Book Excerpt

Swaying in the Treetops

A True Story of Faith and the Fatherless

Preface

Excerpt from E-mail Update by Kathy Rosenow, October 20, 2003:

One day I asked myself, "How did we get here?" I had a clear mental picture of myself climbing a tall, tall tree. I felt like I could remember so clearly what it had been like when God first said, "Come on up—I want you to climb higher in your walk with Me than you have been before." And we started Nathan's adoption. It was great, and He was so faithful to miraculously provide all that we needed to complete that very expensive Bolivian adoption. Then came Meghan, and we climbed a bit higher, still feeling a growing sense of excitement about where God might be leading us as we watched Him again provide all that was needed for her homecoming. Then we started Robyn's and Colin's adoptions. During that period, we scaled this tree at amazing speed, climbing to dizzying heights and feeling pure euphoria as we saw God perform incredible miracles, one after another, to bring those two home and put the pieces into place for the starting of The Shepherd's Crook Orphan Ministry. We felt like we could look down and see such beautiful things about God and His plans for His children that we had not been able to see when we were still on the ground or not so high up the tree. And we wanted to yell to the world, "Brothers and sisters in Christ!! Come on up!! You won't believe what it's like up here! Please come and share this with us!" Then we started Carlin's adoption and immediately after that, Aidan's, then Madlin's. And the two years that followed left us exhausted—emotionally, spiritually, and physically. The adoptions were more difficult than our first ones, the answers to prayer didn't come as quickly as they had in the early part of the climb, the heartbreak— especially in Aidan's case—was far more than we had ever dreamed we would experience when we agreed to follow God into this tree. We climbed much more slowly and fearfully during that period. And that day as I asked myself this question and remembered all of these things, I realized that I suddenly felt like I had climbed so far up, that when I looked down I could no longer see any of God's beautiful plans that I had seen earlier. Everything was so far down that it was blurry and I felt like I was so high up that this tree had become as thin as a twig and was suddenly a swaying, crazy, unsafe place to be. I prayed, "God I'm so far up that it's too scary to look down. I can't see anything at all anymore. I'm scared and I don't know what to do!" And as clear as anything, although it wasn't an audible voice, I felt God say to me, "Then stop looking down and look up!" It really is that simple—although not at all easy. I think of that picture and those words often as the climb gets higher and scarier and more difficult.

We are Scott and Kathy Rosenow. We are the founders of The Shepherd's Crook Orphan Ministry and, at the time of this writing, the parents of twenty-two children, nineteen of whom are still living in our home. When we married in 1977, we had no idea that there would come a time when wheelchairs, prosthetic limbs, anti-seizure medications, Braille, and twenty to forty monthly doctor and therapy appointments would be a part of our daily lives. We could never have dreamed that one day it would take five dozen eggs, a loaf and half of bread, and three pounds of bacon for a breakfast, or ten pounds of chicken breasts, eight pounds of steamed broccoli, and ten pounds of potatoes for one night's supper. It didn't seem possible that a fifteen passenger van wouldn't transport our entire family, or that a 2100-square-foot house could feel so crowded, or that our children's bedrooms would be furnished with not only double-, but triple-bunk beds. And it certainly never even entered our minds that God would allow us the privilege of being a small part of the lives of hundreds of hurting, lonely children from all corners of His world.

This book is the first part of the story of how God changed the two of us: how He molded and shaped our lives and then worked through us to change the futures of many orphans, children all over the world who were born into situations of darkness and hopelessness. As God has worked out His plans in and through our lives, we have learned that, although the tree we are climbing seemed terrifyingly high in 2003 (when the e-mail excerpt, above, was written), it goes so much higher still—and we still have so far to go. But as a friend once told us, "If you want to get to the really good fruit, then you have to get out on the branches, where it's shaky and scary." He was right. The fruit is sweeter and richer than we can describe. We thank God that we serve a risen Savior who has promised never to leave us or forsake us as we make this climb, and we continue striving to look up into His loving face as we follow Him into the ever-higher branches.

This story was written by the two of us, Scott and Kathy; however, we have chosen to write it through the voice of a single person, Scott. We did this to avoid confusion and, hopefully, make the book a bit easier to read. We cherished our Friday afternoons at local coffee shops each week, where we would work for several hours alone; every Friday, we searched through old journal entries and e-mails, reliving the excitement, pain, battles, and joy of our adoption journeys, writing together and watching God slowly put this story onto paper for others to read. We will miss those Friday work "dates."

We pray that our story will in some way encourage you in your walk of faith, even if that walk is completely different from ours and has nothing to do with adoption.

