As I hop out of the white van, I pretend not to see her. I’ve been here before; I know her name and she knows mine. It’s a game we play.

So I look about, calling for her, “Sharon?  Sharon?” Of course I see her. She’s standing 10 feet in front of me, grinning, looking at me, and playing our game. The others gather around her, saying, “This one! This one! This is Sharon!” I look left, I look right; I turn around looking for her, still pretending. Behind me I hear her laugh, and then she runs around to plant herself directly in front of me, hands on her hips. “Here I am!” She said. So begins my sixth trip to Kenya and my third visit to the Seed of Hope orphanage in Kitale.

Of all the memories that I collect in Kenya, Sharon’s is one that stays with me. I feel for her hurt and her struggles. And to make the story more tragic, one afternoon, I found out that she is HIV positive.

The social worker told me her story of abandonment, and how she and her siblings were left to fend for themselves in filth and hunger. How the calamity of HIV, the only thing given to her by her mother, was beginning to tear apart her little body. I listened to this tale of loneliness and desperation, and it darkened my vision. It is true that this child is now much better off in the care of Buckner. Seed of Hope clothes her and provides the medicine she needs. She looks healthy and strong. She’s in school and has friends. Still her story remains fixed in place, unchangeable. How does she hide it? Where does her laughter and joy come from?

It wasn’t until we were leaving, as the tears rolled down her face, that I began to understand the other side of her story. She’s scared, I think, and I feel certain she longs for a mother and father. She’s lonely, and uncertain. She wonders: will we come back? Do we love her? Do we care?

Yes, I care. I care more than I can express. I think of her every day. Like others before me, I think of these children and ask God, “Why is this so?” By grace, my faith gives me just enough strength to allow the question to hang unanswered.

For me, perhaps the answer isn’t as important as the fact I care enough to ask—I really don’t know. What I do know is that in the end, having found few answers, I can only fall back on my faith in God and on my knowledge of who God is. I know that as much as I love this girl and desire good things for her, God loves her infinitely, unimaginably more. So I step out in faith and prayer, trusting our Heavenly Father to tend to His wounded daughter. I pray that if I can somehow be an instrument for this task, then please, Lord, use me, tell me what to do.

For now, I do what I can. For me, this means that I go back. I go until I just can’t go anymore. I’ll show her that because God cares. I care. I’ll show her that because God loves her, I love her. I’ll show her that because she matters to God, she matters to me. As long as God’s plans make room for me to go to Kenya, I’ll hop out of that white van, look around, and call her name again and again.

“Sharon?”

Dave Atkins has made six trips to Kenya since December 2005. He has visited the Buckner Seed of Hope Orphanage three times.

By Susan Serrano

Families will have an opportunity to celebrate Thanksgiving in a unique way this year by giving thanks for their blessings from God and sharing those gifts with others on Dillon International’s Sharing Heart Mission Trip, slated for November 20-27.

Participants will journey to South Korea and engage in a variety of service projects to bless the women, children and senior citizens served by the programs of Eastern Social Welfare Society (ESWS), Dillon’s sister agency in Seoul. Examples of planned activities include:

•  Delivering lunch to homeless senior citizens and teaching English to after-school children served by the Sodaemun Community Center
• Doing laundry at Anyang Child Welfare Center, a temporary care program for children
• Making meals for pregnant women at Esther’s Home and Sharon’s Home, the shelters for unwed mothers
• Teaching American songs to the preschoolers at Jacob’s Home, an orphanage for children age  6 years and under
• Feeding disabled children at the Eastern Rehabilitation Institute, a facility for abandoned children
• Holding infants at the Eastern Babies’ Home

“Although Dillon International’s mission trips to Korea have historically involved adoptive families of children from South Korea, who were seeking a way to give back to their children’s birth country, the Sharing Heart Mission Trip is open to anyone interested in serving the Korean people while learning more about the country’s culture, history and traditions,” said Dukkyung Um, leader of the mission trip and director of Dillon International’s Korea adoption program.

