from hope to reality

Heirs with Christ: The Puritans on Adoption by Dr. Joel Beeke is a new book about the Christian theology of adoption. The book’s forward is by Carolina Hope blogger Dan Cruver. (more…)

It’s been a long week, with more than the usual adoption issues to deal with and more than the expected number of stares and comments from strangers. I sat down on Tuesday to have the ‘Where Babies Come From,’ discussion with my three oldest kids and realized that even there I have to think through [...]

Severely disabled, non-responsive, and unknown life expectancy. These are some of the technical words that define children many of my friends have adopted. These are the hard cold facts that fill the endless pages of their medical histories and that would have condemned them to limited lives in hospitals and other such institutions, except that [...]

Why would I, living in landlocked and frozen MN, buy 6 tickets to the Carolina Hope - Caedmon’s Call/Derek Webb concert this Friday? Maybe I hatched a wild plan to fly out to the coast for the weekend with 5 of my closest girl friends. Sounds fun, but it doesn’t fall within [...]

The concert is this week! We’re gearing up for it, and we’d like to ask your help in getting the word out. Because we’re an adoption agency and not a public relations firm, our advertising dollars are limited. In addition to our promotional efforts in churches, on the radio, and here on the web, we’re [...]

(Don’t forget about our benefit concert for Ethiopia orphan care and adoptions, with Caedmon’s Call, on February 29! Order tickets here.)
In January Lisa Prather (Carolina Hope’s Director of International Programs) and Dan Cruver (Director of Ministry Outreach) took a survey trip to Ethiopia. When they got back, Lisa made a slideshow with some compelling photos. [...]

Sometimes I forget when I am talking with people about transracial adoption (or parenting in general) to share the happy quiet moments as well as the hard ones. When I stop and watch, I see that my family has them every day. Sandwiched in between the training and the conflicts, the school work and the [...]

As the mom to 6 adopted kids I try hard not to be afraid when I need to research Attachment Disorders and all of the psychologically disruptive things that this diagnosis can indicate. Rather than reacting out of fear, I have learned to process what I learn with a sober mind and a [...]

Who would have thought that figuring out how to verbally identify our children’s racial identity would be another one of the hard things about adoption? It seemed simple at first, they are African American and we are Caucasian. Then it got tougher, two of our children are also Cherokee Indian and two have unidentified fathers [...]

On November 28, 2007, Dan Cruver interviewed Anthony Mathenia about trans-racial adoption and about Anthony and his wife Amber’s own Ethiopian adoption journey. Three days ago, January 22, Amber’s life was taken in a car accident. Our prayers are with Anthony and his children.
We commend Amber’s life to our readers as a model of “religion [...]

If you’re thinking about starting a website, you’ll need a website host. Let me recommend 1&1 Internet Inc. This is the host Carolina Hope uses, and we have been very satisfied with the price and the services.
Why am I telling you this? Because if you go to 1&1 using one of the links in this [...]

For some time Carolina Hope has been part of the Amazon Affiliates program. That means that whenever anyone buys from Amazon using the link we provide, a small percentage of the sale is set aside for Carolina Hope. There’s no additional charge to the buyer.
If you’re not already using an affiliate link to shop at [...]

“Why am I in this family anyway?” Words casually thrown to me over the shoulder of my 8 year old as he disappeared up the basement stairs with the umpteenth load of clean laundry.  This is the child that God is using to sharpen me and break down the self-sufficiency that I suffer so dreadfully [...]

Carolina Hope has recently become a member of Giveline, a shopping site (much like Amazon) that donates a percentage of every purchase to your non-profit of choice. The button to the left will take you to the site and automatically select Carolina Hope as the cause you wish to benefit with your purchases.
Here’s a promotional [...]

I have to confess a personal and deep-seated desire to get rid of the ‘Purple Jesus’ print that hangs on my living room wall. I acquired it accidentally when we rebuilt a portion of our church and I became the caretaker for some of the more obscure art we found stashed in various corners of [...]

In an earlier post I wrote that we become a ‘city on the hill’ when we adopt trans-racially. Simply put, we look different from most families and we stand out almost anywhere in our culture. But I have encountered another way that people view our family that I never would have guessed in [...]

As an educated, strong willed, successful American woman the words “I don’t know” have only recently started falling comfortably into my conversations. When I commit to do things I carefully count the costs and regularly have contingency plans — and because of the number of daily decisions it takes to run our family, there hasn’t [...]

After reading Dan’s post this morning I was looking forward to commenting on it until the topic switched from the hypothetical into my immediate life as my 8 year old adopted son came to me in the laundry room and handed me a note with three words on it “I’m running away.”

Family Life recently interviewed a number of individuals who have been involved in orphan care ministry in their local churches. You’ll find this video very challenging and inspiring. Let us be encouraged that Christ is doing a work among his people (among us!) to mobilize them to care for orphans.

(HT: Desiring God Blog)
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This weekend over at EthiHOPEia, the personal adoption blog of the Forrest family (Carolina Hope homestudy clients), I saw this wonderful photo of the Forrests’ son, Caleb, holding their completed homestudy.I think that this photo pretty well sums up the excitement a family feels when they “make it” past the homestudy hurdle.
(At our main website [...]