Jay and I just got off of a conference call with the Orphan Care director who works for our adoption agency, All God’s Children International (AGCI).  She visited Burundi recently and shared her experience and wisdom with us.  It was SO informative.   We focused on every word she shared hoping to get a feel for the country our children are living in, for their living situation and how adoptions are progressing in Burundi.  

What we didn’t expect was to get off the phone and sob.

We learned about the extreme poverty, that the shelters (orphanages) are lacking greatly to care for the needs of the children.  Some shelters cant even offer a place for the children to sleep so they just feed them during the day and watch over them until evening and then the children leave, wander until they find a place to sleep (insert my broken heart).  The thought of my children wandering the streets to find a warm place to sleep brings me to my knees in desperate pleadings that God would protect them, feed them, keep them warm at night and keep them together.  There are also many shelters who don’t even have the resources to register the abandoned children so that they CAN be adopted…what a hopeless feeling.  Some shelters don’t even have beds for the children, just dirt floors. DIRT FLOORS.  These are living conditions that people wouldn’t even want there dogs living in.  My heart aches.

And yet there is hope…AGCI sees the need and is working to care for the children of Burundi and we want to be a part of it, even beyond adoption.  Right now they are working to partner with the Mugisha Children’s Shelter in Burundi.  In the process of building the shelter they ran out of funding so they are not able to provide a permanent place for the children to sleep.  This project will provide funding for beds, furnishings & finished structure so that they can become a full time orphanage. If your heart is aching like mine please visit the link above and donate today!  Please! They are trying to raise $15,000 in 56 days.  This shouldn’t be difficult!

As I look through the pictures connected to the link…into the eyes of the children photographed I just cant help but wonder if any of them are ours.  We don’t know where our children are but they very well could be from this shelter.

On another note, we finished up our home visits and really enjoyed our caseworker!  She was great and very encouraging.  Our home study should hopefully be finalized in the next week or two which means we will be able to move forward with getting approved by Immigration. YAY!!!  After hearing about the conditions in Burundi we feel a greater urgency (if that’s even possible) about getting our dossier into the hands of the Central Authority of Burundi so that we can be placed with our children.

Thank you for being our support.  We so deeply appreciate those of you who are walking along side us through this journey.  Please continue to pray for our babies.  That’s all.

Much love,