protecting children | Minivans Are Hot

When Lee and I first moved to St. Louis, the land in which I spent most of my formative years, we immediately set out to develop new relationships as a married couple. I did not want to only think of St. Louis as my childhood home, though it felt that way since I spent six years in Texas learning the culture and laws of that strange land.

Big Hair. Big Accents. Big Belt Buckles. Big Hearts.

One of the first families we met was the Krosley family and we fell in love with them from the start. They were fun, giving, kind and one life step ahead of us. They had three young kids, we had a baby. We looked up to the Krosley’s in every sense.

We worked closely with the Krosley’s to develop a new ministry in our church geared toward young married couples and in our time with them we learned of their heart for adoption. We prayed with them as they waited to adopt from China and we rejoiced when God answered their prayer in a mighty way with their fourth child – a little boy they named Andrew.

In the eight years that we’ve known the Krosley’s, we’ve watched their children grow. Their two oldest are young adults now, both impacting the world in different ways. Their sixteen year old daughter, Lauren, was so moved by her brother’s adoption that she longed to return to China and work in an orphanage. And this summer, her dream will come true when she and her mom, Pam, go to Choayang, China with Visiting Orphans to minister to the little ones so desperately in need of love.

The most exciting part about this trip is that we can all be involved in helping Lauren and her team raise money to build a new playground for the children in the orphanage. Most of the children these students will be minstering to will likely grow up in their orphanage and a new playground would be such a delight for them.

Would you consider donating to Lauren’s team?

Here are the details. Click this link and under Gift Designation put June 22-July 3. Under the tab Designate to a Specific Team Member, put Lauren Krosley.

Thanks everyone! I would love to see Lauren and her team raise all the funds they need to build the orphans of Choayang a place to dream, play and be kids.

Switching gears…

A few years ago, Lee asked me to not watch Oprah anymore. “Why?” you ask. Well I’ll tell you. In general, I have never been a big Oprah watcher mainly because I just don’t have time to watch TV at 4:00 in the afternoon. But every so often I was intrigued by her previews and tuned in.

In the span of a couple of months I watched several Oprah specials on the plight of orphans worldwide, specifically orphan girls. I heard horror story after horror story of the sex trafficking that these young ones were subjected to and I would dial Lee up in tears, bouncing an infant Sloan on my shoulder.

“We need to adopt a little girl or five from Romania,” I sobbed once. “You should hear what happens to those girls!” Another time I called him blubbering about the abandoned girls in Africa and begged him to consider adopting a few children from that country…in addition to the five from Romania and three or four from Russia. It was at that point that Lee gently suggested I quit watching shows that upset me so much.

So I did. But the stories didn’t leave. I’m horrified at what little girls around the world are facing. It’s nauseating and heart wrenching and it makes me physically ill when I dwell on it. It horrifies me that any child would go through being sold into sexual slavery, but I was especially disheartened to find out about it happening in this very country.

I’m posting a video below that I saw on Shaun Groves’ site last week. It’s long, so if you don’t have time to watch it right now, that’s fine, but I strongly urge you to watch it later when you’ve got 30 minutes. It’s extremely well done and is gut wrenching, both visually and in subject matter.

This is a short film from Whitstone Motion Pictures called The Candy Shop. It was made to specifically highlight the issue of sex trafficking here in the States. You can read more about it here.