We all know in our hearts that the children in orphanages are not okay. Governments around the world don't have the funds to take care of the children as they deserve.
What I didn't know was the children with special needs, like Down Syndrome or Cerebral Palsy, are separated from the other orphans at the age of 4-5 and are moved to a mental institution.
That's probably not good, right? But what can we do? Life goes on, or does it?
I found out this weekend, while doing research for a radio interview today, just how bad the mental institution is.
A friend sent me to a video by Ann Curry called The Dark Side of Serbian Mental Institutions. I think that video has changed my life. I thought that after we bring Jade home, we would be done. We did a good thing. Jade will have a great life and Gabriel will have a great sister. I didn't know that Jade would not just have a great life but have any life at all and be saved from a torturous death.
I didn't know that special needs orphans are tied to their beds 24 hours a day and wait to die. I didn't know that they're are children that have been tied to a bed and are now 20 years old having never moved their bodies. How long could a week be, if you were tied to your bed and not able to move, roll over? Imagine the pain! How long could 20 years be of this kind of torture? Imagine being fed only enough to keep from dying!
Now that we know, what can we do? To whom much is given, much is required. Please join me in asking ourselves, What else can we do? There must be something.
To start with, when we are done raising funds to rescue Jade, we will continue to raise funds for the other children on www.ReecesRainbow.org
What if families decided to give up something they don't really need? Maybe soda, maybe they could save the soda money, choose a child on RR and donate monthly for that child so that the family who would like to adopt that child could actually be encouraged knowing they don't have so much to raise because we've helped in advance.
What about cable? Maybe there are families out there who don't really need to cable.
Our family already gave up cable and drinks a long time ago. So what else could we do? Maybe we could take the money we save from not using the clothes dryer and send that to a child on RR. We discovered, when we moved and couldn't hook up our dryer and were forced to hang a rope in the garage, that the dryer was costing $200 a month! That was a shocker. It only takes about 3 minutes to hang the clothes. So 5 loads a week equals a total of 1 hour a month. What 2nd job could anyone find that pays $200 an hour? There you go.
We are compelled to make a difference. We don't know what that looks like today but we have to start somewhere. If we are faithful with little, we will be entrusted with much.
Please join us!
