first order of business is to meet the physical needs of the children. The next is to care for the orphans who were orphans before the earthquake and then to reunite those newly orphaned children with relatives if at all possible. This needs to be done quickly—find a relative or find a home for a child. Children grow quickly. They need families while they are children.

To do less for orphans is to be reminded of what happens when we turn our backs on those who need our help as shown in Voyage of Damned,  a movie based on the 1939 real life story of a ship carrying 937 Jews from Germany to Havana, Cuba. These Jews knew that with the rise of anti-Semitism in Germany they needed to escape. However, the journey to Cuba was propaganda for the Germans, and the Jews were not permitted to step onto the shores of Cuba. Cuba had recently changed its immigration laws, and only those who had more than tourist visas could finally go ashore. Only 22 of the 937 had the proper immigration documents. The ship then tried to enter the US in Florida, but the Coast Guard stopped them. We all know what happened from there for those on the ship. Later, a Nazi official said that when the whole world had refused to take in Jews as refugees, no country could blame Germany for what happened to the Jews.

Writing together about adoption and the horrors of Nazi Germany may seem like an overstated link. Yet, when certain children cannot enter the US because their government does not have a strong enough infrastructure to produce a proper birth certificate or because a few people actually bribed officials to move the adoption paperwork along faster, thus causing a closure of the adoption program, then the end result is that children will be left behind in orphanages to suffer and often times die. Certainly most of these children will not die because of deliberate and calculated measures, as taken by the Nazis, but because of neglect. Those children who do survive often suffer the horrors of being trafficked as modern day slaves—being forced to work in sub-human conditions or to enter into child prostitution. For the children who do get to live in an orphanage and “graduate” their fate is also dismal: most will turn to a life of alcoholism, drug abuse, prostitution, and crime if they are not the one in ten orphans who eventually commits suicide.

So in essence we have put babies and children on the boat to find a home, but have had to turn them back because their documentation does not meet our or their country’s standards

Others would argue that even if all the children had the right documentation, we Americans could not possibly adopt the 147 million orphans worldwide—thus the implication that just because we cannot adopt all of them, we should not adopt any of them and other measures should be taken to care for them. (more…)

Tomorrow (Tuesday, Jan. 12) at 7 pm, Nightlight Christian Adoptions is presenting a 2-hour workshop introducing domestic and international adoptions. The workshop is free of charge and will be held at Carolina Hope’s office in Greenville, SC.

More information and sign-up information is available at the event page.

AdoptUsKids, an initiative of the Children’s Bureau (part of HHS), is a national database of children awaiting adoption and families approved to adopt. Their website allows families to search for children and workers to search for families throughout the United States. The following is a guest post from AdoptUsKids. We encourage you to prayerfully consider this avenue of adoption in addition to the services Nightlight offers.

My name is Phyllis Stevens and my husband and I are the proud parents of five children: one birth son and four who we adopted.

My kids know that Thanksgiving and Christmas are our favorite times of the year, as these are the times that we get together as a family. We spend our time reminiscing about growing up in the Stevens home. My son (who is now 27) still loves to tell the story about the time when he knocked over the Christmas tree when he was six, and then ran up the stairs to his bedroom and jumped in bed, pretending to sleep. Or the time he got so mad with his brother that he broke the arms off his eye glasses, but then, feeling guilty, put them back together using paper clips.

Over the years many people have asked me, knowing what I know now, if I would do it all over again. Would I adopt children that were born drug addicted, mentally challenged, children with ADHD and Fetal Alcohol Disorder? And, knowing what I know now, I say yes. Yes, because every child deserves a loving, supportive home. And yes, because all four of my adopted children turned out to be happy, functional adults and have provided me with more joy and happiness than I could imagine. (more…)

Greetings!

It has been an exciting year for Nightlight Christian Adoptions of South Carolina. As you know in April of 2009 Carolina Hope was acquired by Nightlight of California. This transition has been relatively a smooth and successful partnership for all involved. We have really enjoyed working with the California and Colorado staff and are very excited about the new adoption programs we have to offer. (more…)

We would like to thank all of you who voted for Nightlight in the Chase Community Giving Campaign. The votes have been counted, and Nightlight did not finish in the top 100. This was the first time we had ever done something like this and it was certainly a learning experience. We now have lots of Facebook friends of Nightlight — people who wouldn’t have known about Nightlight otherwise have now been able to learn about us. So in this regard we are definitely winners. We do appreciate all of your support this year and we’ll see what we can do next year to broaden our reach.