Past participants have reported that their experiences on the mission trip changed their outlook on life. “They feel a strong bond to the country and people of South Korea and to God,” Um explained.

“The mission trip is such a worthwhile project,” said Kim Lively, an adoptive mother who participated in an earlier service trip to Korea. “Eastern Social Welfare Society really reaches into the community they serve.”

After witnessing the needs of the children firsthand, Lively’s family has sponsored children under the care of ESWS through Dillon International’s child sponsorship program there.

“I was moved by the spirit and energy that these children (at the Anyang facility) possessed in spite of their uncertain fate,” she recalled. “They had such bright smiles. They probably gave us more joy than we gave them.”

The Sharing Heart Mission Trip will be mainly focused on service work; however, there will also be opportunities for sightseeing and cultural experiences. Korean adoptees and their families may also request to have access to information related to their adoption. For more information or to request a tour brochure or packet, families may visit the Dillon website or email tours@dillonadopt.com.

Assistant Director of Apartment Life Jimmy Gunn, Resident Director Chris Holloway, sophomores Philip Coleman and Andrew Moore helped the DBU campus collect more than $2,157 for orphans in three months through spare change.

By Jenny Pope
Buckner International

DALLAS – What started as a goal to raise $25 a month in a boys’ dormitory at Dallas Baptist University led to a campus-wide orphan care fundraiser calling for change through the collection of spare change.

Resident Director Chris Holloway, 23, has been on several mission trips with Buckner International, a global nonprofit ministry that helps orphans, vulnerable children and families. As part of the organization’s Voice Council in 2009, he wanted to inspire his dorm to collect just $25 a month to help orphans where he had served.

“I got a five gallon water jug and put a banner on it, it was nothing fancy,” Holloway recalled. He asked resident assistants for help to get the word out among the students. When the first month ended, they had collected $571.68.

It wasn’t long before the rest of the campus’ 1500 students living in dorms and apartments became involved, said Jimmy Gunn, assistant director of apartment life. “We had our maintenance guys go door to door, walking around to the apartments asking for spare change. They saw it as a service to go to them.”

Resident director Chris Holloway initiated the 'Change for Change' project at DBU.

Competition between the dorms and apartments fueled the project, and after three months they had raised more than $2,157 to benefit international orphans through Buckner.

“As we competed, it was the orphans who won,” Holloway said.

Sophomore Phillip Coleman from Longview, Texas said the change project was a “really simple way to get involved. I don’t carry a change purse or anything, and change can be annoying to keep on you. We kept a Gatorade bottle in our room for loose change, and at the end of the month, we’d dump all the change in the jug.”

“It was nice to results,” he continued. “Chris would put up a flyer at the end of the month to show us our success. Our motto was always, ‘Every penny counts.’”

Students found creative ways to get involved, Holloway said. One student would play his guitar and put his case out in front of him to collect “tips,” which he would in turn give to the project.

Holloway said he was overwhelmed at the way students responded to the fundraiser.

“Their hearts have been incredible. Some gave $20 bills. We don’t who they are because they don’t want us to know. It’s for the glory of the Lord.”

Students are DBU are still collecting Change for Change during the spring semester. Holloway hopes the project will continue for many years.

We’re all a piece of the quilt

A year ago last spring, my daughter Jenny asked me to go with her to Guatemala on the mother-daughter mission trip. She wanted me to see first-hand the reason she is so passionate about her work with Buckner. Of course, I had read her articles, heard her stories, and seen her photographs, but I knew deep inside my heart that I wanted to share these life-changing experiences with her.

Upon arrival at the hotel in Guatemala, we met the other mothers and daughters from across the United States, combined all the supplies, personal areas of expertise and God-given talents. Little did we know the depth of the emotions we would share the following days – a roller coaster ride from the highest to the lowest moments.

Our first stop was an orphanage run by the government. We were instructed to wear masks and to not hold the children for too long. We began playing with the children, blew bubbles, bounced balls, drew pictures with sidewalk chalk, held the babies and hugged the toddlers. The time was filled with lots of activity and love, but before long it was time to say good-bye. The children cried when we left and so did we. As we loaded the van, there was no chatter among us – it was perfectly quiet. Our hearts were troubled, and many were wondering how we could possibly make a difference. These children had so little and needed so much. How was God planning to use us?

