Two months ago I was living what I would call a pretty comfortable life. I had a job that paid well, a great house to live in, friends that most could only dream of having, and I was okay with it all. Never did the thought cross my mind that three short weeks later I would be moving five-and-a-half hours west to be a part of an internship that I never in a million years expected to be blessed with.

I have never been more convinced that God has a fantastic sense of humor.

Here I sit, balancing somewhere between reality and what I am sure could only be a dream.

I arrived the evening before my internship with the Red Bus Project started. Although I felt completely unprepared, I felt this excitement that I still can’t fully explain. I don’t think I can fully communicate how AMAZING this team is. These interns are world changers. I’ve never been a part of such a solid team that still has more fun than anyone could describe in words. I’ve laughed harder in the past few weeks with the four other interns and Chris Wheeler than I have in the past few years combined. I pray these relationships only grow stronger over the next few months and will continue for years to come.

The first few weeks in the Show Hope office consisted of processing donations, brainstorming new ideas, shooting promo videos, writing emails, and trying to prepare for a tour that most of us had never experienced. It was a great time to learn where we fit in the team. It was a great preparation for the first week of tour.

On March 5th, we arrived in Asheville, NC at 5am for the first day of the Spring 2013 tour. We had only slept two hours on the overnight trip. We had never set up the bus as a team. But somehow we rallied, set up and opened the bus, and had a fantastic day. I’m still not entirely sure how we pulled it off so well. The day involved a cold start, some dancing, a little bit of limbo, tree climbing, and multiple cornhole competitions. It was a great start to what turned into a challenging but successful first week of tour.

Three days, a monsoon, a mountain trek, a snowfall, amazing volunteers, and a broken-down bus (thanks to Hemphill Brothers for getting us fixed up for next week!) later, we completed our first week of tour. We arrived back in Franklin as a colder, but stronger team.

This brings us to sometime around today. We’re digesting everything that happened last week, tweaking things for the next tour leg, and preparing to hit the road again next Monday. We’re thankful for the week off from tour, but at the same time we’re completely anxious to get back out on the road with the Red Bus Project as we journey to Indiana for a five days.

Please keep our Red Bus team in your prayers. While we adore what we are doing, we are quickly discovering that we aren’t as invincible as we thought. We leave a lot on the road, but we wouldn’t have it any other way.

Follow the Red Bus Project’s journey through Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and our website. We hope to see you on the road!

Upcoming Red Bus Project Tour dates:
3.18 University of Evansville – Evansville, IN
3.21 Taylor University – Upland, IN
3.26 Furman University – Greenville, SC
3.27 Brevard College – Brevard, NC
4.4 Georgia State University – Atlanta, GA
4.9 Lipscomb University – Nashville, TN
4.11 Western Kentucky University – Bowling Green, KY

First comes love, then comes marriage, then comes the baby in the baby carriage.

It’s a cute, old rhyme, but most families know that the journey is never so simple.

Happily married and ready to start a family, Paul and Monika Allen were met with heartache in 2009 when their first child was stillborn. It was a devastating loss that led to a time of deep grieving and prayer. As they mourned, they were reminded of their desire to adopt. Even before they were a couple, both had a desire to adopt a child from a very early age. Paul grew up with siblings who were adopted, and they had spent their entire adult lives working with at-risk children, volunteering with ministries, and dreaming of a large family.

In the fall of 2011, Monika began to feel God urging her to prepare for motherhood. Though confused and unsure, the Allens began preparing for a baby as best as they could.

They started praying for their child, wherever he/she was, with faith that it would be the child that God might have for them to parent. They found a social worker and began saving money and researching grants. They completed a home study and filed paperwork. Adoption seemed like an impossible task, with its mounds of paperwork and bills, but the Allens found solace in setting and reaching the tangible goals, the things that were possible.

As they researched, any organization involved with bringing children into Christian families was on their radar, which is how they first heard of Show Hope. Monika remembers their grant application as straightforward and organized. The couple also took to social media. They began sharing their story on Facebook and through Monika’s blog, and eventually were able to share their story through Show Hope’s “I Heart Adoption” Facebook promotion last fall to help Show Hope raise additional adoption aid funding.

“It was fun helping an organization that had helped us,” Monika said.

People they didn’t even know began to give financially to help bring their child home. They found that friends, family, and even strangers were eager to participate in their journey. With assistance from Show Hope, other grants, and help from friends and family, they were able to finalize the adoption without going into debt.