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Chapter 7 – The Ride of Our Lives

There's a world out there that we've left behind

Full of souls as important as yours and mine;

Looks like a reckless road and a sacrifice

And I'm crazy scared it may cost our lives;

But then I remember Jesus died...

So come on, Becky, let's go for a ride.

Me and Becky  

Chris Rice

Welcome to Bolivia, Again

Two parents, seven children, twelve checked bags, and eighteen carry-on items, including two strollers. Six American passports, two Chinese passports, and one Bolivian passport. Such was the Rosenow family as we descended upon the Dayton International Airport on Wednesday, November 8, 2000. This motley group boarded a small plane in Dayton, bound for Miami en route to La Paz. When we landed in Miami that evening, we grabbed something for the kids to eat in the main terminal, and then began wandering around to find where we were supposed to catch our next flight, scheduled to leave in the wee hours of the morning. As I mentioned in the last chapter, Kathy and I had spent the whole night before we left town packing for the trip and watching election results on TV. We didn't get any sleep at all, and our lack of sleep made the bizarre flight to Bolivia seem even stranger, bordering on surreal.

When we landed in La Paz on Thursday afternoon, Kathy and I had both been awake and active for about fifty hours, and the toll on both of us was beginning to show. Though we were foggy-headed and apt to stumble a bit, we knew we had to make sure we didn't lose any of our children along the way and keep pressing on until we could get to our hotel, get our family settled a bit—and then crash. Our in-country liaison and translator for this trip, Carola, met us at the airport. Carola had made arrangements for us to stay in a small apartment in the Hotel Calacoto. Calacoto is one of the neighborhoods in the Zona Sur, the region in southeastern La Paz that is home to most westerners living there.

We found the hotel to be beautiful and charming, and the owner was kind and gracious. We checked into the small, two-bedroom apartment that was to be our home for at least the next five weeks. We were very cramped, but we were together, and we knew that we could find a way to make it work.

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By the time we all fell into bed that evening, Kathy and I had been awake for about sixty hours, and all of us were tired to the bone. We all slept for a full thirteen hours that night, and it was absolutely wonderful.

We spent the next two days unpacking and settling into our little apartment, and we even ventured out to a local grocery store to get some food and supplies. It was exhilarating for Kathy and me to be back in La Paz, and the feeling was enhanced for both of us as we witnessed the wonder in the eyes of our children. How God blessed us in being able to take the whole family on this adventure!

Reynaldo

The nuns at Carlos de Villegas had requested that we, all of us, come to the orphanage to meet Reynaldo on Sunday, just three days after we arrived in La Paz. They wanted Reynaldo to begin getting to know his new brothers and sisters, as well as his parents, right away. So on Sunday afternoon we squeezed into two small taxis and drove to the orphanage, where the nuns greeted us almost like royalty. They all remembered Nathan, who was now a bubbly three-year-old, and they were ecstatic to see him again. He performed like a little champ, showing them his prosthesis and demonstrating how well he could walk and run. Sister Providencia, the orphanage director, had huge tears in her kind eyes as she hugged our little boy and saw how really well he was doing with his new family.

And then, almost as in a play, a hush fell over the group. We looked up, and there across the courtyard we saw another nun beginning to come toward us with a small bundle in her arms. The bundle was actually a little boy—our new son. She placed him on his feet and he began walking, very tentatively, in our direction, as she held his hand and encouraged him. This nun was Hermana Caridad (car-ee-DAHD). She had taken Reynaldo under her wing and cared for him tenderly during his time at the orphanage whenever she was on duty, and she, too, had tears in her eyes as Kathy squatted in front of Reynaldo and said, "Hola Bébe." Reynaldo reached up, cupped Kathy's face in his very small hands, lifted his sightless eyes toward the sky, and said, "Hola Mamá." There were very few dry eyes watching this introduction unfold. Under Kathy's direction, Kristen explained to the nuns that we had decided to change Reynaldo's name to Colin Zachary and that the meaning of this new name was "young one the LORD hath remembered." She said that, although his life had been hard so far, God had been caring for him, guarding him, and preparing our family for him. Caridad literally dropped her face into her hands and then, through more tears, explained to us that she had prayed over and over again that God would move someone's heart to make this child their son. She said that the actual words of her prayer had been, "God, please don't forget this child." What a huge God we serve—One who hears prayers from every corner of the earth and whose touch reaches across oceans and brings lives together to fulfill His plans.

