Defending the cause of the fatherless...

In only 17 more days, Randy and I will be flying out to Minneapolis, MN to attend the Christian Alliance for Orphans SUMMIT VI!!!

I cannot tell you how excited we are about the opportunity to go to this and that we also get to go with two of our favorite couples who share the same passion for orphans! We have been looking forward to this for months, as we have known that God has called us to be a voice for the orphan but have lacked that specific avenue & strategy to be able to accomplish His purpose for us in this area.
The objective of the conference is to inspire and equip Christians to “care for orphans in their distress” through adoption, foster care and global orphan care ministry rooted in the local church. There will be awesome speakers (see below), worship, tons of breakout sessions, and a ton of different resources to help ordinary people like us dive into orphan ministry and missions. What is there to not be excited about??!!

We have been praying for the Lord to speak loud and clear to us at this conference and I doubt we will come back the same!


INTERESTED?

For Christians stirred by the plight of orphans, The Summit offers the biggest and best opportunity of the year to learn how to act upon conviction. To learn more and register now, visit the Summit website here. It's definitely NOT too late to register!!!

Oh, and if you will be at the Summit- let me know! I have a feeling we're going to run into a lot of bloggy friends there! :-)




"American Christians are stirring to the needs of orphans both at home and abroad as never before. What’s thrilling is that even small ministries in local churches can make such significant impact. There are millions of parentless children worldwide, but a single statistic matters more than any other: it only takes one caring adult to make a lifelong difference in the life of an orphan.”

- Jedd Medefind, President, Christian Alliance for Orphans



***Just in case you were wondering how we got like this, I wanted to share a little part of our story. I have been working on a post about all of this including my testimony of how the Lord saved me from myself and a life of destruction, but I'll save that for another time. :-)

God has used the adoption of our sweet Elliana to forever change our hearts and give us a huge passion to care for the 147 million orphans left in the world. Like it seems to be for a lot of families, when we first started talking about adoption years ago it was mostly to add another child to our family- specifically a daughter that we had never had.

But somewhere along the way God opened our eyes and hearts to all of the children who are left without a mommy and daddy and without someone to share to love of Christ with them. We began to see the bigger picture of God’s adoption of us into His family and how adoption is the gospel lived out.

Now we cannot seem to sit still because we want to advocate and be a voice for those who cannot speak up for themselves! It has started small, but we are faithfully praying that the Lord would use us in whatever ways He sees fit- whether that is starting an orphan ministry at our church, raising funds for orphan care and adoptions, going on orphan care mission trips, adopting several more children ourselves or all of the above! We are confident that He who began that good work in us (and stirred that passion for orphans in us) will be faithful to complete it until the day of Christ Jesus...