The next location was a community child-care center. We presented the story of Esther with the help of our wonderful interpreters, learned a Bible verse, helped the children decorate crowns with jewels and stickers, made bracelets of beads and crosses, and had a recreational time of parachuting, beach balls and jump rope. Everyone was so thrilled with the responsiveness of the children and teachers.

While the girls were jumping rope, I realized they only knew how to jump as a group and not with an individual rope. Two of the girls wanted to learn how to jump rope all by themselves. It had been a few years since I had jumped rope, but this was my opportunity to teach these girls how to do it with their new individual jump ropes. I carefully demonstrated the technique, and one of the girls quickly began jumping. I am not sure who was more thrilled – that precious child or me! Perhaps by now her friend has also mastered the skill. After all, I now know there are others who will follow.

With each opportunity and location we visited, whether it was a neighborhood community center, a government orphanage, or a Buckner home, each of us would return to the van with stories of the children and young people and share our observations and experiences. Every mother and every daughter would bond with at least one child, as if God was choosing a special one for us, and us for them.

Buckner has an incredible network of workers and volunteers who will continue to do God’s work and spread hope and love wherever it is needed. Any dollars you contribute are well spent. Once I could get past the depth of the poverty and the lack of resources and education available to the poorest of the poor in Guatemala, I realized I was there to make a difference in the life of at least one or two children each day, just as the other mothers and daughters did along beside me.

Others will follow in my footsteps – perhaps it is now your turn. I am only one piece of the quilt, and we need to keep adding pieces to this quilt of hope and love – doing His work, sharing His word, and loving His children.  “…My hope comes from Him.”

Kay Hartgraves is from Abilene, Texas and traveled on the mother-daughter mission trip with Buckner in July 2009.

Truth in pictures

Sometimes truth comes out in pictures. I’ve always said that I have a hard time remembering things without a photograph. If I didn’t capture it physically – or make a mental photograph in my head – then it’s possible even my life’s greatest moments will flee from my cluttered cerebral. I guess that’s the consequence of growing up with a camera in my hand.

Last summer, I had the privilege of leading a mission trip of mothers and daughters to Guatemala with Buckner. And for the first time, my own mother would come with me to see the ministry I’ve given my heart to for the past five years.

I was excited to share this experience with my mom, but I’d be lying if I told you the whole trip was filled with fuzzy moments. It was stressful at times to organize a group of strangers and deal with the unpredictable mayhem of a foreign culture in a language I can’t understand. But a year later, when I look back at my photographs, I find my memories to be quite profound.

I have a favorite picture from our trip. It was a rainy day at the Remar Orphanage outside Guatemala City. We were scheduled to spend time with girls ages 7-12 and to provide them with ice cream sundaes. But the inclement weather left many of the orphanage’s 500+ children with nothing to do but stand outside the gym where we played, looking longingly inside at our games and ice cream. We invited some of them in, but quickly became overwhelmed by a pack of surly teenage girls.

As I tried to explain (through a translator) that we didn’t have enough for everyone there, my mother asked me to come and take a picture of her playing with a little girl in a pink dress. They were tucked away in the corner of the gym, tossing a beach ball back and forth to one another. They were laughing and smiling, communicating without words. My mother said they had been tossing the ball for a very long time. “She just came up to me and asked me to play with her,” my mom told me. I quickly snapped their picture, obliging my mother’s request, and returned to my role as leader in the elevating chaos.

I didn’t pay much attention at the time, but when I look back at that picture I am struck by the irony of traveling with my mother to serve girls without one. When I see the picture of my mom with this little girl and think of how this child chose my mother that day, I can’t help but feel thankful to God for choosing my mother for me.

