Kotabumi by Cindy Bleuler Tucker
http://fft3.com/legion.php This is a talk I gave to 2nd-4th graders at Hickory Valley Christian School (Chattanooga, TN) on the National Day of Prayer.
God made a family- mom, dad, child, children, brothers, sisters. How many brothers or sisters do you have? Children come into a family in different ways. Some children are born into a family and some children are adopted. Some adopted children are from close by like in Tennessee or Georgia, but some come all the way from a country very different from the United States. I want to tell you a story about my family and how Mr. Tucker, my daughter Leighanne, and me became a family.
Mr. Tucker and I, like many grown- ups, fell in love and got married. After a few years, we wanted to have a child. We prayed and prayed and prayed but we still did not have a child. We would get sad and want to give up but we kept hoping and praying. We met other people who had adopted from Vietnam and China. We kept praying- would God give us a little girl from China?
Meanwhile, back in China, a mom had a baby and could not take care of her. She loved her baby girl and hoped that maybe a special mom and dad could take care of her. She wrapped her in a red blanket and put her in a basket, just like baby Moses in the Bible. She put her on a train with a note, “Please take her to the nearest orphanage. Someone did. So baby Leighanne was in the orphanage. Now this part of China is very far north, like Canada. Have any of you been to Canada? Now it was November and it was very cold. The power went out and there was no heat. Baby Leighanne was very, very cold. What would happen to her?
The next day a Chinese lady who helped children that need to be adopted came to the orphanage. She saw baby Leighanne shivering in her crib. Remember in the Bible when the Pharaoh’s daughter took pity on baby Moses and rescued him from the Nile River? Well, this lady picked up baby Leighanne and wrapped her inside her coat and kept her warm. She took baby Leighanne to a hospital.
The lady told her son Frank and her daughter-in-law Hannah about baby Leighanne. Now Frank is a pediatrician and Hannah is an English professor. Frank and Hannah are not their real names. They are Chinese, and they chose American names to call themselves to make it easier on their American friends.
Hannah knew Dick, a man who lives on Signal Mountain that helps Americans adopt babies from Vietnam and China.
Meanwhile, back in Georgia Mr. Tucker and I were very sad and thought we would never have a child. The phone rang and I answered. We had met Dick a few months ago. He asked how I was and I told him how sad I was. He told me that there was a baby girl in China who was in a hospital. She was healthy enough to get out of the hospital and he wanted to know if we wanted to adopt her. I hung up, talked to Mr. Tucker, and called Dick back in 5 minutes. Yes, we wanted to adopt baby Leighanne! We had not even seen a picture of her, but we loved her.
It took a year to bring Baby Leighanne home to America. We prayed and prayed for her. We got some pictures of Baby Leighanne. We gave one to Mr. Tucker’s grandmother. She put the picture on her refrigerator door and every time she looked at it she would pray for Leighanne.
We waited that long year. All spring, all summer, than fall. At last Mr. Tucker got the phone call to come and get her. Here is baby Leighanne in China. At last, they came home on the airplane and all the people from church, and all the people in our family-all the people who had prayed for me and Mr. Tucker and baby Leighanne got to see her and welcome her to America! Do you know what day baby Leighanne came to America? The day after Thanksgiving, the day we give thanks to God! We had a lot to be thankful for that Thanksgiving!
From the moment I knew about Leighanne, I began praying for her. My greatest desire was that she would love the Lord Jesus and want to be like Him. I also prayed that she would be healthy and she would be someone who likes to do many things like learn at school, play sports, and have fun with her friends at the playground thanks to resources from https://school-playground-equipment.uk/how-innovative-playground-equipment-enhances-learning/ that make any playground awesome. I pray for Mr. Tucker and Leighanne every day. I am sure your moms and dads pray for you too.
Sometimes we pray for our mom and dad and our brothers and sisters and sometimes we pray for our grandparents. Sometimes we pray for our cousins, aunts and uncles. Sometimes we pray with our family. When we pray we share in the good and bad things that happen to each other, and grow in love for God and each other. When we pray for family, we are praying for God to help them. Jesus says that when two or three pray together, He is there with us and prays with us.
What are some times when families pray together? When families pray for each other, what are some things families pray about?
Now baby Leighanne is grown up and is a beautiful young woman. She is in high school, and she has homework just like you do! One of her assignments was to write an autobiography. An autobiography is when you write a true story about yourself!
This is what grown-up Leighanne said in her autobiography: “Only in the past year and a half have I really begun to understand the intricate and amazing journey I have before I was born. God has his guiding hand on my life, and I can definitely see His work from the beginning of my life. I cannot help but think that my adoption was for a purpose and a plan… {I} cannot say I know exactly what my purpose is… here, but I know it is no accident.”
God loves you and has special things He wants each of you to do. He loves families and wants families to pray together and God wants you to pray for your family. God listens to your prayers and listens to your family’s prayers too.
