Part 4: Quick Survey of Adoption’s Marking Function (read the other parts here)
As I noted in part 3, God’s work of adoption has a “marking” function in the grand story of redemption. It plays a leading role from before the beginning of the unfolding story of redemption (before God created the world) all the way [...]

Part 3: Adoption’s Importance and Recovery (read the other parts here)
So how important is the doctrine of adoption and why should it be recovered? Its importance should not be evaluated by considering the number of times the term adoption is actually used in Scripture. One of the other reasons adoption has been neglected in church [...]

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 [...]

Come hear Carolina Hope’s Dan Cruver at The Vine Community Church this Sunday. Here’s the announcement from our Workshops page:
Adoption Awareness Service
Sunday, March 30, 2008 (6pm)
Dan Cruver, Carolina Hope’s Ministry Outreach Director, who is an adoptive father, will be speaking at this special adoption service. Also, two birthmothers and an adult adoptee [...]

Part 2: The Neglect of Heavenly Adoption (read part 1 here)
If adoption is first heavenly (i.e., vertical) before it is earthly (i.e., horizontal), why do we Christians so often think of earthly adoption before we think of heavenly adoption? Why do we think horizontally before we think vertically? I think one reason for this is [...]

What do you first think of when you hear the word adoption? Most people think of the earthly practice of adoption before they think of heavenly adoption, that is, they think of couples adopting children before they think of God adopting us as His children.
Throughout this new series of posts on the importance of adoption [...]

Today’s interview is with Greg Whiting, a husband, father, pastor, and one of my closest friends in college.  God has given Greg and his wife, Teresa, a beautiful adoption story. When the two of us were in college together, neither one of us had any idea that God would one day grow our future families [...]

Benedict & Kathleen Schwartz of All Kids Can Learn International and Children of Zion Village will be guests on FamilyLife Today both Monday and Tuesday, March 17th-18th, next week. Dennis Rainey will be interviewing them about the exciting orphan ministry opportunities with this Christian Alliance for Orphans partner in Namibia and Zambia. You can learn [...]

This morning I read a short post over at Riley Dad’s Weblog which reminded me that I’ve been meaning to post about adoption language issues.
One of the first things that struck me when I started working at Carolina Hope in 2005 was the lingo. I was told there were certain things I wasn’t allowed to [...]

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 [...]

John and Connie met each other at church during their college days at Oklahoma State University. What started out as a very casual and comfortable friendship steadily grew into much more as they spent more and more time together in church/ministry, and hanging out with friends–less than 14 months after they met, they were married!
They [...]

As we celebrate our adoption agency’s 10th Anniversary, I’m posting brief introductions of the Carolina Hope staff. Last Friday I told you a little about our Director, Laura Godwin. Today I’d like you to meet our Assistant Director (and Director of International and Domestic Adoption Programs), Lisa Prather. I’ve asked her a few questions, and [...]

Over the weekend we received our first donations to specific needs at the Ethiopia Group Home. Check out the list of needed items to see what’s been given and what is still needed. And thanks to those who gave!
(You can watch video footage here of Ethiopian orphans who were visited by Carolina Hope’s Lisa Prather [...]

As we celebrate our 10th Anniversary as an adoption agency, I want to give you some brief introductions to the Carolina Hope staff. I’ll begin with our director, who is also the founder of the agency, Laura Beauvais-Godwin.

Laura’s involvement with adoption began at least as far back as her first adoption, about 20 years ago. [...]

This is our Ethiopia video that premiered at our recent benefit concert with Caedmon’s Call. It was created by Brannon McAllister from footage captured on our recent trip to Ethiopia. The children shown in this video live at one of the orphanages with which we work, an orphanage located in a village with [...]

Today I’m writing to recommend to you a recent children’s book about adoption by Andrea Stephens, Gifts To Each Other. Assistant Director Lisa Prather says that the book is “a very good resource for talking to children about adoption.”
At the end of the post I’ve included a few screenshots of pages (taken from Amazon’s preview [...]

Here is the adoption video that Desiring God made for our Caedmon’s Call benefit concert for our Ethiopia orphan care and adoption programs. Enjoy!

I cannot express how thankful I am for all the volunteers who helped with our Caedmon’s Call benefit concert.  It was a great opportunity to raise awareness of and funds for the Ethiopian orphans we are sponsoring as an agency.  The concert began with a deeply moving three minute video created by Brannon McAllister from footage [...]

This spring, Carolina Hope celebrates its 10-year anniversary! As part of the celebration, we are hosting an Easter Egg hunt for families whose lives have been touched by adoption. All children are welcome, whether they came into your family by adoption or birth. Here’s the announcement from Carolina Hope’s website:
Easter Egg Hunt at Carolina Hope
[...]

Just a reminder that tomorrow evening (Tuesday, March 4) from 7 to 9 pm, Carolina Hope is conducting an informational workshop about domestic and international adoptions at our office in Greenville, SC.
Here’s the announcement from our workshops page:
Introducing Domestic and International Adoption
Tuesday, March 4, 2008 (7-9pm)
At this adoption workshop, Carolina Hope Christian Adoption Agency and [...]