Needless to say, our event was cancelled that night, as was our meeting with President Bush. But we had forged important friendships during that trip, in particular with Scott Hasenbalg, who would eventually help us create an adoption and orphan care ministry and would become its executive director. We would call it Shaohannah’s Hope.
We officially incorporated Shaohannah’s Hope as a nonprofit 501(c)(3) organization in February 2003. God had given us a burden to inspire and educate believers about the plight of orphans and vulnerable children. If Christians could become advocates for orphans who could not help themselves, we would truly be doing the work of the body of Christ and be a witness for the reality of Jesus’ love in a hurting world.
There are about 140 million orphans in the world today. As we became aware of their needs, we read our Bibles with fresh eyes. We saw all the times that the Bible talks about both orphans and adoptions. In Steven’s music and in the platforms God gave us, we started talking more about them as well.
As Shaohannah’s Hope grew, our mission became clear: to care for orphans by engaging the church and helping Christian families reduce the financial barriers to adoption. We provide Christian couples with financial grants so the overwhelming cost of adoption doesn’t discourage them. Our average grants are about three to four thousand dollars. We believe that we shouldn’t fully fund the entire adoption: we want families to raise funds on their own as well as be supported by their local community of faith.
It doesn’t matter which country the child comes from; we’ve given grants to families who have adopted from forty-five different countries.
Beyond that, we felt called to do something about the care and needs of orphans and vulnerable children who might not be adoptable. We believe that even those children who may not survive for very long are still little treasures whom God has put in our world to reveal something unique about Himself.
We committed to help, however we could, those who could be cared for medically and eventually become adoptable, those who would need long-term medical care and not be adopted, and those who would simply need a place to be held and rocked until they peacefully entered heaven.
We also felt that God had called us to help believers in the U.S. become more aware. If there was ever an issue that followers of Jesus should be all about, it would be caring for orphans in their distress. So we’ve become increasingly involved in mobilizing churches and communities to care for orphans.
The only problem with the ministry was that our name was a little hard to spell properly or to Google. I knew this would be a problem from the start, but God had so clearly given us Shaohannah’s name that we felt strongly we needed to name the ministry after her. Eventually we would change the name to the far simpler Show Hope. And incredibly, as I write this, we’ve given more than 2,500 grants! That’s 2,500 children now home with loving families . . . and that number just keeps on growing.
For more current information about Show Hope, check out our website at www.showhope.org.
Even though I had become passionate about adoption, helping everyone I knew adopt kids from China, Africa, and wherever else, my husband had serious reservations about us adopting again. He felt – understandably – worried about our family’s sanity. Especially mine.
In spite of how much we all loved Shaoey and how God had so clearly worked in her adoption to communicate His love to me, Steven didn’t want me to take on too much. So he told God, “I’m open to adopting again, but I need a burning bush if it’s Your plan for us.”
Before Shaoey, I’d been the holdout and Steven and the kids had all engaged in a prayer conspiracy against me.
Now it was my turn . . . and so the rest of the Chapman family began praying for Steven to get his burning bush. If it was God’s will, of course.
15
I’m Signing,
You’re Signing, We’re All Signing
A person who lives in faith must proceed
on incomplete evidence, trusting in advance
what will only make sense in reverse.
Philip Yancey
One Sunday morning in the fall of 2002, our family was all lined up in a pew at church. Our great friends, Dan and Terri Coley, were at the front of the sanctuary dedicating their new little boy Daniel to God, as well as two of his siblings, Michael and Katie.
During my second trip to China in 2001, I had met Daniel when he was a sickly, tiny infant. Steven and I had met up with Terri Coley’s daughter, Rachel, who was a college junior studying in China that year. We traveled to a Christian foster home about an hour from Beijing where a group of houses had been set up to care for the orphans who somehow found their way to this place.
You could sense the love and care for the children. They were divided by age and special needs. Some were in rooms full of toys, and they were playing with balls and blocks. Some were in high chairs, being fed by nannies. Then there were the tiny babies who had not been there long. I saw a little white crib with a mosquito net streaming from the ceiling to cover it.
Rachel and I walked to the crib and peeked in. A baby boy was lying there. He was so tiny, probably just a few weeks old. He had a cleft lip and palate. It undid me to see him. He was so small, so helpless. He’s just lying there, I thought, waiting. Waiting for someoneto come. A rescuer.
I picked him up and held him close.
Rachel and I decided we should call her mother back in Nashville.
“Terri,” I said, “I don’t know why on earth I thought of you, with all the children you’ve already adopted, but I felt like I just had to call and tell you about this little baby here! I think you may need him in your family!”
Terri laughed for a minute. “Mary Beth,” she said in her matter-of-fact voice, “I already have seven children. Seven is the biblical number of perfection. I don’t need any more children!”
It wasn’t like I knew God’s will for Terri’s life . . . but still, this itty bitty boy touched my heart, and something inside of me knew that, in spite of Terri’s certainty that seven children was enough, this tiny Chinese baby would touch her too.