– The Staff at Nightlight

Click on the card to see our 2009 Family Photo Album.

This morning, Lisa Prather distributed the message below. Note that only families who are currently home-study approved should contact us. For more information, email lisa@nightlight.org.

Good Morning Everyone! I’m writing to let you know that we have learned of an infant boy waiting for adoption from China on the special needs list. He is 10 months old and has cleft lip and palate. (more…)

From: Nightlight Christian Adoptions
To: All the families who have adopted through Nightlight Christian Adoptions (including those who have adopted through Carolina Hope Christian Adoption Agency, which is now part of Nightlight)

Merry Christmas to You All!

We hope that you have a very special Christmas with your family and friends and get just what you wished for. The greatest gift though was the birth of our Savior, Jesus Christ. As we have become part of His family, we celebrate all of the children that have become part of your family through adoption.

We at Nightlight always enjoy the Christmas season because we receive Christmas cards from so many of you, with pictures of you and your children. It’s fun to see how they are growing up! If you would like to have your Christmas photo shared, please send us an email (KathrynD@nightlight.org) granting your permission to put the photo on our web site, along with your digital photo.

We wish you a very Merry Christmas and a New Year filled with blessings!

The Nightlight Staff

And for good measure, here’s a staff photo from Nightlight’s South Carolina office:

(L-to-R) Laura Thien, Lisa Prather, Susan Rahn,
Laura Godwin, Erika Godwin, Michelle Hatcher

This morning, Nightlight passed the 700 votes mark in the Chase Community Giving Campaign that I blogged about 2 days ago. This is great news! We’d love to push past 1000 votes this weekend and keep the momentum going. Here’s what you can do:

• Vote
• Publicize this on your Facebook page
• Do a blog post linking to www.nightlight.org (instructions are there, too)

Remember, the top 100 charities in the voting receive $25,000. We don’t know where we stand compared to other charities, so we’ll keep pushing till the first-round voting ends on Dec. 11. Please help us!

The following testimony is from Bones Anthony, an evangelist and church planter in Uganda, where Lisa Prather recently visited several orphanages and children’s homes. Bones was legally orphaned as an infant, and here he relates his testimony of God’s grace in rescuing him.

My mother was an Alcoholic; she was a single parent. By the time me and my twin brother (Chris) were being born, she was really in bad shape. I am told that she would spend days away without coming home even to see how we were.

When we were 3 months old, she came home one day in the afternoon, very drunk and wanting to commit suicide. She took the pair of us, her youngest kids, and headed for the river. Fortunately, other people followed her and just at the time she threw me in and jumped in with my twin, they jumped in and rescued us.

I still get tears in my eyes even today as I write when I remember this, how desperate her life was, and how fragile ours was.

Anyway, after being rescued we were taken to a foster home, and a court order was issued to her that she could not take us away. We then were raised by a British man and his Kenyan wife who took in orphans from the streets of Eldoret town.

This was God’s doing. We grew up with 40 other kids, we went to good schools, and we had more going for us than even other kids in our estate. (more…)

Vote for Nightlight in the Chase Community Giving Campaign on Facebook

How to vote:

• Sign in to your Facebook account or create a new Facebook page (for help please contact Sarah, smartin@nightlight.org)
• While signed into Facebook go to: www.facebook.com/ChaseCommunityGiving
• Search “Nightlight Christian Adoptions, Fullerton CA” – be sure to select the right Nightlight!
• Click “Allow”
• Click “Become a Fan” (if you’re not one already)
• Click “Vote for Charity”
• Use your Facebook page to spread the word!

It really doesn’t take more than a couple of minutes and would help Nightlight greatly. If you have any problems or just want to be sure you’re doing it correctly, please call (714.693.5437) or email Sarah at Nightlight: smartin@nightlight.org.

Thank you for your help!

Here are a few photos I’ve taken over the past few days during my time in Uganda. I’ll write more about the trip when I’m back in the States. (Click on a thumbnail for a larger image. Click on a larger image to return to thumbnails.)

The Blind Side, the story of NFL Rookie of the Year Michael Oher, depicts the the impact of a loving (adoptive) family. Read more at World Magazine, and check the official movie website for trailers, etc.

Yesterday I visited Mama Mary’s house. Mama Mary is a former Muslim. After accepting Christ, she felt called by the Lord to take care of orphans. She was a school master at the time and found that she could not turn away children who could not afford to pay their school tuition fees. She also began taking orphans into her home. However, the school eventually collapsed because there was not enough money.

