Our goal is to end the orphan crisis.

What does that mean?

To prevent another orphan from ever becoming one and to reunite or find families for every orphan that does not have one now.

Its a great goal, and with 163,000,000 orphans in the world and many other depressing statistics that you can read about here, it is a daunting goal to be sure.

But as with most things, progress is slow and happens one person, one child, one life at a time.

But as an organization (and a family) that serves orphanages and partners people with orphans through sponsorship and service opportunities, it would seem that our main goal is to put ourselves out of a job…

that’s right…and very, very hard. Not because we are worried about unemployment, but because it can be hard to say goodbye to those we have come to care so much for.

In the last four months, we have seen the children’s home that we captain, Casa Hogar San Jose, go from fourteen kids to eight. It can be difficult to say goodbye, especially under difficult circumstances where you were not able to reassure yourself that the parents were ready to properly care for their kids.

But in the end, we are not their parents, and their sponsors in the states are not their parents, and if you have ever read the book Castaway Kid, you know that there is no level of care that compares with living with family, even in poverty.

It is right, and it is hard.

So as we continue to work ourselves out of a job (Lord-willing in our lifetime) we are learning how to say goodbye to those who were never really ours, but God placed in our lives for a period. As a good friend has coined, “Our God is a great story weaver” and I am so thankful that he allowed us to be woven into a small part the stories of these six precious little ones.

As we move forward, we are planning to do our best to stay connected with the kids and families in the cases that we can, to make sure that the family never has to be separated again. Along with this, the wonderful caretakers who run Casa Hogar San Jose have agreed to allow Back2Back (Anna and I) to be involved in the interview process before kids are accepted into the home in the hopes of preventing the separation from happening to begin with, or knowing if we can help in any way to make the institutional stay as short as possible. We obviously want to mitigate as much damage as possible from living in an institutional environment. You can read all about the dangers of institutional care here.

Please pray with us that God continues to provide and care for Jorge, Ana, Alexa, Bety, Jeny, and Mari as they live with their parents now.

Thank you for following along and partnering with us in our work to restore every family and child that God loves so dearly, even when it is hard.