GET INVOLVED

Hope for 100 provides many opportunities for those wanting to get involved with the cause of adoption and foster care such as:

Orphan Care Ministry Opportunities
If you read the Bible from beginning to end, you will notice three groups of people coming up over and over. In fact, they appear so many times, you have to have to wonder if God mentions them purposely to make sure they are at the top of our priority list.

These groups of individuals are the fatherless (orphans), widows, and aliens (or strangers).  It is inescapable that these three people groups matter deeply to God.

Because God commands His people to care for the fatherless, widows and orphans, Hope For 100 has an emphasis on Orphan Care Ministry. There is a year round campaign with "Shoes for Orphan Souls" with the goal of supplying 1,000 pairs of shoes by December 2008 and 2,000 pairs by October 2009. Shoes for Orphan Souls began in 1995 by radio station KCBI in Dallas, Texas. In 1999, Buckner International assumed leadership of the program. To date, more than 1.5 million pairs of new shoes have been distributed to at-risk children in the USA and to orphans in 55 countries. Hope For 100 and Green Acres Baptist Church are pleased to join Shoes for Orphans Souls in serving the fatherless.

Mission trips to visit orphanages and care for orphans are planned in 2009. In addition, a trip for approximately 12 Russian orphans is planned for the summer of 2009 and will be sponsored by Bright Futures. The orphans will stay in homes of prospective adoptive families with the hope that many of the families will choose to permanent adopt the children they host. For more details about any of the Orphan Care Ministry Opportunities, contact Todd Martin at: martintdm@suddenlink.net.

Foster Care
In the United States today, there are an estimated 500,000 children in foster care. Approximately 27% of these children are classified as available to be adopted. Each year, some 25,000 children "age out" of the system without anyone claiming them as part of their family. Children in foster care vary in age and are in the system for reasons such as abuse, neglect and abandonment. Many of them have suffered greatly and need someone to love and care for them. Usually the adoption of a child from the U.S. foster care system takes place through a state’s human services department.

To learn more about how Hope For 100 is involved with Foster Care, contact Woody Edmiston at: woodye@mail.gabc.org.

Adoption
While many people have considered adoption, they often hold back from actively pursuing it due to false information. Some common misconceptions about adoption include:

1. Adoption costs too much.
2. Fear that a child's birth parents will get a child back after the adoption.
3. Emotional issues of the adopted child that I won't know how to handle.
4. Inability to love an adopted child as a biological child.

Hope For 100 will help prospective adoptive parents walk through all the various adoption issues including answers to difficult questions, help with selecting an agency or attorney, assistance with adoption expenses, and post-adoption ministry for the adoptive family. An excellent resource for those considering adoption is Natalie Nichols Gillespie’s handbook "Successful Adoption: A Guide for Christian Families". This book includes the personal stories of Steven Curtis Chapman, Stormie Omartian, Karen Kingsbury, Nicole C. Mullen, Senator Sam Brownback and many others.