When we got home from Jamaica in July 2011, we joked about how fun it would be to live Jamaica - maybe even own a hotel or bed and breakfast on the ocean. It was a dream that we talked about just about every day. We talked about it so often that our family started to accept it as reality.
About a year later, I woke up early one July morning to a vision and said to Bruce, “I think we are going to start a children’s home or a foster care center or something....in Jamaica.” He looked at me for a minute like I had two heads, and then said., “Um, okay.”
Now, let me clarify that I know nothing whatsoever about adoption, foster care, or even much about Jamaica. We did get off the beaten path on our trip - our vacation and second honeymoon - but not really very far. We never went to an orphanage. Nor have I ever been to an orphanage. However, this vision was pretty clear to me. But, I wondered, is there even a need for adoptive parents or foster families in Jamaica? So I went where everyone goes when there is a question: Google. And there, on the front page of the Jamaica Observer for July 7, 2012 the headline read, “We need more foster families”. The government was desperately trying to place some 6,000 children! Hmmm....well, I guess maybe there is a need. In doing a little more research over the next few days we discovered that there are some 75,000 children that are in need of care. Wow.
But really? Is this supposed to be our job? We talked about it more and more over the next couple of weeks and months. We were thinking that maybe when 11 year old Katie, our youngest, is graduated....from college. Maybe then. We’ll just dream about it and carefully plan it out. We’ll get out of debt first. We’ll save up some money. We’ll prepare our beach bodies for Jamaica. We’ll do more travel first. Then perhaps we could start a small bed and breakfast someplace on the Caribbean Ocean. And then, when we are well established, we will think about helping out with some orphanage. We can send support in each month - don’t they call that ‘adopting’ a child? Yes, that's just what we'll do.
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