Bonneur Adoption

This morning I sat in a church in Kampala listening to the voices of a choir filling every corner of the building. As in many places here, it’s kind of an outdoor building, almost a pavilion. There was a breeze running through and fans overhead keeping it comfortable. People here sing with all their heart, really it’s not singing, it’s pure worship. How church should be. My mother-in-law has said to me recently, “When prayers go up, blessings come down”. That’s what was happening in this church. Songs of prayer were soaring up thanking God for the blessings that are coming down. Inside the bulletin was the story of the wood pecker. The story goes something like this: the wood pecker flew to the top of a tall pine tree and gave 3 pecks on the side, at the same instant lightning struck the tree, shredding it, leaving it on the ground. The wood pecker thinks that he himself shredded the tree with his powerful pecks. The point of the story is that we often attribute God’s glory to ourselves. But instead we must be like John who said “He must become greater and I must become less.” John 3:30. I share this so that you reading this know that Andy and I did nothing heroic or selfless here. We listened to God and he blessed us. He blessed us with prayer and support and amazing answers all packed into 2 weeks. Soon I will be leaving Kampala and sorting all of this out at home. But I want to write something before I leave, especially since we have gotten a lot of attention and prayers and even praise. The last is hard to swallow. For 3 years we have been working to adopt. For the last 9 months we have been working to adopt James and Kira. They have been a part of our household, our nightly prayers, pictures on the mantle, 2 bedrooms waiting for their coming… I carried their pictures in my purse and showed them to anyone, and I mean EVERYONE, the post office lady, the Walmart employee, basically anyone with a pulse who didn’t punch me. During all this time we also prayed for their mother. We had been told that because of special circumstances, and we were assured it wasn’t poverty, that she had given them up, for their safety. Life, and every story, is always more complicated. We flew into Entebbe on Feb. 16th, and we met the kids Feb. 17th. We drove thru Kampala to their orphan home, which was about a 2 hour drive. We were in culture shock and jet lagged, and we’d gone from 12 degree weather to HOT, which is what I believe the thermostat reads here since no one can ever tell me the actual temperature. Someday if you are reading this and are interested I will tell you what Kampala is like, but that would take too long here. Needless to say, I LOVE it here. But my next trip will include an arsenal of bug spray. I digress. From the minute we met the kids Kira was in our lap calling us mom and dad. We found out the next day that this was not a good sign. James ran away from us, they translated that he said he was upset, he didn’t even have a picture of his mom. We also learned that Kira was wearing a new dress her mom had recently brought her, and that the kids had gone home with her for 3 days during Christmas. This was surprising to us, as we had thought they had no contact with her since being in the orphan home. We knew initial meetings were emotional and scary on both sides, so we were not to alarmed. We spent about an hour at the home and then took the kids with us to our guest house, stopping on the way to buy James shoes for court. The rest of the afternoon was spent in getting to know them a little, but mostly Andy and I staring at them in disbelief. We were probably acting like all new parents who bring their baby home for the first time worried that they might break the kids or ruin their lives by using the wrong soap at bath time. Luckily James is 9 and Kira is 4 so they aren’t quite as breakable. Tuesday we were supposed to go to court, but we’d been told that they cancelled our court with one judge in favor of us going before another judge. We didn’t have a court date, and we had just found this out. This was concerning, but we were occupied with getting to know the kids. Each day that week we expected to get a court date, and finally we were told it would be Friday afternoon. The time between Tuesday and Friday was not what we had expected. James and Kira are beautiful children. They played with the other kids at our guest house, a total of 12, 9 which were being adopted. Kira loves to laugh and smile and get attention. She loves to swing and follow me around everywhere. She loves to dance, and these kids here are born dancing, they put us to shame in the States. Every kid in the house had better moves than James Brown. Kira didn’t speak much English, but she could get her point across, as most girls can. James quickly became the favorite of everyone in the house. He was brotherly to the younger kids, sweet with the babies, intelligent, a hilarious sense of humor, and the best was that he would listen to instruction and always try to do everything better. This was a son we would be proud of. We are proud of him. To have endured what he has at 9 years old yet behave like a man is not something you see often. He was sensitive but tough. He was the best. So here comes the story. Between Tuesday and Friday, despite how great these kids were, something was horribly wrong. I was sick, emotionally. These weren’t our kids. I told my agent we were babysitting someone else’s kids. I talked to other adopting parents in the house and they reassured me that we don’t always attach immediately to our kids, it can take time. I kept praying but I felt lost and guilty. I had so much guilt I made myself physically ill. If it had just been me, I would have thought