By Desi Stephens-
The newest child at our home came to us from the government orphanage where FCI’s mission teams serve. Maria was placed there two days after her birth when her 19-year-old mother abandoned her.
Special Mother Ismelda Sumale is caring for Maria, who was born Apr. 14.
“Before coming to Dorie’s Promise she didn’t smile a lot,” Ismelda says. “Now she is always smiling. She really enjoys her bottle and I love spending time with her. She is so cute.”
Unfortunately, it isn’t shocking for the court system to refer babies to us who have been abandoned at the hospital. It happens often in Guatemala City.
Before a Guatemalan family can adopt Maria, certain legal steps must occur. For a child to make the adoption registry, officials must first investigate to determine if extended family members want to go through the legal process to obtain custody.
If no family expresses an interest in adoption, the child can be moved to “favorable” adoption status.
Currently, only domestic adoptions are taking place in Guatemala.
While we wait to see what happens, there are two major ways that supporters can pray for Maria.
One is for healing, since she is sick—pray that God would watch over her and provide her with good health. The other is that individuals would sponsor her so that all her needs would be met, from medicine to food.
It only costs $35 a month to sponsor a child. Our children benefit greatly from donors’ generosity.
With Maria joining us recently, our home has 38 children, just six shy of capacity. As a private home, we feel the impact of international adoptions being closed. Our prayer is that we will be able to expand our home to continue serving the children of Guatemala.
In addition to expansion, we have three major projects that we are trying to accomplish:
1) The first is getting our four homes well established. Pray that new donors would join our mission.
2) We need about $5,000 for improvements to our backyard.
3) We are hoping to raise funds to buy a new van. Our children are growing and we need more reliable transportation for them, as well as our mission teams. A new van will cost $25,000.
As we like to say here, no gift is too small and all gifts are appreciated.
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