Why we are doing all this...

among the many personal reasons...there is also the biblical mandate to care for orphans. While this can be accomplished in many people's lives by providing care and donations to orphanages and orphan-care ministries, some of us are called to a deeper level of care - taking the orphan into our homes and lives and thus making her no longer an orphan. Because they need more than just better staffed and supplied orphanages...they need mommies and daddies.

"Adopting children, regarding and treating them as one’s own children, means recognizing that the relationship between parents and children is not measured only by genetic standards. Procreative love is first and foremost a gift of self. There is a form of ‘procreation’ which occurs through acceptance, concern and devotion. The resulting relationship is so intimate and enduring that it is in no way inferior to one based on a biological connection. When this is also juridically protected, as it is in adoption, in a family united by the stable bond of marriage, it assures the child that peaceful atmosphere and that paternal and maternal love which he needs for his full human development.” - John Paul II, Letter to Adoptive Families (Sept 5, 2000)