After we left China, Rachel Coley began taking a bus every weekend to visit with the kids, particularly the little guy with the cleft palate. When Terri came to China to help Rachel move from one city to another after her semester was over, Rachel took her mom to the foster home.
After they left, Terri had tears in her eyes. She kept thinking about the orphans . . . what would happen to them? One of her other daughters, Carrie, was traveling with her. Seeing her mom’s tears, Carrie said, “Why don’t you think about adopting one of them?”
“Oh, Carrie!” Terri said. “I’m too old!”
“Well, let’s think about that,” said Carrie, who was sixteen at the time. “Is it better for an orphan to have an old mom . . . or no mom?”
When Terri got home, she and Dan felt God tugging on their hearts to adopt again. They started their paperwork . . . and within a year, on their twenty-fifth wedding anniversary, baby Daniel – the same little guy Rachel and I had met in the foster home – was placed in their arms. His cleft palate had been repaired in China, but he would still need many more surgeries in Nashville.
It was a tough road. Daniel had recurring infections, hearing loss, eventual speech therapy . . . and several of the Coleys’ other seven children had tough needs and difficulties.
Now, on this Sunday morning, I felt teary as I looked at our friends. Terri and Dan were – and are – my heroes.
They were in the front of the church with Christi, Rachel, Carrie, and Johnson (their biological children), and Josh, Katie, Michael, and baby Daniel (their adopted children, who are, respectively, Caucasian, biracial, African American, and Chinese). (Later they would adopt Anna, who was named by Christi, and who also had a cleft lip and palate and many medical needs.)
We’d walked with Terri and Dan through many struggles. They had adopted Josh at age six out of the state system. He had suffered neglect and abuse, and he�
�d brought hard issues to the Coley family. They had been through so much . . . and now, as I looked at the Coleys up in front of the church, they looked like a picture of God’s family: children from all kinds of backgrounds and all kinds of suffering, joined together by love.
Love isn’t easy. It’s hard. And the Coleys were doing hard, swimming against the current of the brokenness of their children’s past, as well as against the flow of our comfortable culture, which so often encourages the wide, easy road.
I looked down our row and saw my husband, tears streaming down his face, scribbling furiously in the front of his Bible. I didn’t think much about it because he often writes lyrics and other ideas when things are triggered in that creative mind of his.
He must have a song idea, I thought.
After church, as our Land Cruiser pulled out of the parking lot on our way to get some lunch, Steven announced sort of formally that he had something to say. It caught our attention, which was hard because everyone was hungry and talking all at once about where each person wanted to eat.
He cleared his throat.
“I have an announcement,” he said. “This morning when we were on our way to church, if someone had asked me if we were going to adopt, my answer would have been no.”
Everyone groaned.
“But as I was watching the Coleys today,” Steven continued, “God spoke to me so clearly.”
We were afraid to get too excited yet. Maybe Steven was just processing his thoughts, or preaching a second sermon of the day. But we had a little bit of hope. Could this be the burning bush Steven had been praying for?
He handed me his Bible, since he was driving. “I want Mom to read you what I wrote down about this.”
I opened to the page where Steven had been scribbling.
Daniel, Michael Ray, and Katie Coley were baptized this morning at Christ Community Church. As I watched these great friends and faithful servants celebrating their children’s entrance into the covenant and being received into the community of those who stand under the waterfall of God’s grace, God’s Spirit spoke to my heart and said, “Go and do likewise. Somewhere there’s a child that I have plans for to know my love and grace and take his or her place under the waterfall. Will you trust me with the details that you’ve been worried about and walk in faith where I’m leading you and your family?”
Who knows (God does) how this act may be multiplied within our close circle of friends and family, and I will pray and ask for that, but that’s not the point. The point is that there is one life somewhere (probably China) that is or soon will be in need of a family who will introduce him or her to his or her Savior. Today I commit to respond to God’s revelation and give Mary Beth my full support to begin paperwork for another adoption.
Emily, Caleb, and Will started screaming. I started crying. The joyful noise startled an almost-asleep Shaoey, who promptly started crying, as if to say, “Oh no, my throne is going to be captured!”
I was completely excited, completely fearful of the implications, but the wheels were already turning in my madly multitasking brain. In my head, I was half done with all the adoption paperwork, and somehow I was already brewing a plan to get some of our closest friends to adopt again with us so we could all go to China together.
A week later, Steven was reading his Bible and a verse from 1 Thessalonians 2 hit him: “For what is our hope, our joy, or the crown in which we will glory in the presence of our Lord Jesus when He comes? Is it not you? Indeed, you are our glory and joy” (v. 19).
He felt that God was reminding him that when we all stand before Christ in the end, the main thing we’ll have to show for this life will be the spiritual children we’ve been a part of bringing into His kingdom. What a joy, Steven thought, to present our children toChrist as our joy and our crown in His presence!
We had already picked the name “Stevey” for our new daughter-to-be. We knew it meant “crowned one” because “Steven” means the same thing. Who knew God would give us a tiny little girl, who out of all the Chapman children would be a princess in training, a girl who loves sparkly crowns and tiaras? God knew. And as Steven read his Bible that day, he felt like God was showing him, “Here’s your hope (Shaohannah Hope) and your crown of joy (Stevey Joy).”