it was fear driving all these emotions, and I did think that for most of the week. But Andy was feeling the same way. Andy was great by the way. I see now the kind of dad he will be. He played with the kids, was patient with them, laughed with them, he gently corrected them and encouraged them. It’s always a blessing to find out your husband is also a great father. But unfortunately we did not feel like parents to these 2 kids. After 9 months of anticipating this week, we were so lost. We prayed together each day trying to figure out what God wanted us to do. My aunt and uncle and cousin were also in Kampala doing mission work for Scripture Union. They had planned their trip a year ahead of time, and our first 2 weeks in Kampala (which we had 30 days notice of) coincided with their trip. Before we left we had a night of prayer with our Bible study group which includes my aunt and uncle. My uncle truly thought it was God’s timing to have us there together, that he would be able to encourage us if needed. At the time I thought we will be with our kids, why will we need encouragement? But looking back we can see God’s protection and blessings at every step. We met with them for dinner on Wednesday night with the kids. They knew things were not going well and they encouraged us and let us know they were praying for us, from then on they kept in touch daily. By Friday morning Andy and I were ready for court. We were in a better place. We had prayed and prayed and we decided if we went to court and the judge ruled in our favor, then the kids were meant to be ours. We would just need time to attach. But if the mother changed her mind or the judge ruled against us, then we would know why we felt the way we did. We arrived at court with the kids and sat in the waiting room with our case worker and a young lady from the orphan home. She took the kids on a tour of the courthouse, which was helpful especially since Kira thought we were in the jail. We spent that time catching up with our Ugandan case worker. We were waiting on the kids mother to get there. It appeared the mother had not told the kids what was happening. The case worker wanted her to do that before we went into court. In the meantime we found out that the kids hadn’t spent the last 2 years in the orphan home, they had spent some of that time living with the orphan home director and his wife, calling them mom and dad. Although throughout all this time they still had contact with their mom. This is why Kira so readily called us “mom and dad”. It didn’t mean anything except that we were new caretakers. She had a “mom”, who regardless of the title we shared, was her one and only mom. After 30 minutes the judge called us up, but our lawyer and the mother weren’t there yet. He was annoyed and sent us back down to the waiting room. Soon they arrived. When the kids saw their mom, we knew. Their faces lit up. Kira was immediately in her lap, holding her hand. James was all smiles. This was the most awkward moment of our lives and completely unsettling. Our lawyer went up to the judge, but the judge was now mad at his being late and told us to go, and come back next wed. afternoon. Anyone who has adopted realizes every day you don’t have court is more money, more time in country, more time waiting on a ruling, more stress. But, looking back, we once again clearly see God’s protection and blessing. If our lawyer had been on time, we would have had court, and perhaps not had the opportunity we did. As we left court, and shared a ride with their mother (also surreal) we were informed by our case worker that on Monday Andy and I would go visit their mother at her home. At the time I thought this was outrageous. We were uncomfortable enough, how could this be a good thing? I should explain a little about the circumstances. Without going into their private details, I can say we were told that they were given up for adoption NOT because of poverty, but because of a tribal taboo. We were told that the kids were put in a home for their own safety. That they had no life in Uganda and their mother was an outcast as long as the kids were with her. None of the reasons have any bearing in the US, this is a different culture and there are many tribes here with their own subcultures. Of course we were now seeing a different picture, one where they still had contact with a loving mother and were still able to stay at her home, with relatives in safety. So on Saturday we went with the other families in the house to a local pool. Sunday we went to Jinja with my Aunt and Uncle, this is where the source of the Nile is. Both days Andy and I were miserable. Now we knew why we felt we were babysitting, these kids have a loving mother. Someone they see even after being put in the home. Someone who loved them but felt she was cursed and had to give them up. On the two hour drive back from Jinja, when the kids fell asleep in the van, Andy and I talked and prayed with my aunt and uncle. It was like a mobile prayer group. We knew that God had given us a window to talk to the mother on Monday. We knew that we had to share the gospel with her. My uncle, who is a retired pastor, helped walk us through how to give our testimony. The next day we spent 2 hours talking with their mother. We shared with her how we are all cursed by sin. It is only thru the death of Christ that we are redeemed and purified. He broke the curse, cast our sin away. She was free if she believed. She had a Lugandan Bible and we went over scriptures with her. We shared how we knew she loved her children and they were blessings from God. She did not have to give them up if she believed that Christ had forgiven her and she was no longer cursed. We had prayed ahead of time that