One of the most neglected ministries of Christian households is adoption. We struggle to understand why this might be the case. After all, adoption is at the heart of the Gospel, of the Christian faith. Without it, none could be saved. God is the infinite adoptive parent. The Trinity is the infinite adoptive family. Yet, for some reason, the Christian community is not all that geared up to adopt children--we, who, ourselves, are all adopted. God is the One who takes up the solitary and puts them in families (Psalm 68: 5,6). God is the One whose eye is upon the orphan and the widow. But His people? Not so much.
When Christians adopt orphans they are walking in, and after, the steps of God Himself. We thus rejoice with the Dyer family whose adoption of Jendah has finally been recognised by the New Zealand government.
A young Cambodian girl adopted by a Kiwi couple has qualified for New Zealand citizenship after a five-year battle. Jendah Dyer was last week adopted under New Zealand law by Grahame and Kathryn Dyer, allowing them to apply for a passport for the 8-year-old. "We got the adoption through last Thursday in the Tauranga Family Court," Mrs Dyer told the Herald. "So happy! Jendah is now able to apply for her NZ passport and we are free to come and go as a whole family!"When bureaucrats make rules and regulations, there are always exceptions which must break the rules or the rules become an impersonal tyranny. That is why all such rules, if properly designed, have a mechanism for exceptions to be recognised and justified. As happened in this case--albeit it far too slowly.
Mr and Mrs Dyer adopted Jendah in Cambodia in 2011 but were then told by the Department of Internal Affairs that she would not be granted citizenship because it did not recognise adoption processes carried out under Cambodian law before 2012. Immigration NZ also deemed Jendah, who has a developmental delay disorder, to be too sick to be issued a visa to enter New Zealand. [NZ Herald]
However, the agency agreed to grant her a nine-month visitor visa last July after a directive from Associate Immigration Minister Nikki Kaye following a Herald report on their plight. "I am sure that having our story in the Herald was a big part of us getting into NZ last July," said Mrs Dyer.Top marks to Nikki Kaye.
Mr and Mrs Dyer, originally from Paeroa, have been living and working in Cambodia as aid workers for a Christian organisation, Asian Outreach New Zealand, since 2004. They have two other children, aged 12 and 13, and have been struggling to remain together as a family unit over the past five years because of Jendah's situation.
But that aside, the Christian community ought to be informally and formally organising itself to carry out this kind of ministry of compassion and grace all the time. Things have become more favourable than they were twenty years ago. Government policy is far more positive and accommodating about international adoptions than it once was. The Child, Youth and Family website says, "We're here to help" several times in the section devoted to international adoptions. But far more could be done. So pressure, appeals, submissions, arguments, etc. need to continue at official levels. But Christians also need to get smarter and organised and more dedicated to this ministry of grace and mercy.
One of the finest books on this subject is Russell Moore's Adopted For Life: The Priority of Adoption for Christian Families and Churches (Wheaton, Ill.: Crossway Books, 2009), which we highly recommend. It deals with both the author's personal experience of international adoption, and the biblical theology and teaching calling us to this ministry.
And to encourage us all, here is the very happy Dyer family--complete, at last.
1 comment:
The Dyer's story is one certainly to be celebrated.
Your advocacy for, "the Christian community ought to be informally and formally organising itself to carry out this kind of ministry of compassion and grace all the time" is spot on because many families who would like to adopt, and who would be ideal families faith for these kids, cannot on their own afford to as international adoption is a very expensive exercise. This is one way the Christian community could really work together.
This is happening overseas through ministries such as Loving Arms but not here in NZ as you say.
One reason I can think that this doesn't happen is that it is costly in so many other ways. We know many families who have fostered or adopted and the issues are huge and life long. This is the same as it can be with one's own kids. But, that's the point, they are one's own (biologically speaking) and there is a sense of greater control and fewer surprises - it is perceived (not necessarily true) to be less risky to raise one's "own".
As parents of two foster children we would dearly loved to have formally adopted them but it is frowned upon in NZ by the authorities. In fact in all the official training we have completed to be eligible within the NZ state system as carers it has never been a focus. Our experience has certainly been one where the mere thought is discouraged. Our impression of this is because the parents who have lost the right to custody of their children and would legally have to consent to the step o adoption (even though the children were removed without their consent), the state isn't about to take the courageous step of removing their right to guardianship even if they have taken away their right to custody. Too bold a step and the advocates for parental rights would be right in there defending the parents', who have lost custody to parental abuse or neglect, to retain their vestige of control over the child's life via their preserved guardianship rights as the child's birth parents.
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