The next week I wasted no time in ordering various documents, scheduling the home study, and making my way through adoption agency applications and all that comes with the daunting task of assembling a dossier for a China adoption. As I worked on all the papers, I felt for some reason that I should order two of everything: two birth certificates each for Steven and me, two marriage certificates. Later this would be exactly what we needed to add to our family again, quickly. Of course, I didn’t know that then. But God did.
The other crazy thing that was going on inside my “don’t take no for an answer” brain was that, as the unofficial fourth member of the Trinity, I had decided it was God’s will that our great friends Geoff and Jan Moore should adopt again with us. The only small problem was that God had not yet revealed this to Geoff and Jan.
So, sucking Steven into my plot, I asked him to invite them to Loveless Café, our favorite breakfast spot. We ate a dozen or so biscuits with our favorite strawberry jam, eggs, and bacon.
“We kind of need to talk to you guys about something,” Steven said.
I pulled out a giant envelope full of adoption paperwork.
“This might shock you,” I said, smiling, “but we’ve decided to adopt again!”
Of course they weren’t surprised. They had seen us become intoxicated with Shaoey and adoption and orphan care, to the point of helping several friends adopt and even starting Show Hope. They grinned.
“And,” I went on, “we think you want to adopt again too! We would love to have you on this journey with us, so let’s do it together!”
Cue the crickets.
Our friends just sat there looking at us, and then slowly they looked at each other and smiled. Geoff’s grin said a dozen things at once. Things like, “Oh, crap! I knew it! We were already thinking about it! Only Mary Beth could try something like this!”
“Don’t worry,” I said. “It just so happens that when I filled out our preliminary applications, I filled out yours too!” I dramatically pulled out a manila folder full of their preliminary agency applications, with all the correct information filled in.
Jan was teary and thrilled all at once. She and Geoff had talked about adopting again, but all this information was a little sudden for her. Geoff was looking down, shaking his head, and grinning. Steven and I were beside ourselves.
It was a beautiful day, so – since we were all getting a little too emotional for the restaurant – we decided to take our conversation outside to the grassy area in front of our cars.
We talked some more and prayed, and then, after lots of hugs and jumping up and down, I handed them the papers and we quoted one of our favorite movie lines from That Thing You Do: “Okay! I’m signing, you’re signing, we’re all signing!”
As the Chinese proverb says, the journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step. In our case it was about eight thousand miles, but the journey to bring home Ashley Rose Moore and Stevey Joy Chapman began as we laughed and cried and signed our paperwork in front of that little home-cookin’ restaurant.
As our kids at home prepared for our new arrival, the reality of a new sister was setting in with Caleb and Will. Shaoey’s first year with us had been filled with broken sleep and screams from night terrors. So the boys really wanted a low-maintenance, happier sister who would have no problems sleeping through the night, and they decided it would be good to pray fervently for a chilled-out Chinese baby.
Then we began to hear about a weird viral epidemic in China, something called severe acute respiratory syndrome, or SARS. The World Health Organization was picking up reports of an outbreak of deaths from a highly contagious, flu-like virus. The Chinese government wasn’t revealing much, so news reports were pretty vague.
> China is huge, I thought, and it has like two billion people, andthey’re saying that a few hundred have died. How bad can thisSARS thing be?
I was trying to convince myself that this wouldn’t affect Chinese adoptions. But deep in my heart I began to suspect that this could be a problem. I began to pray and hope that we would travel as planned, and to fret that we would not.
Our referral packet arrived from Bethany Christian Services in early March 2003. We were thrilled with Stevey Joy (aka Chen Bi Ru), but her photo looked pretty pitiful. She was tiny – 1.7 kilos (3.7 pounds). She’d been found outside a police station in a cardboard box, carefully wrapped in a man’s suit jacket. Her report went on to read that she had IVs for various things and that the people in the orphanage were concerned about her, even though she was officially listed as “healthy” rather than “special needs.”
Though the orphanage had evidently tried some traditional Chinese medicines to fatten her up, Stevey Joy’s little picture was of a pasty white, sad, tiny girl who desperately needed a mom to come get her. Caleb and Will continued to pray diligently that she’d be a chilled-out kid.
While we waited for word from Bethany about when we could leave for China, I got four visas for Steven and me and Jan and Geoff. All we needed now were our official travel letters from the U.S. government. Meanwhile, the rumblings about SARS were getting louder. The virus was lethal, fast, and extremely contagious.
One evening shortly after receiving our referrals, Steven and I were at the Moores’ home, talking about life and wondering if SARS would affect our travel plans. We joked, dreamed, and reflected back on our journey together. Geoff and Jan had been the first people we told when we were pregnant with our Emily . . . and now here we were, hopefully adding to both our families again. Jan told us how she was going to paint their master bedroom the next day. She wanted to get home projects out of the way before the adoption.
All I kept thinking was that SARS just could not stop our adoption arrangements. I had a plan, and nothing was going to get in my way. But, true to the way He so often seems to deal with me, God wasn’t running the world – or writing my story – according to my plans.
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