Our first day at the orphanage was very emotional, and the nuns and staff made us feel so welcome; when after two hours we decided it was time to head back to the hotel, they seemed almost like they hated to see us go. All of our kids loved being there, playing and interacting with the children and babies. We hated to leave Colin behind, and we were very worried about his eyes. They seemed to be irritated, especially his left one. He poked at it constantly and it was very red.

Before traveling to Bolivia, we had arranged some doctor appointments for Colin, and one of them was with a nationally known pediatric ophthalmologist in Cincinnati on December 20. We were even more concerned now that we get the adoption completed as quickly as possible, to be able to get home in time for Colin to make that appointment. But our first audiencia, or court appearance, wasn't scheduled until November 21, which didn't seem to give us enough time to finish everything and still be home by December 20.

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The Bolivian roller coaster

We first met Colin at Carlos de Villegas on Sunday, November 12. The following Thursday we got news that our first audiencia still wasn't scheduled until the following Tuesday, November 21; however, completely against convention, the nuns decided that they were going to let Colin go live with us at the apartment while we waited for the audiencia. This was exciting news for us, since we felt that the bonding with Colin couldn't begin in earnest until he was living with us. When we got to the orphanage to pick Colin up, we got some more good news: normally, the process in Bolivia entails three audiencias; at the first, the court grants permission for the parents to visit the child at his or her orphanage; the second grants permission for the child to live with the parents while the adoption proceeds; and the third is when the court grants the adoption petition and declares everything final. The nuns told us that the court had decided to waive the first audiencia—just as the judge had done in Nathan's case—and thus the one scheduled for the following Tuesday would actually be the second. This truncation of the process was very good news for us, as every day was precious.

We took Colin back to the apartment and began to settle in to what would become our daily routine for the next several weeks. Because we home-school the children, we had taken along with us enough materials and books to be able to continue their schooling while we were in Bolivia. Every morning, Kristen and Allan would run down to the street to purchase amazing Bolivian bread, baked in little outdoor ovens right there on the streets, and we would begin each day with a family breakfast and Bible time. Breakfast was followed by school for the younger kids; for the older kids, it was chores first, and then school. We enjoyed a lunch together at midday, often outside in the back garden just behind our apartment. This garden was where the hotel booked many of its outdoor events, and it included a playground area. The seasons in the southern hemisphere are essentially opposite to those here in the States, and so even though it was November, Bolivia was nearing the end of spring and moving toward summer. The beautiful weather, combined with the convenience of the outside garden, provided the opportunity for our children to enjoy fresh air and exercise almost every day—when we didn't have other obligations or appointments that prevented our doing so. After lunch, we would put the youngest four down for naps, and while the older kids continued their schoolwork, overseen by Kristen, Kathy and I would often walk to the nearby Internet café for some e-mail correspondence. Most days, after naps and school, we would all walk as a family to the new supermarket, called Supermercado Ketal (kay-TAHL), where we could purchase all of the ingredients for the next day's meals. Our evenings were quiet and private, as we cuddled our four little ones until their bedtimes and then ended each day with hot cocoa and reading time aloud with the older kids: we were reading through The Chronicles of Narnia with them. These memories still warm our hearts today, years later.

Battling for a little heart

We quickly learned that this blind two-year-old was more of a handful than might have been suggested by his tiny size. He obviously had become accustomed to having his own way, and he made it clear that he was not about to take orders from a couple of gringos who sounded funny, smelled funny, and couldn't even speak Spanish. Very soon after Colin came to live with us, we discerned a deep and intense anger in his little heart. He often refused to eat, holding food in his mouth for surprising lengths of time. He wouldn't drink at all, just letting the liquid run out of his mouth. Although we were initially alarmed and worried about what we thought was an inability to eat and drink, it quickly became clear to us that refusing to eat or drink was his way of manipulating and controlling his new life. He wasn't combative over these things, or any other areas in which he refused to obey. He was just silently, but very clearly, rebellious. He would completely zone out and act like he couldn't hear us and just refuse to do what he knew we wanted him to do. We didn't know it at the time, but this was the beginning of a long adjustment. It was to be a full two years before Colin finally surrendered his heart to us and accepted us as his family. He seemed especially resistant to bonding with Kathy—but when it finally happened, it was beautiful and it was deep.

We saw almost immediately that he was an extremely intelligent little boy. We felt certain that much of his anger was due to the fact that he desired so much more than his dark world had allowed him to have. He was frustrated and longed for stimulation, and right away began to respond to activities that would challenge him mentally. He was brave and curious and would wander through the apartment memorizing where the furniture was placed and where each step or door was located. We were amazed as we watched him explore his new world, and we ached to be allowed to be a part of it with him. Thankfully, he did allow us to snuggle him, but it was more like he tolerated it, rather than embracing it and desiring it the way Robyn did.

