Steven Curtis, Mary Beth, and I will be in St. Louis, MO tomorrow (Wednesday, October 12) with JOY FM radio as they host their second radiothon fundraiser for Show Hope.  JOY FM is the Christian radio station in the St. Louis area, and they are long-time supporters of Steven and Show Hope. Tune in to JOY FM during the morning drive, mid-day, and afternoon drive as the on-air talent and the Chapmans talk to listeners about the ministry and impact of Show Hope. They will especially highlight our work with orphans with special needs in China at Maria’s Big House of Hope.

JOY FM Listeners will be asked to call the station, where 25 volunteers will be taking calls, to make a donation to support Show Hope’s work at MBHOH.  The goal for the day is to raise more than $100,000! Please pray for Show Hope as we reach out to the Christian radio listeners in St. Louis with a little music, weather, traffic…and an opportunity to engage in orphan care!

If you are interested in listening or donating online, visit JOY FM’s by clicking here >

I think James 1:27 scares people. For those of us engaged in orphan care this verse is the one we “hang our hat on,” and for obvious reasons. Through this verse, God directs us as believers to care for widows and orphans. I have commented many times that this verse is wonderfully vague as it doesn’t tell us as Christians exactly what to do. Just as the parables given as examples by Jesus throughout the New Testament, this verse is a bit open-ended and leaves interpretation up to the reader. What exactly does “care” mean for me? What does “care” mean for you? The reality is it could and does mean entirely different things to different people. Caring for orphans doesn’t always mean adopting an orphan. We are not all called to adopt, as many people reading the verse may fear!

I recently attended a fundraiser event for friends Ron and Leigh Ann Taylor who are adopting. This was a silent auction and concert event at a local church here in the Nashville area. I was excited to see so many people “caring” for orphans at that event, all in their own unique and personal way. The Taylor family, who is bringing their sweet Jenni home from China, was at the center of the event, but there were countless other friends, family and church members coming alongside of them as well. These friends and family were helping the Taylors raise funds to pay for some of the adoption costs as well as to encourage them in the long journey. These other “carers” handled everything from the logistics of the event, to securing items for the silent auction, to providing snacks and drinks for the attendees.

My encouragement for potential adoptive parents is that you have friends and family members who would be willing to come alongside your family to care in a similar way. You just need to be bold and ask for help! I also want to encourage those of you who are not called to adopt. Rest in the fact that you are participating in the command God has given us all in James 1:27 to care for orphans as you assist others in their efforts to adopt. While caring for orphans is most definitely the heart of God, I encourage each of you to seek His will on what that means to you and your family.

If you’re looking for a way to come alongside even more adoptive families, we invite you to become a Show Hope sponsor. For $35 a month, your gift will provide adoption assistance to help orphans come into their forever families and orphan care through special care centers like Maria’s Big House of Hope. Click here to learn more about sponsorship >

We are all getting excited about the Feb 5th kick-off for The Movement! In preparation, we have high school students all over the office this week. They are in the conference room, the work room, the storage room and the break room! Students are in every available space in the Show Hope office…and it’s amazing! They are laughing, listening to music, and having a blast…but mostly they are working to help orphans. These are amazing sights and sounds in our normally calm offices.

These students are here helping Chris, Caleb, Jesse and Nick get ready for The Movement Kick-off event here in Nashville this weekend. They are making displays, splicing wire for lighting decorations, and planning activities for the hundreds of local high school students who will attend.

I think most office workers would be a little overwhelmed with all of this activity in their work space, especially if the activity was from a large number of highly active teenagers. However, the Show Hope staff is excited to have all of these young people giving their time to help orphans around the world. Our hope is to find more students across the country that will have the same passion and heart as these amazing teens to create Movement Clubs in their high schools and help with other events.

The youth of today are the leaders of tomorrow. That statement has been made for generations, not always from a positive standpoint, but this week I’m witnessing youth who will lead a future orphan movement in our country…and couldn’t be more excited about it! If you aren’t near Nashville this weekend, you can show support for this event by sending in a picture of you advertising The Movement (see details here)! But if you’re anywhere near Nashville, come out to Liberty Hall at the Factory in Franklin, doors open at 6pm. You don’t want to miss what these students are doing to care for orphans!

