At the end of 2009, my wife and I adopted our daughter, Almaz, from Ethiopia.  What an amazing and wonderful experience it was!  Meeting and bringing home our, then, 7 month old daughter was met with so many emotions from love and joy to grief and heartache.  We had taken many courses, read many books and been to various Tapestry events and small groups.  Our wait had been full of discussions about parenting, attachment and adoption.  I’d like to think that we were as prepared as anyone could be for adopting a child, but there was one thing we were not prepared for.  There was one thing that all the books and seminars could not have fully prepared us for, and which took us completely by surprise.

After leaving Ethiopia, we returned to the U.S. with a sense of reverse culture shock and a longing for Ethiopia.  In the short time we were there, I had fallen in love with the country of our daughter’s birth.  The people, geography, sights and even the smells stayed with me long after our return.  I found myself wondering what the weather was like there and what the people I had met were doing; I missed the food.  While I had experienced similar feelings about other places I have visited, the feelings had always quickly subsided.  But, in the months that followed our bringing Almaz home from Ethiopia, these feelings did not subside.  They grew stronger and more intense.  With each passing day, I found myself thinking more about Ethiopia. Whether I was driving, working, watching a movie or listening to music, my mind went there.  I began to worry that I was becoming more than a bit obsessed.

One night, my wife and I were having a dinner conversation that quickly turned to Ethiopia.  We both expressed a deep feeling of needing to do something, a restlessness that would not subside and could not be ignored.  We considered that God might be calling us to adopt another child, but we knew that was not it.  We even talked about whether we felt like we needed to move to Ethiopia, but that was not it either.  We searched our hearts, then prayed and talked some more.  What was it about Ethiopia that would not leave us?  What was it that kept us yearning and restless?  Days and weeks of prayer and searching lead us to our answer.  What we could not get out of our minds and hearts was the stark reality of the orphan crisis, a crisis that no amount of American families adopting could adequately address.  This same issue that, in part, led us to our daughter, was now compelling us to ask “what’s next?”

While in Ethiopia, we visited several government run orphanages.  The realities of what we saw echoed the realities of what those children lived each and every day, and it was truly heartbreaking. Words fail to fully describe our experience, and yet I was left to deal with an even more challenging reality for me personally.  As beautiful and wonderful as adoption can be, it simply will not address the extent of the orphan crisis in Ethiopia, or the rest of the world for that matter.  Orphans eat, sleep and play in an orphanage.  They go to bed and wake up every morning in an orphanage.  Tens of thousands will grow up knowing only the orphanage as their home.  They may or may not get an education.  They will almost certainly never learn skills that can make them employable or prepare them for life.  And at some point they will “age out” of the system and be forced to leave the place they know as home.  With little or no skills, education or resources, the future for these orphans is very bleak. This is unacceptable, and yet it brought me back to the same question that I still needed to answer – “what’s next?”

I’ll admit that at first this issue seemed insurmountable.  After all, what can one adoptive father living in Texas possibly do to make an impact in a country half a world away with over five million orphans and counting?  Then, one night, driving home from the veterinary clinic where I work I got the answer to my question – “what’s next?”  The answer was a farm – a farm that could teach orphans a skill, give them ownership in a business and provide them with the means to earn an income.  The idea of not giving financial aid directly, but helping the orphans to become self-sufficient really made sense to me, and as I have come to learn it also makes sense to many who are experts in helping poor and disadvantaged people in underdeveloped countries.  So with my answer to “what’s next,” Carmen and I began to formulate a plan which would begin with providing housing, livestock, land and agricultural education to orphans interested in farming.  In return, once the farm is successful, they will agree to employ other orphans aging out of the orphanage system.  They will be able teach and inspire others who come behind them – and just maybe God will use this small contribution to deeply impact the lives of orphans.

I know that my small contribution will not “solve” the orphan crisis, but it is something – something that I believe will inspire, encourage and bring hope and tangible help.  And in the end I have not been called to “solve” the orphan crisis.  I’ve simply been called to answer the question “what’s next?”, and then be willing to move forward as God leads.

Jim Clawson and his wife Carmen serve on the Tapestry leadership team.

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