After a month of great food, family games and little cousins
meeting each other, it’s time to re-enter the world of Huehue.
It’s the place that has become our home over the last few
years. But it feels even more like our home for one major reason: we continue
to live here even though we no longer work for one of the only nonprofits in
the area.
In September, we decided that upon our return to Guatemala
in November we would no longer be working for Story International, or for the
children’s home that it funds and operates.
Where did this
decision come from? It is rooted in months of conversation about what
orphan care means for our family and, ultimately, a paradigm shift for our role
in the future.
We have spent the last nine months connecting with others
around Guatemala and the world who do similar work – orphan care, that is.
Through these interactions, we have seen that there are many different ways to
care for God’s children outside the context of an orphanage.
The end result is that we have become convinced that our
role in orphan care is not in an orphanage at all. Instead, it is to open up
our home and simultaneously encourage existing organizations to support family
strengthening and reunification services.
If you want more
information on what family-based care means, you can check out Brooklin’s post on Medium.
For our own family, we believe that the last three years
have brought us to a very specific jumping off point. In the immediate future,
the paradigm shift means bringing in one of the older girls that we have
developed a relationship with over the past . “C” is two years away from
finishing high school, and we want to support her as she transitions away from
an orphanage and into her own life. “C” will be living with us as she finishes
school, and we will be supporting her in any way we can during this time.
The second jumping off point is to continue pursuing
adoption for “A”, one of the youngest girls that we have taken care of. We have
felt the calling to adopt her since the day that we met her. Our residency
papers are all in order, and we are just waiting on approval before going
through the adoption process. Stepping out of working in an orphanage setting
means that we can open our own home as a forever family.
At the same time, we are looking for ways to support the
movement toward family-based care in Guatemala. This means working with both
children’s homes and churches in encouraging competent care giving,
reunification, foster care, and adoption.
Right now, that role isn’t exactly clear. We expect that it
will be in the future. For now, our role is to pursue the little girl that has
been placed in our life and to support “C” as she transitions out of an
institution and into the real world. This is our focus in the coming two years.
More than anything, we know that we still have a lot to
learn. We are convinced that we are called to continue working in international
children’s rights and orphan care – probably for life. In this stage, we look
forward to learning everything that we can while we take these two steps with
our family.
We are very blessed to know that we have the body of Christ
behind us and the Holy Spirit in front of us.
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