At that point she had lost her job and had many orphans staying in her home. Her friends thought she had gone mad. The Lord has continued to provide for her and the children every day. She now has 38 children in her home. Some of these children have been with her their entire lives and are now old enough to help out. For the most part though, Mama Mary who is 52 years old, does all of the work. It is very obvious that she loves the children and that they love her immensely.

The ministry here that I am traveling with is called Equipping with Truth. They are currently paying for the rent at Mama Mary’s and also raising funds to provide food to her and the children monthly. I also brought many toys and coloring books for the children thanks to many generous donations. The children played and enjoyed a few moments of just being children.

(more…)

Not that I need to write post about this, since if you’re at our blog you can see for yourself that the design is radically different from yesterday. But I’ve finally managed to find time to integrate the blog into Nightlight Christian Adoptions’ web presence.

“From Hope to Reality” started in July 2007 at the impetus of Dan Cruver, then the Outreach Director of Carolina Hope Christian Adoption Agency (and now the director of Together for Adoption). A lot has happened since then, most notably, Carolina Hope’s merger with Nightlight Christian Adoptions. Because so many things had to change, redesigning the blog was not at the top of my priority list for a long time. Not till this week, in fact. But finally, we’ve made it.

If anything looks out-of-whack here, please let me know (joshuaj@nightlight.org). I’ve tested the new design in Firefox 3.5, Safari 4, Opera 9.6, and Internet Explorer 8. This is the first time I haven’t tried to make a design work in IE 6. If you’re using IE 6, maybe you can read the content, but everything will be ugly until you you’re able to visit using a modern, standards-compliant browser.

From the Lisa Prather, Nightlight Christian Adoptions Assistant Director:

Greetings!

There are an estimated 2 Million orphans in Uganda. Many of these children are orphans due to losing a parent to AIDS. I will be traveling to Uganda next week as a representative of Nightlight Christian Adoptions. My goal is to make contact with adoption professionals and visit a few orphanages. In addition, I will be distributing clothes, food, formula, and other needs to the orphanages I come into contact with. Financial donations are welcome. It is our desire to begin an adoption program in Uganda. While I am in Uganda, I plan to update our staff as to how the trip is going. If you would like to follow my trip as well, please check back here for updates.

In Christ,

Lisa Prather, LMSW
Assistant Director

Rocky and his wife, Suzanne, adopted from Ethiopia through Carolina Hope Christian Adoption Agency, which is now the South Carolina office of Nightlight Christian Adoptions. Nightlight continues to have an Ethiopia adoption program, carried over and largely unchanged from the Carolina Hope program. Note, however, that Nightlight’s policy requires that if a family  becomes pregnant during the paperwork phase of an adoption, the adoption should go on hold. Rocky’s testimony reflects the old Carolina Hope policy, which is no longer in force.

When we decided that we wanted to grow our family, the possibility of adoption almost immediately entered the conversation. I was not the one bringing it up though, my wife was. She had almost always wanted to adopt. I liked the idea of adoption in the abstract, but the thought of doing it while I was still in school was not something that I saw us doing, and I told Suzanne that. She accepted my answer, but was not going to give up completely. She prayed that my heart would change on the issue and continued to bring it up occasionally. At the school that I attend, there are many professors and students who have adopted. Suzanne went to a talk on adoption at the school, and brought me the CD to listen to. I began to consider the possibility of starting the adoption process. This entire time we were hoping that Suzanne would become pregnant.

It did not take long before God changed my heart. (more…)

Grace Community Church, pastored by John MacArthur, is hosting an “Adoption: For Life” conference this week. Nightlight’s Mary Madison will be speaking 10:30-11:20am on Domestic Adoption. More details and registration are available at Grace Community’s event website. (Registration is $20/person, or $25/couple.)

Yesterday we posted an interview with Matt Thien, a Christian musician who has started a CD project called 10 Days 10 Songs Africa to benefit the Tumaini Mission Center in Nakuru, Kenya. Matt has agreed to donate a CD — once it’s released — to one of our readers (you don’t have to be a regular!).

Simple rules:

1. Post a comment on the interview with Matt Thien post (not on this one). It doesn’t have to be long.
2. Link to the interview from a blog or website. (If you don’t have a blog or website, ask a friend whether you can write a guest post. Alternatively, you can do a Facebook note/post, including a link to the interview, and share it with all your “friends.” Just let us know what you did.)
3. Do these things by November 8 (a week from Sunday).

Your name will be entered into the drawing, and one winner will be chosen randomly using random.org soon after November 8.