Loving Hearts Babies Home

Blaise and I have been kicking the idea of adoption around for some time…we both want to have biological children someday in the future, but we both feel pulled to adoption first.  I don’t know why, but it just seems right.

While here in Kampala, I have been very eager to visit an orphanage and just connect with some children who are without parents.  I wanted to feel that pull on my heartstrings and see if after visiting with orphaned children I still felt called to adopt.

I do.

I went with Staci to a beautiful, Ugandan-run orphanage in Bunga this morning.  I knew that it was a good place, as Staci used to volunteer there and I had heard only great things; however, I was still impressed by the home.  It was a fun place, with walls splashed with colors, maps, and Scripture; floors covered with foam alphabet tiles and toys; workers and volunteers with smiles and loving arms; and chubby, smiling babies.  It was not at all a place of sadness…it was a place of hope!

I wasn’t exactly sure what I would do during my visit, but as soon as I arrived I plopped down on the floor and just let children climb all over me.  It was definitely an amazing time, and for the first time, the amount of drool and snot that ended up all over the front of my shirt and scarf did not bother me.  Hmmm…

It’s easy to imagine the lives that these children had before arriving at Loving Hearts…Staci told me stories of babies who have been found in plastic bags, abandoned in homes and out in the elements, and just turned over in the hospitals, left by their mothers.  However, the children that crawled and climbed all over me showed resilience and strength, and I thought of the parents who will be SO incredibly blessed to have these children placed in their arms.  Sure, there were signs of the lives the children once had…lack of language development, gray hair, stunted physical growth.  Yes, it’s tragic, and yes, it breaks my heart to think of the madness of babies being abandoned, but there is hope.  They have been placed in a home in which God is at the very core, and a place in which they are well-fed, loved, and stimulated constantly.  God has already selected families for all eighteen of the children in the home, and that is a beautiful thing! 

Here were some of the precious angels that I met and held today…

This little fussy-pants had been all smiles and playing with my mzungu hair, and then he made this delightful face when I put him down…