Video to watch

My mother sent me a link to a You Tube video that touched her. It was the Contemporary Christian Music artists Leeland and Brandon Heath on a mission trip to Cambodia. The video and pictures are powerful, but the song is what is so strong! The song talks about taking Jesus into broken homes and such.   Cambodia, a small country ravaged by decades of war.  A country of about 14 million people.  I just read a UNICEF report that estimated in 2004 there were 553,000 orphans living in Cambodia.  Yep, I did type half a million orphaned children in that one tiny country alone!!!!!!!!  Inconceivable!  This really breaks my heart and I'll be transparent and tell you why.  You see, the end of August 2000, we had been in the adoption process for about 7 months.  We were losing it.  It was soooo hard to sit and wait and not know when we would get a referral call.  I knew there were kids out there waiting for homes, and here we sat on a waiting list.  It seemed crazy.  So, we began looking at some waiting child sites.  We found a darling 3 months old girl waiting for a family---in Cambodia.  We were so naive and thought we could just make a few changes on our paperwork and Voila, jump over to Cambodia instead of Korea right?  Fortunately, the director of Dillon International was very forthright with me about the challenges of changing countries.  Then, the agency who was working with this little girl informed me that Cambodia had just closed to adoptions, but they expected them to open in just a few months and we could go get the baby then.  Thankfully the Holy Spirit nudged us to stay with Korea and Dillon Int.  That was 9 years ago and Cambodia still hasn't reopened to adoptions.  I think about that dark skinned, chubby baby in the picture we had.  Her name on the file was "Rath Theary."  Many of the Cambodian children were named 2 names.  The first one was always Rath.  Do you know what the name Rath means in Cambodia?   
                        UNWANTED
                       
Can you  imagine growing up with the name Unwanted???  That precious angel baby girl is the same age as my beautiful daughter Abigail.  Do you know what the name Abigail means?  Her father rejoices! 
Both little girls began life without families somewhere in Asia.  One little girl becomes the beloved only daughter whose name means Her Father Rejoices.  One little girl is most likely still an orphan, spending her days in an institution, full of other children whose names mean Unwanted!
Pray for the unwanted.  Give to the unwanted.  Bring in the unwanted.  Go to the unwanted.  Spread the word about the unwanted!