ADOPTION

I am attaching a newsletter I sent in 2011 about this subject. This is a drama about a real person who is living out of the African worldview box. The pastor in the drama is the one I was writing about in the letter who I interviewed. The next seminar I had the drama written and ready for his approval. He showed up with his wife. I was very moved to meet this extraordinary couple.

All of the other issues mentioned in this drama were brought out in the seminar the drama letter describes. The girl who was raised and educated by one family and then taken and married off by her biological family is a real case situation. The misuse of orphans of relatives is the norm. When subsidies enter in, it gets complicated.

One situation that was brought to my attention was a pastor in Zambia had a boy attending his Sunday school who was an orphan. The family who took the boy was receiving a subsidy in the form of food staples. They were using the corn and sugar to make local beer and had an informal business going. The pastor asked me to contact an NGO that was prepared to take him in and educate him. The adults who had him told the boy that this NGO would take and mistreat him. They filled him with all kind of stories to the point where he refused to go. They also persuaded him to stop going to church because they didn’t want to lose their source of income. The pastor was sure this child was already using alcohol.