Miracles

One of the many miracles that has taken place in our adoption journey is the one to follow.

 In our small church fellowship, the Lord was working in a young woman named Elizabeth to send her on a big adventure way outside anything she had ever done before.

Without knowing that we were adopting, she set out to volunteer for 4 weeks at an orphanage in Africa.

Without knowing that she was traveling to Africa, we made plans to adopt a little boy from Ghana.

 The day or so before she left, we pulled her aside in church and showed her a picture of Hugo, telling her that he was going to be our son. We knew that the chances were a million to one that she would be anywhere near him, and we hadn't really told everyone yet that we were adopting, but, you know, crazier things have happened ....

We told her where (we thought) he was staying, the name of the village as well as the name of the orphanage and asked if she had any choice over where in Africa she was sent. Of course, she was going with her own agenda and we wanted to honor that - but still! If she had any chance to travel to see him, we asked, would she be willing to take some pictures of our family along, just in case?

Elizabeth received her placement - and we were THRILLED beyond words to find out that it was within a day's driving distance from Hugo's orphanage. There was a chance that she just might be able to meet up with him! We sent along some toys, pictures, bubbles, and a stuffed friend - still, just in case.

Shortly after she left for Ghana, we found out that we were mistaken about the location of his orphanage.

It turns out that we were wrong:

It was in the exact same town,

on the exact same street,


a two minute walk away,


as the orphanage where Elizabeth was sent to volunteer.

There are 48.3 MILLION orphans in Africa.

Here is a picture of my friend Liz with our son:


Thank you, Liz, for your sacrifice, your love for orphans, and for taking the time to write your thoughts so soon after you returned from the most amazing trip of your life.

From Liz:

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My time spent in Ghana was the most productive and amazing month of my life.  Life there is very different from what we are accustomed to; it was something I couldn’t imagine up on my own.  Washing clothes in buckets, no internet outside of cafes, no refrigerators, no flushing toilets, and drinking water out of a sachet—those were just some of the major changes I had to get used to.    

Another thing that took me by surprise was that everywhere I went people would yell, “Oburoni, Oburoni,” which means ‘foreigner’ in Twi.  If you want to feel like a celebrity, go to Ghana!   People there do try and overcharge you for taxis and, well, anything else they can because they assume that since you’re white you don’t know what’s going on.  Having natives around to help the first couple days was very helpful; we got accustomed to the prices and were able to negotiate with the Ghanaian people on our own.  I am not the bartering type, so I was very glad that one of my friends at the orphanage would handle all of that for me.  

Yet another thing that took some time to get used to was the weather.  When I first stepped off the plane, a gust of very hot and very humid air came met me.  At 10:45. PM. My first thought was, “If it is this hot at night, how hot will it be during the day?”  Weeks one and two were just a constant heat wave, all day and all night.  There was no breeze, just a still and heavy heat.  June brought on the beginning of the rainy season, and the temperature declined quite a bit.  It rained every two or three days, and usually more than once that day.  This made washing clothes a bit difficult, because they would have to hang outside for a couple of days to actually dry.  And you never know if they will smell damp or not; if they did you would have to rewash them (which I had to do!).

Everyone knows that I like to eat- most of the food was heavy in starch and carbohydrates.  Lots of rice, cassava, yams (but not the orange yams we think of); they were served with a soup.  My favorite food was banku (corn and cassava dough) with groundnut soup. So good!  The second time I visited Hugo, the cook at his orphanage had a huge pot of banku for the kids to eat for dinner!  Meeting this little boy was one of the coolest things I got to do in Ghana, it was amazing how God put us a 2 minute walk away from each other!  Walking down the road to the orphanage I worked at, you could see his orphanage. It was that close.  

Two things struck me about him—how cute and quiet he was!  If you know me, you know just how short I am; he came up a big higher than my knee level.  I asked one of the workers at his orphanage if he spoke and understood English, and she told me that they think he understands it but he doesn’t speak it.  She also said that he doesn’t speak much in general either, so he may be able to I just did not hear his voice!  The third and final time I got to visit him, he showed me a bit of his personality.  When he wanted to show me something, he would pat me and then point in the direction of the object he was looking at.  I would try and guess what he was pointing at and if I guessed wrong he would just keep pointing until I tried everything in that area!  He really seemed to like cars as well, like any 2 year old boy! 

His orphanage was run much differently than the orphanage where I was.  I was so impressed while visiting him, everything about it was nicer.  There was a family atmosphere with the kids and they appeared to value their personal belongings.  In the compound there was a separate building for boys and girls.  Each building was broken down into bedrooms, each bedroom housing ten kids with a care mom/dad in each room.  Also, they separated the kids so that there were younger and older ones in each room, encouraging the older kids to take care of the smaller ones.

Each of the ten kids was given a shelf space, a place where they could put their own personal belongings.  These things may seem very small and insignificant to most people, but I saw what the absence of such things can do.  Lack of adult care and interaction instills an attitude in a child that is centered on them; they need to take care of only their own self—no one else is looking out for them.  Having a space to put their personal belongings encouraged a value for their own possessions, they would take better care of them instead of letting their clothes/shoes get dirty or even simply throwing them somewhere.  A family atmosphere helps children to get along because they are working together and looking out for each other, not simply looking out for their own selves.

So many things were great about his orphanage; but something that was very interesting to me was that they do not cane the children.  Caning, while it seems almost inhumane to most Westerners, is simply a part of the Ghanaian culture (at least it was in the area I was living in).  A thin bamboo shoot is used for caning; the child will hold their hand out to get hit, unless it is a serious punishment which they get hit on the back for. 

I could go on for hours and hours about the smiling people, varying conditions, great fruit, and general atmosphere felt in our little town.  Living in a country like Ghana would be definitely different than visiting it, they don’t know what it is like to put dirty dishes or clothes in a machine, put some soap in it, press a button, and then an hour later have them be clean.  It is just like we don’t know what it is like to have to fetch water from a spigot for washing and drinking, cleaning clothes in a bucket, or using the restroom in a drain on the side of the road.  That lifestyle is normal to them, just as ours is normal to us.  Being there, and then returning to England made me realize just how blessed I am.

While I am even more grateful and appreciative of inside showers, flushing toilets (and toilets that aren’t holes), electricity, internet—even on my phone, great schools, it stretches beyond that.  Knowing that I have a family, one that stretches far beyond simple blood relatives, who loves and takes care of me, holds a greater weight.  Hugo is now is going to be able to have that same feeling that I, and all of you who are reading this know.  A feeling of unconditional love that spreads further than just brothers, sisters, mom, dad, aunts, uncles, cousins, and grandparents.  We belong to a family that reaches countries all over the world, where there are people who I call ‘aunt’ and ‘uncle’ and consider many brothers and sisters.  They mean just as much to me as my actual relatives.  It is amazing what a family we belong to in Jesus.  I am so excited to see what other amazing things God has planned for Hugo.  He loves this little boy so much that he is placing him in the Rummel family where he will be surrounded by sisters and a brother, as well as great parents and grandparents!

We all get to be a part of this amazing journey, and I am just blown away that I got to be there at the very start of it all! Finding words for how excited I am about him coming home to Indiana is difficult, but when I get to see him again I’m sure they will be there!