Christians get passionate about overseas adoption
CALGARY, AB—Christians across Canada are responding to what many believe is a movement of God to adopt needy children from overseas, no matter how much it costs them in time, effort and money.
"A lot of them are mortgaging their houses to bring in a child from another country," says Wendy Robinson, executive director of Christian Adoption Services in Calgary.
"I've got a lady who adopted two [children] from China. She's still making payments on the loan she took out to bring in the first one, who's now eight. Then she had a relative pass away, and she used her inheritance to cover the costs of the second one."
The entire process can take up to nine years, and cost as much as $30,000. That includes the cost of travel to some faraway destination to bring the adopted child to his or her new home in Canada.
And it is getting harder to adopt, as some countries at least temporarily refuse to let their children leave to live elsewhere, for fear of the threat this could pose to the future of their language and culture.
Last year,Family Helper reported that after peaking at more than 45,000 in 2004, adoptions worldwide had fallen to about 30,000 in 2009—and that the downward slide would likely continue "for years to come."
Prospective parents may also have trouble finding a Christian adoption agency. Calgary's Christian Adoption Services and Jewels for Jesus in Mississauga, Ontario, are among the only ones in Canada. Hope Adoption Services in Abbotsford, B.C. closed its doors in January, because it said it was "unable to meet [its] financial obligations."
"All those families that were with Hope had to go to other agencies and start the process over, which makes their wait-times even longer. A lot of people lost a lot of money as well," says Langley, B.C., adoption advocate Tamara Hull.
"We talked with quite a few that were really discouraged. It was really sad."
But for all that, Canadians—not just Christians—are still lining up to adopt. In 2010, they welcomed into their homes nearly 2,000 children from overseas, making Canada one of the world's top five adopting countries.
"I'm seeing about a third more applicants," Robinson says. "When I do an information class, instead of six couples, it's nine couples. In my training classes, where I normally have 18 people, I had 26 the other week."
Julie Berger in Lacombe, Alberta, credits this growing interest to a shift in people's attitudes toward adoption. "It isn't about what I want to be—'I want to be a parent,'" she says. "Adoption is about children that need families and a safe place to grow up."
Berger and her husband, a local pastor, have 10 children by birth, and five more by adoption, four from Liberia and one from Vietnam. For them, adopting them was an act of obedience.
"If God puts on your heart that you need to open your home to non-biological children, at least for us, we did what we had to do to bring them into our family," she says.
To help meet the financial challenges of adoption, Hull launched ABBA Canada just over a year ago. The charity provides grants to Christian families wanting to adopt. Since September, it has given out seven grants across Canada of up to $3,500 each.
Also part of ABBA's mandate is raising awareness of the issues surrounding adoption among Canada's churches.
"Calgary seems to be a really big hub right now of supportive churches," Hull says. "And so along with Focus on the Family Canada, we're zeroing in on a couple of those churches and helping them launch something big."
"Adoption's not a big risk," says Berger. "God's got everything in control. It's not about controlling every little thing or figuring out all the what-ifs. It's about trusting Him."
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