Paperwork wasn’t all that they did during this preparation period. Monika made it a point to celebrate milestones in their adoption process. Instead of capturing shots of a growing belly, the couple took photos of getting fingerprinted for background checks and when they installed their first car-seat.

Then, in May 2012, about nine months after beginning to prepare for a baby, they received word that a birth mother in Texas has chosen them as parents. Their baby boy was born in July.

“[Through this process,] I learned how generous people are and how many people love adoption. The financial side of adoption seemed impossible — I often wonder if our social worker thought we were a little nuts! But I’m so glad we didn’t wait until all the money was in the bank before we got started,” Monika said. “If we had done that, I wouldn’t have my beautiful son right now.”

The few months since bringing baby Cole home have been a whirlwind for the Allens. As new parents, they’re adjusting to late-night feedings, lack of sleep, and juggling schedules. And as newly adoptive parents, they’re still processing the miracle that took place early last year, in their own hearts and in Cole’s adoption.

“Overall, the experience deepened our hope, our trust, and our love,” Monika said. “Both in God and for each other. It feels very vulnerable to put yourself out there, hoping that someone will choose you as a worthy parent.”

Trust and love, two fruits the Allens have gleaned from their adoption process. Each step along the way has been taken cautiously but faithfully, and the reward has been great.

“Ever since we brought our son home, my heart and soul have felt more alive than ever before,” Monika said. “I love being a mom and my husband loves being a dad. The deepest cry of our hearts has been heard and answered in the most wonderful way possible. Not a day has gone by where we haven’t thanked God for the gift of our son.”

To celebrate our 10 year Anniversary, Steven Curtis Chapman is taking you “Inside Show Hope!” Meet our staff, learn fun facts about the Chapmans and our ministry, and celebrate with us! We’ll be releasing a new episode of “Inside Show Hope” every two weeks, so check back often for new videos. Enjoy!

Episode 1 of this brand new series introduces you to Jaimee Marks, our Sponsorship Liaison.

If you have been following the Show Hope blog, chances are good that you recognize Judah. He was made “famous” by a post a few years ago called “MBHOH has Bieber Fever” which is one of the most-viewed posts in Show Hope blog history (if you haven’t already seen it, check it out here). Besides being a great singer, Judah is an incredibly bright little boy with a truly unforgettable personality. There are few who come through the doors of Maria’s Big House of Hope without leaving with some endearing story or memory of Judah.

Judah loves coming to preschool and becomes quite sad on days when we don’t have class. As you can see in the video at the top of this post, he has learned nearly all of the letters (and thinks “Hui Li,” who you may remember as Jessica, is the Queen. She left quite a regal impression on the MBHOH class before she joined her family!). Judah also enjoys identifying letters he knows in environmental print (books, words on clothing, letters on billboards, etc).

As his preschool teacher, I continue to be blown away by the way that Judah has learned to overcome and compensate for many physical limitations without losing an ounce of life in the process. He is not afraid of trying new activities and loves engaging new people with his charming personality. In fact, just a few months back, we took some of the older preschoolers to McDonald’s for lunch. As we sat and ate, Judah greeted every woman that walked by our table with “Ni Hao, Ayi!” (“Hello Auntie”). It caught most of them off-guard until they saw Judah’s beaming smile looking back at them.

Recently, I met another little boy, James, whose perseverance reminded me so much of Judah. We hope that our blog readers will grow to love James just as much as Judah!! Like Judah, James’ physical limitations do not stop him from enjoying life and trying new things. He has learned to stand up on his own and walk, despite difficulty in bending his knees. James (pictured below) thrives in pre-school and loves to learn and do crafts in class. James was originally admitted to our Show Hope Special Care Center in Jiaozuo, but was moved to the Beijing’s Hope Healing Home for more acute care. He is a sweet little guy and captures the heart of anyone who goes into his nursery. We hope that both of these remarkable boys will one day know the love of a forever family!

Help make care for children like Judah and James possible through Show Hope Special Care Centers. Become a Show Hope sponsor >

We hope you enjoy meeting Sabrina through this month’s Sponsorship Update Video! Sabrina is one of several children under care at a Show Hope Special Care Centers who has been diagnosed with biliary atresia, a condition which affects the liver. Each month, you are making a life-changing impact for hundred of children like Sabrina through your Show Hope sponsorship.

