Weekend Prayer Requests for Kenya

- First of all, thank you Lord for your incredible love for every child and how you have used so many strangers and friends to protect the future of our children! Please bless the countless people that pulled off the miracle of this week, only half of whom we know personally.

- Please pray that we will successfully obtain the letters from President Bush and the highest levels of the judiciary that all necessary to remove any doubt concerning our legal standing as a couple that has the approval of the US government to adopt.

- For the healing and reconciliation process to reach a point where the IDP’s can return home. For the materials provided by IBS to be a catalyst in this process.

- Strength and provision for the countless widows and low income families in Kenya who carry a disproportionate weight of orphan care, particularly in rural areas. Kenyans are strong people. Our sacrifice pales in comparison to theirs.

- That God would move the hearts of more Kenyans to give permanent families to the 2.4 million Kenyan children without parents. That Kenya will find families for all orphans within the next five years, setting an example not only to Africa but to the rest of the world.

- For more inter-country dialogue about adoption, to build trust about motives for adoption. Suspicion remains a major barrier to children finding a forever family. Many disturbing stories about the West are pervasive—such as that children are killed and their organs harvested, or that they are sold to be domestic servants or worse. And to be fair, historically it hasn’t been that long since apartheid in South Africa or “separate but equal” in the US. So despite the fact that these rumors seem unfathomable to most of us in the US, the suspicions against people of my skin color were not born in a vacuum.

- That HIV can be conquered—it has claimed the lives of the parents of half of Kenya’s 2.4 parentless children.

- That young, economically challenged women save their bodies in anticipation of a permanent relationship, reducing the number of unplanned pregnancies. That those with unplanned pregnancies would be empowered to keep the babies, reducing the number of abandoned kids (also about 1.2 million).

- For Baby M.—that she would find her way out of the orphanage and into her permanent family.

- For J., Sundi’s age mate ; who was taken back to the orphanage by a local family who was undergoing hardship. He is a kind, polite, and fun but sometimes sad boy that is craving a Mom and Dad. Pray that God finds him a family soon.

- That God would use the challenging stuff we’ve been going through lately as a positive catalyst for representing the blessings of adoption, rather than as a discouragement. We don’t want anyone to hear horror stories that scare them away from receiving this blessing if God has put it on their hearts.

- That God would use the church—both in Kenya and abroad—to change the misconception that adoption is only for those who can’t procreate or are older and done having “their own” kids. That we would embrace the implications of Ephesians chapter 1, that we are adopted by God—and that this isn’t a “tier 2” option. That adoption and “old-fashioned” birth would be seen by the church as equal opportunities to receive God’s blessings and expand our families. That this calling for permanent families for the orphan would be the banner of the next generation of the church (I Timothy 4:12)

- Why are you downcast, oh my soul? And why you troubled within me? Put your hope in God, for yet will I praise Him. My saviour and my God!