God would use us to talk to her, that His words would be spoken and not ours. Let me assure you, I had nothing to do with the 2 hours of talking that came out of my mouth. I couldn’t have spoken and shared with her and prayed with her the way we did without the Holy Spirit. By the time we left, she had decided she wanted to keep her children. Praise be to God, and only God. Now in the midst of all this we found out lots of information. Things in the story that I don’t need to share, but that have a lot of bearing on this adoption referral. Many things came to light which made it evident that we never should have had this referral, in fact it most likely would not have made it past the judge or the embassy exit interview. There is a lot of corruption world wide in adoption. Adoption can quickly turn into the buying and selling of children. We thought we had carefully chosen an ethical Christian agency, and I won’t yet point fingers, but I do have this to say: We were told that our agency saw adoption as a ministry, not just their business. They told us the Ugandan lawyer that they work with also sees it as a ministry, we were also told that the orphan director was a strong Christian, and this was a ministry to him. My question is, who in all of this ministry was ministering to the mother? If she gave up her kids because she felt she was cursed, why did no one share the gospel and MINISTER to her? If God hadn’t protected Andy and I every step of the way we would have missed this, and I believe we would have realized it too late, and we would have been as guilty as if we had stolen her children. It has opened our eyes to our accountability in adopting but also in going thru life. Now things are not resolved. God blessed us again by putting in our path an organization here in Kampala, that specializes in reuniting parents or family with orphans. They set up grants for the mother and help her with getting self-sustained, they check in on the kids weekly. They would send pictures back to us and let us know how they are doing. All this is amazing and more confirmation from God that He was guiding us all along. These were not going to be our kids, but He used us to make sure they could be reunited with their mother, to make sure she knows she is also a precious child of God. Now it would be great if this story had a happy ending. I truly hope and pray that it will. But we are finding opposition and roadblocks from our agency and from the orphan director and lawyers here. I hope that they are only temporarily dragging their feet, that they will utilize the organization reuniting the kids, that they do have a ministry, that it wasn’t a line we fell for. Because they do not make money on reuniting families, they do make money on adoptions. We shall soon see where their heart lies. An important lesson I have learned is that in many places in scripture God calls us to CARE for the fatherless. The most well known scripture on adoption says this: “ Religion that God our father accepts as pure and faultless is this: to look after orphans and widows in their distress and to keep oneself from being polluted by the world.” James 1:27. Caring for the fatherless doesn’t always mean adopting. Caring may mean reuniting with their family. Adoption is a blessing and I fully believe God intends for all children to have families. But we must be accountable to finding out if they already have a family, otherwise adoption becomes polluted by the greed and sin of the world. Our agency says it could be months before the kids are reunited with their mother. If they utilize the organization helping reunite kids it would only be weeks. Our agency said it’s very difficult to reunite families. The orphan director says it almost always fails, the kids run away, they get beaten, they starve, the house is overcrowded, etc etc. The organization reuniting kids has almost a perfect success record in reuniting families. God has handed them the solution, it’s up to them to use it. We will be keeping on top of this. In the meantime, Friday we had to drop James and Kira off at the orphan director’s home, after spending 2 weeks with them. Kira still had no idea what was going on, she waved goodbye and went to play. I hope this means that her heart was protected in all of this because she knows who her mother is. But we broke Jame’s heart, and ours along with it. He sat silent but with tears rolling down his face. Even now the pain of that is so overwhelming. We know we did the right thing, but the guilt remains. I hugged him so hard while we were both crying. He is only 9 years old, I would give anything to make this right. We have been shut out of the reunification process by our agency and lawyer here. They say we should not have sought outside help. We called them out on it, and now they assure us they will work with the organization reuniting the kids, as they admittedly have no experience. They say they will contact them this midweek in order to get things rolling soon. Although I have lost trust in them, I plead with all of you reading this to pray pray pray each day for James, Kira and their mother, that they are back together soon. That the kids are not sitting in the orphan home for another 6 months. God has a plan here, we just need our sinful natures to get out of the way. We don’t know where it leaves us. Andy and I still love Uganda, we want to adopt. But we won’t be moving forward with the same people. This is a loss of time and money. But we will continue to thank God for his amazing blessings and have Faith that he has a plan for us.

Bonneur Adoption

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Book for Sale!!!

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Adoption Fundraiser