from hope to reality

On November 2 & 3, Carolina Hope’s Ministry Outreach Coordinator Dan Cruver will be speaking at the Adoption and Orphan Weekend sponsored by Colonial Baptist Church in Cary, NC. The weekend conference will cover a variety of topics, including:

domestic adoption
international adoption
adoption agencies
orphan ministries
foster care
adoption support
financial strategies

Many of these topics will be explored in workshops during [...]

With a population of approximately 80 million people, it is estimated that Ethiopia has between 4 and 5 million orphan. The situation is quickly becoming worse. It is believed that nearly half of Ethiopia’s children will become orphans over the next four years. As a result of Ethiopia’s orphan population, [...]

It may seem like an obvious thing to blog about, but a lot of prospective adoptive families don’t know where to go to get their CIS forms such as the I-600A and I-864W. (CIS and USCIS are the standard abbreviations for for U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, formerly INS.) With their website redesign (last year, [...]

Carolina Hope Christian Adoption Agency currently has programs in Azerbaijan, China, Guatemala, and Cambodia (Cambodian adoptions are only available to non-U.S. residents). In December our Ethiopia Adoption program will open. Families wishing to adopt from Ethiopia can submit an application now to begin the process. Because laws in Ethiopia do not place unnecessary restrictions on [...]

[Carolina Hope is a Christian adoption agency that serves families from all over the country.]
One of the main connections, if not the primary one, between Uppercase Adoption (i.e. God adopting us as His children) and lowercase adoption (i.e. our adoption of a child) is that both are preeminently concerned with relationship. Adoption, whether [...]

We are looking for a Christian family that would be interested in adopting a 2 1/2 year old boy.  He will be 3 in January. He is very bright and described as “hyper.” His guardian (great aunt) cannot run after him, as she has arthritis. The birth mother has a criminal history and is reportedly bi-polar. [...]

One of my deepest desires is that the doctrine of adoption would be recovered within the Christian church, that it would be valued, treasured and articulated by pastors (and their people) and theologians even as the doctrine of justification is. Progress is being made, but there is much more needed—not only in its recovery but [...]

I’m very pleased to announce that this is the first in a series of interviews about adoption. The purpose of these interviews is to address adoption-related issues from a theological, gospel-centered perspective. We will be interviewing theologians, authors, adoptive parents, and a few adult adoptees about a number of adoption issues. Carolina Hope is committed [...]

Here are several of our key posts that discuss theological adoption:
Christian Faith and Christian Adoption
Adoption: No Better Way to Understand Christianity
The Life of Adoption
“This is my Beloved Son…”
What God has done in Adoption
Orphans, Adoption, and Fuling, China: a fresh look at James 1:27
:: posted by dan ::

“The Christian…enjoys communion with Christ in the privileges of grace. The highest of these is adoption. Christians are the sons of God: ‘adoption is the authoritative translation of a believer, by Jesus Christ, from the family of the world and Satan into the family of God, with his investiture in all the privileges [...]

I’m in the process of reviewing a book that was written specifically for adopted children and will post an interview with its author in a few weeks. We plan on recommending helpful books that address issues unique to adoptive families, but we’ll also recommend books that are helpful for any family whether it’s been touched [...]

The Guatemalan Forever Families Network (GFFN) of North Carolina has announced the following event, open for all families whose lives are touched by the adoption of a child from Guatemala:

!! Meet & Greet Fiesta !!
Our first event will be held on September 22, 2007 at Lake Johnson in Raleigh, NC.
You can come as early and [...]

The U.S. Embassy in Kyiv, Ukraine, has instituted new procedures this month for issuing immigrant visas to Ukrainian children adopted by U.S. citizens. (For more information about Carolina Hope’s Ukraine adoption program, go to our Ukraine page.)

This is to inform you that effective September 4, 2007, the procedure to submit documents for visas for adopted [...]

Tomorrow there’s a workshop at Carolina Hope in Greenville, South Carolina, covering domestic adoption and international adoption. Here’s a blurb:

Carolina Hope Adoption Education
Introducing Domestic and International Adoption
Saturday, September 15, 2007 (9:30 A.M. - 12:00 noon)
At this adoption workshop, Carolina Hope Christian Adoption Agency and the Law Office of Raymond W. Godwin will present basic information [...]

This from the Joint Council on International Children’s Services:
Joint Council Announcement
Program: Professional Enrichment
Announcement Date: September 12, 2007
Regarding: Ethica & Evan B Donaldson Conference on Ethics
Joint Council’s Tom DiFilipo and over 20 Joint Council members will be speaking at the Adoption Ethics and Accountability Conference, sponsored by Joint Council Member Organizations Evan B Donaldson and Ethic [...]

Employers step up with benefits as adoption becomes more difficult
September 2, 2007
BY SUE SCHELLENBARGER The Wall Street Journal
Adopting a child from overseas has never been easy. But new restrictions on overseas adoptions have made the process much tougher, causing added stress and job disruptions for would-be parents.
The changes are demanding more patience on [...]

If you are an adoptive family (or are at least considering adoption), let me encourage you to read the book of Ephesians with your own adoptive family in mind. It is full of instruction that will strengthen and enrich relationships within adoptive families (or in any family for that matter). Jeanne Stevenson-Moessner, author of The [...]

This article was written by Laura Godwin, Director of Carolina Hope, and originally published by The Greenville News on September 11th, 1997. Since adoption law has not changed too much since then, we thought we would recirculate this thought-provoking article to encourage lawmakers to make state laws more pro-adoption.
 
Make adoption wonderful choice, not humiliating ordeal
By [...]

This morning, Bjorn Lomborg, author of Cool It: The Skeptical Environmentalist’s Guide to Global Warming was interviewed on NPR’s Morning Edition. Mr. Lomborg believes that global warming is a reality, and he believes that human activity is contributing to the problem. However, he rejects solutions like the Kyoto Protocol, because he believes these types of [...]

The writers of the Heidelberg Catechism, one of the most influential confessional documents ever created, thought the doctrine of adoption was important enough to be included in this beautifully written question and answer document. I’m grateful they did. In it they briefly address the relationship between Christ’s Sonship and ours.
Question 33. Why [...]