Baby Dedication and Adoption Celebration

A few weeks ago The Family Church in Gainesville, had a simple baby dedication. An opportunity for parents to stand before the church, and have the pastors and church pray for them, and for the parents to express their desire to raise their children as God would have them be raised.

The cool thing was that there were six families, six children, from four different continents. Two babies born in the US, one being adopted, another child from a family from western Africa, one baby adopted from China, a baby adopted from Bulgaria, and our baby born in Mozambique. It was amazing to see those stories all woven together to be on that stage in that one moment, on that day.

A week later, some of us met again at the Orphan Care group at the church. It was a small gathering, but the group there has accounted for eight international adoptions, and more on the way. The evening was a great chance to celebrate the enormous success of this group this past year. Three families (four children) had adoptions finalized in the past several months.

Sarah and I are encouraged as we build our team for going back to Mozambique, to have been able to meet so many people who have accomplished so much, and who do care for the children that the world does not care for.

Psalm 82: 3

‘’Defend the weak and the fatherless;
uphold the cause of the poor and the oppressed.

I Samuel 1:21-28

When her husband Elkanah went up with all his family to offer the annual sacrifice to the LORD and to fulfill his vow, Hannah did not go. She said to her husband, “After the boy is weaned, I will take him and present him before the LORD, and he will live there always.”

“Do what seems best to you,” her husband Elkanah told her. “Stay here until you have weaned him; only may the LORD make good his word.” So the woman stayed at home and nursed her son until she had weaned him.

After he was weaned, she took the boy with her, young as he was, along with a three-year-old bull, an ephah of flour and a skin of wine, and brought him to the house of the LORD at Shiloh. When the bull had been sacrificed, they brought the boy to Eli, and she said to him, “Pardon me, my lord. As surely as you live, I am the woman who stood here beside you praying to the LORD. I prayed for this child, and the LORD has granted me what I asked of him. So now I give him to the LORD. For his whole life he will be given over to the LORD.” And he worshiped the LORD there.