To extend the impact of your sponsorship, we invite you to do three things:
1) Share this video on your social networks: Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, etc. We encourage you to include a sentence or two on what you love most about being a sponsor.
2) Sign up for our monthly prayer updates. www.showhope.org/pray
3) Invited a friend to join you at Show Hope’s 10 year Anniversary Celebration this Memorial Day! www.showhope.org/10yr

On Valentine’s Day, many people have love, chocolate, flowers, and hearts on their minds. Here at Maria’s Big House of Hope, our preschoolers took a short break from the Chinese New Year festivities to celebrate Valentine’s Day. We learned a song about “Haley Heart” as we painted hearts, did Valentine-themed alphabet activities, made Valentine cards, and decorated heart-shaped cookies (and then ate them, of course!).

Hearts are something we talk about and have on our minds very often at MBHOH and our other care centers, not just on Valentine’s Day. It’s not the heart-shape that may initially come to mind this time of year, but rather the physical, beating, life-giving heart. This week, we were not only celebrating Valentine’s Day, but we were also particularly mindful of children all around the world living with Congenital Heart Disease (CHD).

Many children with CHD live in our very own home… children such as Fahlin, Maria Claire, Nathalie, and Dante, and many others whose photos appear at the bottom of this post. Today and every day, we celebrate that these children are given opportunities to live and thrive. We pray for healing to come to their physical hearts, but also for their emotional hearts to be tended to and molded as they are loved and cared for.

To conclude Congenital Heart Disease Awareness Week, we are trying to raise the funds to provide a surgery for a child with CHD. Give a gift from the heart!

Show Hope is turning 10 this year! Since we awarded our first adoption aid grant in 2003, we have been humbled and blown away by all that God has done through your prayers, support, and financial gifts!

On Memorial Day Weekend (May 25-26, 2013), Steven Curtis and Mary Beth Chapman will host Show Hope’s 10 Year Celebration. Come meet the Show Hope staff at our Open House, enjoy a family picnic with food trucks and inflatables, and finish the weekend with our 10 year anniversary concert, featuring Mark Hall of Casting Crowns! It’s going to be an incredible weekend of fellowship and hope! Learn more and purchase tickets >

But there is something you can do NOW to help us celebrate as well. Help us spread the word about our ten year anniversary. Complete the steps below, and you’ll be entered to win a $50 gift card to the Nashville restaurant of your choice and a Show Hope t-shirt to enjoy when you visit us in May for our anniversary festivities!

Here’s how you can win:
1) Take a photo of yourself with “10” somewhere in the photo! Get creative…craft a 10 out of kitchen utensils, make a human 10 with some of your friends, hire a sky-writer…you name it.
2) Post your photo to Show Hope’s Facebook wall and include the message “Happy 10th Anniversary, Show Hope! www.showhope.org/10yr”
3) Alternately, you may post to Twitter or Instagram. Be sure to mention us (@ShowHope) and tag your photo #SH10yr

The winner will be randomly chosen and announced on March 1, so get your photo in today!

Thank you for your continued support of our mission and ministry as we celebrate our first ten years of growing the movement to care for orphans and look forward to the next ten years of transforming lives!

In most parts of the world, the New Year holiday has given way to Valentine’s Day and will turn to St. Patrick’s Day later this week. New Year’s resolutions have run their short course and we are back into the habits of everyday life.

That’s in most parts of the world….But here in China, the excitement of the Chinese New Year (also know as the Spring Festival) is just beginning! This Sunday, February 10th we celebrated the Chinese New Year with a very literal “bang” as amateur firework enthusiasts like myself lit up the sky with questionably-produced pyrotechnics to ring in the Year of the Snake.

Chinese New Year is the longest and most important traditional holiday for this country of 1 billion plus residents (and many other Asian countries). In the coming weeks, Chinese people will travel home to be with family, enjoy copious amounts of dumplings, and light off more fireworks than New York’s Fourth of July extravaganza.

Here at Maria’s Big House of Hope, we also joined in the excitement and celebrations. In preschool, we made dragon masks and painted pictures of fireworks to hang up around our home. Maria Claire, Weston, Judah, and Hope among other children smiled and laughed as they colored, painted, and glittered (is that a word?) each piece.

We also had the privilege of traveling to our other Special Care Centers this week – Zhengzhou, Xinyang, and Jiaozuo – to prepare for the New Year with some of the other kids you have recently met through the blog, like Dante and his friend Debby.

May your Joy be full this Chinese New Year – Chun Jia Kuai Le!

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Did your family celebrate Chinese New Year? Leave us a comment with your tips and ideas for teaching kids about this holiday!

