Orphan World Relief -- How It All Began

A few years ago I started Orphan World Relief to begin helping the over 144 million orphans around the globe. But it didn't start there. In some ways it started with me from day one.

My biological mother and father lived in a small Iowa town. She had been married previously and had a little girl. When things went wrong, she moved home and my mother met my father and... well, you know what happened. It's a boy!

Back in the '60s in Iowa you didn't have a baby without being married so my biological mother was shipped off to the other side of the state until I was born.

My parents, the ones who raised me, were a military couple living nearby. They had a daughter nine years earlier and wanted another child. After a series of miscarriages they were told that it would be best not to try any longer. So set out to adopt.

A little over a month after I was born, they got me and took me home. It wasn't until the fifth grade that I learned about the word "adopted". It was traumatic... wet snotty tears (from my mom) and lots of questions from me.

But more about that later.

I was the only one I knew in the world who had been adopted. And it wasn't until very later in life that I learned how wide spread the issue with orphans acutally was.

While I was married (very briefly), I expressed to my wife the huge desire to adopt. Adoption seemed natural to me by that point. But she wanted to have children the old fashioned way first...and we were working on that when she left me for the final time.

But more about that later.

A few years after my divorce the desire to have kids was overwhelming. I wasn't one of those guys who needed the wife -- in fact I had grown to learn how much less complex my life had become without a wife!

Just before the adoption process began, I took my first mission trip to Kiev, Ukraine. The first of many trips around the globe (but I didn't know it at that time). While there, I spent a damp and cloudy day at a park with some homeless boys. We played with them. They wanted to play with my disposable camera and loved the candy we brought. I also shared with them how I became a Christian and shared about my upbringing (starting out as an orphan).

They seemed to take to me. The next day a few of us were walking to visit a local orphanage (there are many). After walking through an underpass I noticed that it sounded like someone calling my name. But this was my first time overseas... who would know me? I spun around and noticed some of the homeless boys -- they slept under the underpass that night.

I couldn't go back to America without making a difference. And although it was 10 years before the formal corporation was formed, the ideas for Orphan World Relief were in my brain and the start of a business plan began taking shape.

And while, at the point of writing this blog, we're still waiting for the IRS to approve our 501c3 status, we're supporting four orphanages in: Kiev, Ukraine; St. Petersburg, Russia; Cochabamba, Bolivia; and Nizamabad, India.

It's our tag line, but it's very true: Children Need You

http://www.OrphanWorldRelief.org