And He didn’t give me just any mother, but a mom who has always been there for me. A mom who would drop everything to help me if I asked. A mom who would throw a beach ball back and forth with me for hours, or days even, if I wanted her to. Sharing my mom with this motherless child for 20 minutes – a child who was so eager for my own mother’s love and attention – convicted me of the 28 years I’ve taken her for granted.

And just as I have taken for granted God’s blessing of a wonderful mother and father on earth, I tend to take his ultimate gift for granted to – that while we were still sinners, he died for us. And he will return for us one day. “I will not abandon you as orphans. I will come to you. Soon the world will no longer see me, but you will see me. Since I live, you also will live.” John 14:18-19

Pictures may help me remember things  from my past, but I’m most thankful for the photos  – like this one of my mom – which help me grasp truth for the future.

Jenny Pope is from Richardson, Texas and is the associate director of public relations for Buckner.

To learn more about the mother-daughter mission trip with Buckner, click here.

To help support Buckner’s crisis relief work in Haiti, please click here.
To collect humanitarian aid for Haiti, click here for a list of needed items.

“One of our biggest needs is for hygiene kits,” said Matt Asato, Buckner director of humanitarian aid.

Complete hygiene kits include the following items:
· Hand towel
· Wash cloth
· Toothpaste (4.6 oz or larger)
· Toothbrush (in original package)
· Bar of soap (in original package)
· Comb
· Wet wipes
· Shampoo
· Bandages (travel size or larger)
· Tissues – 2 travel pack sizes
· Feminine hygiene products (18 or more per pack)

To collect and send a kit, fill a two-gallon sized Ziploc bag with the items listed above and mail or drop it off at the Buckner Center for Humanitarian Aid, located at 5405 Shoe Drive, Mesquite, Texas 75149. Or to schedule a drop off, please call 214-328-7463.

Other items being collected include new clothing, shoes, socks, tents, blankets, baby food, and new medical supplies. Click here to download a complete list.

Four shipping containers are being provided by GAiN (Global Aid Network), and Buckner is filling them for distribution within the next couple of weeks. Buckner is also coordinating the distribution of medical supplies and hygiene kits within the week, Asato said.

Aid will be sent to support Gladys Thomas’s Hope Hospital, which is receiving many casualties from the quakes, as well as the children living in the Children’s Village orphanage.

Dillon International, Buckner’s international adoption affiliate, has worked with Thomas for 25 years and places children from her orphanage into adoptive families in the United States.

To give financially, donors may call the Buckner Foundation at 214-758-8050 or click here to give online.

More stories about Haiti
You can help ship aid to Haitian earthquake victims
Buckner, Dillon International Respond to Haiti Crisis

By Analiz G. Schremmer

WACO, Texas — Sugar and spice and Russian adoption—twice.

Sarah and Natalie, ages 6 and 7, became part of the Bull family in April 2009, but already their English is perfect.They giggle and tickle each other and play with dolls and Hello Kitty as much as any other little girl. And their new mom, Melinda Bull, said they were always happy girls.

Natalie and Sarah have only been living in the United States with their new parents for less than a year, but already their English is perfect.

 “One thing that I really liked was that the girls were happy in the orphanage,” Melinda said. “They are just happier now that they have a mommy and daddy.

“When they got here, they were very disciplined. They brushed their own teeth and picked up their clothes. They chose their own outfits and dressed themselves in the morning.”

 Now they’re a little more spoiled.

 “Before we came here, we had to eat whatever was on our plates even if we didn’t like it,” Natalie said. “Now we get to choose.”

Natalie added that at the orphanage they had daily chores and didn’t have their own sets of clothes.

 “You pulled out whatever it was that came out of the laundry,” she said.

And when the Bulls went to pick them up at the orphanage, they had to bring some new clothes for the girls because whatever they were wearing belonged to the orphanage and they needed to give it back.  

“I guess it just took them some time to get used to us,” said Frank Bull, the girls’ father.

The family has a video of the day they met their little daughters. The girls had short brown hair and shy eyes that looked at the floor. When Frank, their new father, put his hand on one of their backs, the child was completley unresponsive.

