The River

A number of months ago, while riding in the van on the way to a project, our friend, John Wright talked about his work. It went something like this...

All these humanitarian projects, our work feels like we are standing downstream in a raging river. Kids are being thrown in upstream and we are overwhelmed with trying to catch them before they drown. The more we catch, the more it seems slip by us. Someone needs to go upstream and teach the people up there not to throw the children in the river.

When John said that, all I could say was, incredible. What a way to put into words exactly what the heartbeat of LAMb is. Our hope, passion and energy focuses on teaching and training social workers, families, government officials and leaders how not to throw the children into the river.

Last week, Ruby spent Thursday night and Friday night training an orphanage doctor, a government social worker and an orphan social worker on material that they, in turn can use to train adoptive parents for the task. Saturday she conducted the first adoption training in this country with five national families awaiting placement of their babies.

Over the months we have been here, I have had the privilege of slowly nurturing a group of commited workers as they seek to develop a foster care program in their community. We finish on Thursday of this week and will have a group of trainers who have invested many hours in preparation. Wednesday we drive two hours to visit with a group of people who have begun a foster care program in their area. We are excited about the potential of this meeting.

Both David and Lynn are working with leadership and spiritual development issues with the foundation and its schools. Much work to do in this area!

It is late tonight and I could not help but reflect on what John shared with us many months ago. We hope to be able to help those upstream to know how to keep kids from being swallowed up by the raging river of horrific poverty, abandonment, abuse and neglect.

Thank you for sharing our journey as it continues...we leave on Saturday, leaving behind most of our heart, but with a promise to return in spring.