Choosing to SEE - Mary Beth Chapman [36]
We also felt that God had called us to help believers in the U.S. become more aware. If there was ever an issue that followers of Jesus should be all about, it would be caring for orphans in their distress. So we’ve become increasingly involved in mobilizing churches and communities to care for orphans.
The only problem with the ministry was that our name was a little hard to spell properly or to Google. I knew this would be a problem from the start, but God had so clearly given us Shaohannah’s name that we felt strongly we needed to name the ministry after her. Eventually we would change the name to the far simpler Show Hope. And incredibly, as I write this, we’ve given more than 2,500 grants! That’s 2,500 children now home with loving families . . . and that number just keeps on growing.
For more current information about Show Hope, check out our website at www.showhope.org.
Even though I had become passionate about adoption, helping everyone I knew adopt kids from China, Africa, and wherever else, my husband had serious reservations about us adopting again. He felt – understandably – worried about our family’s sanity. Especially mine.
In spite of how much we all loved Shaoey and how God had so clearly worked in her adoption to communicate His love to me, Steven didn’t want me to take on too much. So he told God, “I’m open to adopting again, but I need a burning bush if it’s Your plan for us.”
Before Shaoey, I’d been the holdout and Steven and the kids had all engaged in a prayer conspiracy against me.
Now it was my turn . . . and so the rest of the Chapman family began praying for Steven to get his burning bush. If it was God’s will, of course.
15
I’m Signing,
You’re Signing, We’re All Signing
A person who lives in faith must proceed
on incomplete evidence, trusting in advance
what will only make sense in reverse.
Philip Yancey
One Sunday morning in the fall of 2002, our family was all lined up in a pew at church. Our great friends, Dan and Terri Coley, were at the front of the sanctuary dedicating their new little boy Daniel to God, as well as two of his siblings, Michael and Katie.
During my second trip to China in 2001, I had met Daniel when he was a sickly, tiny infant. Steven and I had met up with Terri Coley’s daughter, Rachel, who was a college junior studying in China that year. We traveled to a Christian foster home about an hour from Beijing where a group of houses had been set up to care for the orphans who somehow found their way to this place.
You could sense the love and care for the children. They were divided by age and special needs. Some were in rooms full of toys, and they were playing with balls and blocks. Some were in high chairs, being fed by nannies. Then there were the tiny babies who had not been there long. I saw a little white crib with a mosquito net streaming from the ceiling to cover it.
Rachel and I walked to the crib and peeked in. A baby boy was lying there. He was so tiny, probably just a few weeks old. He had a cleft lip and palate. It undid me to see him. He was so small, so helpless. He’s just lying there, I thought, waiting. Waiting for someoneto come. A rescuer.
I picked him up and held him close.
Rachel and I decided we should call her mother back in Nashville.
“Terri,” I said, “I don’t know why on earth I thought of you, with all the children you’ve already adopted, but I felt like I just had to call and tell you about this little baby here! I think you may need him in your family!”
Terri laughed for a minute. “Mary Beth,” she said in her matter-of-fact voice, “I already have seven children. Seven is the biblical number of perfection. I don’t need any more children!”
It wasn’t like I knew God’s will for Terri’s life . . . but still, this itty bitty boy touched my heart, and something inside of me knew that, in spite of Terri’s certainty that seven children was enough, this tiny Chinese baby would touch her too.
After we left China, Rachel Coley began taking a bus every weekend to visit with the kids, particularly the little guy with the