Frank Bull said he and his wife, Melinda, felt called to serve the Russian people.

Frank and Melinda stuck with Buckner after government expectations changed and Buckner was forced to go through the accreditation again. So the adoption process, which typically would take a couple of years, turned into a four-year wait.

“We felt like we were supposed to stay with Buckner through all of this,” Frank said. “Now it’s so clear that God wanted us to work through Buckner and have these very kids. We’re so glad we did.”

Irina Shytova, Buckner case manager for Russia said that it typically takes 6-9 months to adopt a child who is older than 3 years. For a child who is 3 or younger, it takes 9-16 months.

“The Bull family got caught up in our accreditation delay, unfortunately, which lasted more than two years,” Shytova said. “Now with our non-expiring accreditation, there will be no long delays like the Bulls experienced.”

Buckner placed 11 Russian children in families in 2009 and has been placing children from Russia since 1995. To learn more about the Russian adoption process, visit www.beafamily.org or www.dillonadopt.com.

On Saturday I saw poverty. They didn’t warn us. 

Saturday morning after a much needed deep sleep after a busy day of travel, we woke up and joined the rest of the group for breakfast. We then started sorting all of the supplies and bags.

We went out to lunch at a place called Rustica. Live music and a colorful buffet of Peruvian food. I felt like a local. Not really. From there we split the group in two and headed out to our different locations.

It was so nice to be able to see the city in the daytime. Our bus was really old and wasn’t the smoothest ride ever, which made it a lot of fun. Every now and then I caught a glimpse of some very broken down houses scattering a brown hillside. I leaned over to Courtney, pointed and said, “Looks like the slums are on the hillside over there.” Next thing I know we’re driving up the hillside right into the middle of that same community.

I’ve never seen anything like this before except in movies and documentaries.

It was poverty; real, dirty, sandy, smelly poverty. I heard one of our translators mention that it gets worse the higher up the hill you go. We kept driving…up. All of the sudden the smell of waste (human or animal waste I didn’t know) filled the bus. It was bad enough to make you gag. Then the bus stopped and one of our trip leaders rose and said, “Ok guys this is our stop.” Can you believe that?! They stopped at the exact place it smelled the worst! The nerve. Then it hit me, we were probably in one of the worst parts of this community and it is right where Buen Pastor Community Center (our final destination) is located. It was a bit of a reality check.

We got off the bus, walked over to the front entrance and our leader began telling us what we were going to do. I found myself not listening to her, but rather I was focused on the joyful singing coming from inside the community center. I had kind of a Grinch moment when he hears the present-less Whos singing on Christmas morning. I looked around at their broken down homes and realized that they don’t need “things” to be joyful. They’re going to sing loud regardless.

We walked in and all eyes turned on us. The music director got their attention and they started singing again. They were singing worship songs. I caught words like “Jesus,” “Dios,” and “Gloria.” As we stood there and listened to the 200+ kids sing to God in the middle of their slum I realized how big God really is. I look at Courtney, standing four people over from me, and she looked back at me with tears in her eyes. I realized I was crying too.

I thanked God for letting me see this beautiful sight and hear this beautiful sound. I thanked God for these children who were setting an amazing example for me by lifting high the name of the Lord in the midst of their broken situation. I call it broken; they call it life. I have so much to learn…

Danny and his wife Courtney are from Tampa, Fla. and traveled with Buckner on the Joy FM Shoes for Orphan Souls mission trip to Peru in December.

By Rachael Brown

A few blocks away from the Buckner Office in Guatemala City is a house with a plastic grass yard, a living room with tile floors and bean bag chairs, and four bedrooms filled with thirteen tiny beds. If you’ve been to Guatemala on a Buckner trip, you probably know the place. It’s the Buckner Baby Home, and inside it lives thirteen beautiful children whose lives have been changed by Buckner and the teams of people who have come through Guatemala and fallen in love with the children there.   

The ages of the children at the Baby Home range from infancy to ten years old. Of those who visit them, different groups and different people are attracted to different ages.  Some prefer the littlest babies. Some are drawn to the toddlers. For my husband and me, it’s the “big kids.” 

