CEO Note
I hope everyone is enjoying the last few days of summer before school gets under way again. I know there are many things going on in your life, but I want to mention our program that helps orphaned children have the opportunity for more than going to school – it gives these orphans an opportunity for a permanent family. If you have not heard about it, it’s called the Orphan’s Ticket Home Campaign. This is our agency’s way of raising money to fund many of the projects we’ve taken on to seek permanent families for orphans around the world. We have a year-end goal of reaching $250,000 for our fundraising and, eight months into the year, we are far from reaching this goal. I would encourage you to contact our Director of Development, Jason West, if you have any questions or want to learn more about ways you can be involved in our agency’s projects.
Next week I am traveling to Ethiopia to participate in meetings focusing on African adoption. I’ve been asked to speak to a group of organizations that USAID is putting together and I will also be meeting with other agencies and orphan care organizations. While I’m there, I’ll of course be meeting with our staff and visiting the America World transition homes.
I know many families in our Rwanda Program are concerned about how some of the recent changes will affect their family’s adoption timeline. We are working to help families learn more about what the timeframe will be. We’re also praying for families and trusting that the LORD’s providence and plans are perfect.
I want to mention that there are still a lot of children in our China Waiting Child program that I hope families are considering. In particular this week our staff has discussed the children with the special need of certain heart conditions; often families are intimidated by such special needs – but we hope that families will pray about this, learn more about the conditions and consider if adopting a child with such a special need is what God has in store for their family. Please contact one of our China Family Coordinators for more information.
Finally, I want to inform families that we’re on Facebook. Find us and friend us! We want to build up a base of our families and friends to use this as another medium to give information and connect to families.
— Brian Luwis, CEO