SCC, MBC and Skip

This past Wednesday, Mary Beth, Steven Curtis, Jim Houser (Steven and Mary Beth’s very capable manager) and I (Charley Redmond) had the privilege to go to Ingram distribution located in the Middle Tennessee area for a Choosing to See book signing. Mary Beth was invited by Skip Prichard, the President & CEO of Ingram. Skip is a big fan of Steven’s, and really loved Mary Beth’s book. Steven sang and Mary Beth spoke to 50 or more of the Ingram employees and signed books for them all.

Ingram is the largest book distributor in the world, so there’s a good chance that many of you have purchased a book in the past that has been printed, warehoused and distributed to your favorite retailer by this amazing company. Ingram distributes books into all sorts of retailers all over America including many of your favorite Christian retailers.

This quick trip to Ingram was perfectly timed, coming just on the heels of the announcement that Choosing to See entered the New York Times Bestseller List at #16 on the Nonfiction list! We are thrilled with this news, as the royalties from Mary Beth’s book come to Show Hope and help us to care for orphans around the world.

Sunday, August 29 was a special day for Show Hope and a special day for the children at Christ Community Church in Franklin (just outside Nashville). It was “Show Hope Day” for the children’s ministry. Christ Community is Steven and Mary Beth’s home church (mine too) and Steven, Mary Beth, and Emily shared with more than 300 children and leaders about all that God is doing through Show Hope in the world of orphan care and adoption.

MBC and Shaoey reading "Shaoey and Dot"

Steven led worship and sang his new song “Meant to Be” which will be on the VeggieTales Christmas DVD, Emily gave a wonderful talk about the needs of orphans around the world and how all of us can help, and Mary Beth read from the book, Shaoey and Dot. Afterward, the children were all given a craft project that incorporated a picture of one of the children currently being cared for at Maria’s Big House of Hope. With the project, they were asked to list five things they could pray for the kids at MBHOH. It was a fun morning of ministry, engaging children and families of our home church on behalf of the world’s waiting orphans.

I returned this week from leading a small team of donors on a trip to Maria’s Big House of Hope, and wanted to give an update on my time there. The team consisted of two amazing families (the Ashburns from Nashville and the Barnards from the Tulsa area) who love the children at MBHOH and have seen firsthand how this wonderful facility and staff cares for the children. We had a wonderful time enjoying the culture and people of this very unique country. We flew into Beijing two weekends ago, did some sightseeing and then went down to Luoyang and MBHOH.

It was fun getting to know the nurses and nannies, and it was especially great to play with the children. These kids are so full of life and are so well loved by the staff. I am proud of the work being done, and am excited about future growth opportunities to help more children in China who have special needs. I was reminded on this trip that it really is a miracle that we are receiving partnership opportunities with the Chinese people. Everything was amazing…except the lamb some of us had for lunch early in the trip!

One thing we did on our trip was to build a deck on the roof of MBHOH. There are five nurses who live at MBHOH, and they each have their own apartment on the floor that they oversee. Their place to “get away” in the evenings is up on the roof. As roofs go, it is nice and safe, but we wanted to really make it a special space for them. Earlier in the week, Mikey (our do-it-all guy on staff at MBHOH), James Barnard, and I went to the local lumber yard to find materials to build a rooftop deck. If you are picturing an indoor lumber yard like Home Depot or Lowes, think again! We went to an alleyway market area where everyone sold building materials of some sort. I love home remodeling, so this was a fun experience for me!

To my surprise, we actually found treated lumber to build the deck.  Then we went to the “tool store”…a 10′ x 10′ store just down the street, to purchase saw blades, tape measures (metric, of course) and a speed square. We found this last tool to be the most necessary, as nothing was actually square! When we got back to MBHOH,  the lumber would not fit on the elevators. Carrying it up 7 flights of stairs while battling the heat and extremely high HUMIDITY was a job in itself. Then, after working into the evening up on the roof, the bad lamb kicked in. Wow…welcome to China!

We stayed up all night on the last evening we were in Luoyang to finish the deck. The nurses are amazing young women who love the children at MBHOH, and I’m excited to give them a place that will make their time a little nicer as they relax, laugh, pray and enjoy cool nights on the roof…I just wish they had warned me about the lamb!!