It seems like a gut-wrenching idea: Host an impovershied orphan from a destitute country for a few months, then send him or her back to her homeland.
But Project 143 is hoping it will be a step toward finding families for hard to place children.
Internationally as well as domestically, people tend to want to adopt infants. What happens to the orphans in Eastern Europe, Asia, or other parts of the world who are older, with some tough years behind them and an uncertain future ahead?
Project 143 pairs Americans who care about adoption but are not currently good candidates with a child who needs a home. It is essentially an international version of foster care. Show a child some love for a while, hope and pray he or she finds a permanent home.
Here is a story of a boy from Latvia and his hosts:
After 4+ life changing weeks, it was time for Aleks to return to Latvia. We can still remember how sick we were. We were packing up this little boy who we had fallen in love with, and sending him back to an orphanage. WHAT? Something was wrong about this idea, but we had no other choice. We knew from the beginning of the hosting program that we were too young to adopt. Basically, all we could do was try to find Aleks a forever family, and that is exactly what we were going to do!
We left the airport on January 15th 2009 without Aleks. Three days later, determined to find a home for him, we posted the following message on our Facebook page “Is anyone interested in adoption?”. Who knew if or when a family would answer this call? One year later, February 2010 Aleks has been adopted and has been living with his family for almost 9 months.
Looking back we see how God chose us and a lot of other people to be part of the chain reaction that lead Aleks Tuttle to his forever family. We were ONE domino in the huge chain reaction that changed his life FOREVER! And in the process our lives changed too! The cool part of this story is that Aleks is 12 years old now with so much life to live and we get to be a part of watching it unfold.
What do you think? If you’d like to find out more information on this program, it can be found on their website.