Our connection to these older children really begins with the story of our friends, John and Emily Wiggins. To make a long, arduous and (as of yet) unfinished story short, several years ago John and Emily not only fell in love with these kids, but also felt God calling them to adopt one of the older boys. Perhaps you’ve heard of or even met their son, Juan Pablo? When you visit the Baby Home, J.P. and his fellow “big kid” friends – Jose, Estuardo and Daniel – are almost always waiting to jump on you and play the moment you walk in the door. Or, if those names don’t ring a bell, maybe you’ll recognize their alter egos: Spiderman, Superman, Batman and Buzz Lightyear. 

On one of their many trips, John and Emily decided to give these boys the gift of childhood make-believe and imagination packaged in the form of superhero Halloween costumes. My very first memory of these boys involves a trip to McDonalds for dinner and play. “Our boys” stood out from the other kids not because of their special needs or because they traveled with a group of non-Spanish-speaking white Americans, but because they were dressed as superheroes. Spiderman, Batman, Buzz Lightyear and Superman spent the evening eating French fries, climbing up the slide and showing off their best superhero moves.

That trip to McDonalds was a mere 18 months ago. Now, when my husband dresses up as Spidey and jumps over the wall with his can of silly string the boys are excited, but they’re old enough to know that he’s not really Spiderman. They know it’s my husband, not because of his voice or his build, but because they recognize (of all things) the soles of his tennis shoes. At the same time, while they’re not too old to show off their superhero moves, their superhero costumes hang, perhaps permanently, in the closet all four boys share.

Fantasies and costumes aren’t the only things these not-so-little boys have outgrown. In many ways, they’ve outgrown their own home. These boys were never meant to remain there permanently. They belong in homes with families and mommies and daddies. What’s more, at ages 6, 8, and 9, these boys want just that: a mom and dad. I hear this desire in their voices when they tell us that they want to come home with us. I see this longing in the tears that pour down their cheeks when we leave. 

My stomach literally aches when I think that one of these days I will visit Guatemala and I won’t see the superheroes waving at me when we pull up to the gate of the baby home.  But, at the same time, I praise the Lord because their absence will mean that Buckner has had success in finding them foster or forever families. Although I will miss them more than I dare say, I thank God that He placed these children in Buckner’s loving care and that He blessed me by letting me know and love the littlest superheroes of Guatemala City. 

Please join me, Buckner, and the boys as we ask God to use His super power to provide families for these special boys in Guatemala. 

Rachael Brown is from Terre Haute, Indiana.

A total of 121 Shoes for Orphan Soulks were distributed to Ukrainian orphans by An Orphan's Bright Star, a non-profit that serves orphans in the Ukraine.

By Analiz G. Schremmer

Earlier this year, Buckner International partnered with An Orphan’s Bright Star to send 121 Shoes for Orphan Souls to children and teens in the Green Forest Internat orphanage in Kharkiv, Ukraine. The children received them as Easter presents.

“Many parcels arrived from the United States containing beautiful new shoes,” said Green Forest Internat Director Vasily Nikolaevich Goga. “Our children were dreaming of new shoes from early spring, but they had none. Suddenly, this dream was made reality when shoes came to us from you. Our children could not believe it at first.

“These are all ours to choose?” they asked. “They found so much happiness in trying on and wearing these beautiful shoes. Our children and staff are happy that they have such friends as you.”

Rachel Garton, director of Shoes for Orphan Souls said she was glad to see the pictures of the orphan children receiving their new shoes.
“This is what we are all about,” Garton said. “Supplying shoes brings happiness to the orphans and fulfills a basic need for orphan children. The shoes are vital to their health and wellbeing and we were glad to partner with An Orphan’s Bright Star to make life better for these children.”

An Orphan’s Bright is a non-profit focuses on serving orphans in the Ukraine. They took care of shipping the Buckner shoes to orphans in the country.

Help Buckner International put shoes on the feet of orphans. Donate a pair of shoes now.