from hope to reality

Here are brief bios of the three regular contributors at our blog, From Hope to Reality.

Dan Cruver
Dorothy Bode
Josh Jensen

The views of the authors are generally in line with those of Carolina Hope Christian Adoption Agency. However, individual posts should not be considered official statements of position. If you have any questions, please email Carolina Hope - office(at)CarolinaHopeAdoption(dot)org - or contact the individual authors (contact information below).

Dan

Dan Cruver, formerly Carolina Hope’s Director of Ministry Outreach, is the co-founder and director of Together for Adoption.

Together for Adoption (T4A) sponsors regional adoption conferences that focus primarily on vertical adoption (i.e., God adopting us as His children), with a secondary focus on its implications for orphan care and horizontal adoption (i.e., couples adopting children). In fulfillment of that primary objective, they desire to see conference attendees walk away from a T4A event:

• understanding why it is that vertical adoption is the highest blessing of the gospel
• rejoicing afresh in the gospel of grace
• moved to greater action on James 1:27 both locally and globallytruth “to the praise of [God’s] glorious
  grace” (Ephesians 1:6).

A former pastor and college professor of Bible and Theology, Dan is a strong adoption advocate. He and his wife, Melissa, a professor of education at North Greenville University, began to actively pursue adoption after their second biological child, Daniel Jr., was diagnosed with a serious brain disorder caused by a genetic defect. They adopted their son Isaiah ten months before Daniel Jr. died at the age of three. The Cruvers are now a multi-ethnic family with a 10-year-old biological daughter, Hannah, and two adopted African-American boys, Isaiah (5) and Noah (3).

To see all of Dan’s posts, go here. Check out Dan’s personal blog here.

E-mail Dan with your comments and/or questions at dan.cruver (at) TogetherforAdoption (dot) org.

Dan is available to speak in churches on the beautiful connections between Uppercase Adoption (i.e. God adopting us as His children) and lowercase adoption (i.e. couples adopting children).

Dorothy

Dorothy Bode is a friend of Carolina Hope currently living in Minnesota. She has been blessed with three biological and 6 adopted children over the past 11 years. Her family represents African American, Cherokee and European heritages, and all of the adoptions have been transracial. Dorothy has been happily married to Robert for 12 years and they have spent the past 8 living in the inner-city of Minneapolis loving the urban poor. As a homeschooling mom and volunteer for the police department, her life is full of ethnic and social diversity and the daily opportunity to share Christ with the hurting. Her strangest claim to fame is that she has changed over 27,000 diapers.

She and her husband have been active members of Bethlehem Baptist Church for 12 years and have served on the MICAH fund board as well as being involved in various other ministries. She has a MBA that is well used in both adoption and urban ministry and her husband Robert is the Director of Financial Aid at Metro State University. Both Dorothy and Robert came to saving faith as young adults and strongly agree with the correlation between God’s Adoption of them and the call he places on Christians to adopt and aid children in need.

To see all of Dorothy’s posts, go here.

Josh

Josh has been with Carolina Hope since the spring of 2005. He began at the agency as a case manager for China adoptions and as the editor for agency publications. At the end of 2006, he began working with Guatemala adoptions, and he became Coordinator for International Programs at the beginning of 2007. He resigned from his position as Programs Coordinator in August 2007 to begin the PhD program in linguistics at the University of Texas at Arlington. He continues to assist Carolina Hope with the development of print and online publications.

To see all of Josh’s posts, go here. Joshua’s bio at Carolina Hope’s main site is here.

E-mail Josh with your comments and/or questions at joshuaj(at)CarolinaHopeAdoption(dot)org.