Become a sponsor and help make more moments like this possible for waiting children at Show Hope Special Care Centers!
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As we were beginning the process of our third adoption in 2011, we pondered what special needs were “off the table,” so to speak. These would be “needs” we were convinced we couldn’t handle in a child.

Tops on the list: congenital heart disease.

Years earlier, we traveled in China to bring home our son, James, who was born with a cleft lip and palate. At that time in 2008 that was more than we thought we could (or really wanted) to handle. But truth be told, it was imminently doable (in God’s strength). Yet given that, we believed we had stretched as far as we were willing or able to stretch. And we were firmly convinced of that until we saw Hudson’s picture and heard his story in 2011.

Then in a way that we cannot explain everything changed. It had to be God.

Hudson came home in May 2012.

Unless you saw Hudson at our neighborhood pool and saw the uneven scar running the length of his chest or you were around when he gets winded and noticed a blueness under his finger nails, you wouldn’t have a clue that he was born with only one ventricle and already had two heart surgeries while waiting for us in China.

Since he came home, Hudson has had a battery of medical tests, including a heart catheterization, at our local children’s hospital. Doctors have given him the green light for his third heart surgery, the Fontan procedure, in April.

We’re not looking forward to it, in the way one would anticipate a beach vacation, but we are eager for Hudson’s health to get this next surgery complete. Our pediatrician told us Hudson will be a “new boy” after this surgery. We can hardly imagine that; he is already a little dynamo unto himself!

It’s all much bigger than us. If we focus too much on Hudson’s medical condition, we are easily overwhelmed. But then, all of our children–bio and adopted–have issues that they must contend with that can be overwhelming if you spend all your time focusing on them.

God has used each of our children to teach us it is wise to take one day at a time, although our nature is to lie awake at night and fret over things that are not in our control (Matthew 6:34). It really all comes down to trust.

For us now it is simply doing what comes next. For each test or surgery that Hudson has, there is a different (specialized) cardiologist. They are working together to give him the best care available. We know this and are confident he would not be on track for this level of care if he were still in an orphanage.

In the same way that not every one is called to adopt (but God expects us all to be involved), it’s unreasonable to expect every family to choose to grow by adopting a CHD child. Yet on this side of Hudson’s adoption, we couldn’t imagine it any other way. It is an option well worth considering.

Hudson is an intelligent, brave little boy. I can’t imagine any other child as my youngest son. His physical heart might not be whole but his heart for life is as full as it can be. Through Hudson, we know the fullness of God’s love for us just a little bit more. We are blessed.

-Dwayne and Marla Hastings

You can help a child like Hudson receive life-saving surgeries and medical care. Click here to help fund a heart surgery!

Have you adopted a child with CHD? Leave us a comment with your best advice for other families considering bringing home a child with CHD.

Today, we invite you to meet Dante. As we mark the beginning of Congenital Heart Disease (CHD) Awareness Week (February 7-14), we wanted to highlight a child with a heart condition who is currently under care at a Show Hope Special Care Center. Dante was diagnosed with irreparable CHD when we was admitted to our care as an infant, and was not expected not to live more than three years. We are thrilled to celebrate Dante’s fourth birthday this weekend!

Dante attends pre-school five days a week at the orphanage, and his teacher says he is a very good student. His nurse, Erma, shares that Dante has a great vocabulary and is active in spite of his heart condition. In fact, he recently won a class award for running! He also loves to assist the nurses and Dr. Steve as they do rounds and check on the other children in his care center.

Mikey and Rebecca first met Dante while they visited Jiaozuo at the end of last year. Rebecca shares, “Dante quickly caught my attention because he immediately smiled and waved as we glanced into his nursery. His smile was a familiar one, reminding me of one of my sweet Maria’s Big House of Hope preschool kids who also has CHD. During our latest visit, we had the opportunity to spend a bit of time with Dante in his preschool class, which he attends daily with his friend, Debbie.

“That day, the kids were learning how to use scissors. As a teacher, my initial reaction is to want to see what they are doing and join in, so I picked up some paper and together we started cutting. Each time his scissors would snip the paper apart, a huge grin spread across Dante’s face. Then, he picked up the next piece for me to hold while he cut. We shared lots of laughs as we did this until there were no large pieces left.”

Please join us in prayer for waiting children with CHD, like Dante, to remain healthy enough to join forever families and receive life-saving medical care. Thank you to the sponsors and donors who make his care possible! We encourage you to leave a birthday greeting for Dante in the comments section below!