Colin initially hated his baths and would scream throughout the entire ordeal each night. This didn't seem to be out of anger or a desire to control, however. Rather, he seemed genuinely terrified of the bath. Once the traumatic bath time was behind us, though, our evenings were the most restful and peaceful times we had with him, and we looked forward to them each day. As I mentioned earlier, we would always spend some good "connect and snuggle" time with the four little ones before putting them to bed. We would all gather in the family room, and after playing a few games of "Memory" with Nathan and Meghan, we would snuggle Robyn and Colin in our laps and sing songs, teaching the hand motions to children's favorites like "Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star" and "Itsy Bitsy Spider." This was the one setting when we would see Colin actually come to life. He would smile and softly join in the singing. Whenever a new child joins our family, we always choose a specific song to be that child's "special song." The choosing of these songs pretty quickly became an important family tradition and always involves much family discussion. We had chosen "What a Wonderful World" for Colin's song, and from the very beginning, he loved it and would listen each night as we sang it to him, his face a picture of focused but peaceful concentration. He quickly learned all of the words to his song, and we were very excited to hear that he had an amazing singing voice. He seemed to have perfect pitch, and a great sense of rhythm, too.

Yes, we had our hands very full and a long road ahead, as we searched for ways to work through Colin's anger issues. But what a jewel we had found hidden away in that Bolivian orphanage! We were struck many times by the thought that the world would've missed knowing about this incredible child had he been locked away in the mental institution as planned. These thoughts, and the certainty that God had brought this child to us as our son, helped us to persevere in our struggles to reach Colin and draw him into our world, where we could love him and truly get to know him.

Dean and Linda

When Kathy was young, she and her family attended a church in the suburbs of Birmingham, Alabama. There was a young couple attending the same church, whose names were Dean and Linda Self. In fact, Kathy and her brother, Gary, had attended a weekly Bible-study led by Dean during the early 70's. Dean was a former police officer who later left all of that behind to become a missionary to South America. When Kathy and I traveled to Bolivia for Nathan's adoption, Dean and Linda were associated with South America Missions (SAM) and working in the Bolivian city of Santa Cruz—and so we had been unable to see them. But this time they were living in El Alto, the city adjacent to La Paz a bit higher on the altiplano. Shortly after we got settled into our apartment at Hotel Calacoto, they came to visit us and catch up on some old times. They were very excited about the new work they were doing, which was to minister to the Aymara (ī-MAR-ah), the indigenous people of the altiplano. We didn't know it at that first meeting, but Dean and Linda were to become an integral part of our second adoption journey in Bolivia, and almost all of our recollections of Colin's adoption are imbrued with memories of time spent with them. They had lived in La Paz during previous missionary assignments, and they knew the city and its people and ways very well.

The Audiencia

On Tuesday, November 21, we had our audiencia with the judge. This was a fairly formal affair, attended by Kathy and me, along with Colin, Carola, our attorney, the fiscal, the ex-ONAMFA official, the orphanage social worker, and the judge. Once the legal details were taken care of, the judge asked the orphanage social worker to take Colin and officially hand him to Kathy. She, the judge, then instructed Kathy to hand Colin to me, and she formally charged us, under law and before God, to take good care of this baby and to raise him as our own. By this time, pretty much everyone in the room was in tears. All of the officials thanked us profusely for providing a home for this special child. It was an emotional experience, but it made for a very good day. They did count this appearance as Colin's second audiencia, so the adoption could now begin in earnest.

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A call to arms

Woven within and among all of these times, in which we and our children were privileged to experience the people and beauty and culture and sadness of Bolivia, were weeks of mounting frustrations over the adoption process. Some of these frustrations were of a different nature than those we had encountered during Nathan's adoption, but the result was the same: longer than necessary delays and a system that appeared to have no rhyme or reason—and certainly no concern for a two-year-old orphan's vision problems.

A few days after our trip to Lake Titicaca, we were still just plodding along, waiting for things to happen. Our documents had not been found, and we still didn't have a scheduled date for our final audiencia. There seemed to be nothing we could do to make things move more quickly. It is difficult to explain what was going through our minds, now that we had entered the month of December, now that our scheduled departure date was looming nearer and nearer without any likelihood of finishing the adoption in time. As we watched one day roll into the next, we felt a growing sense of uneasiness, which eventually welled into a state of near panic.

Kathy and I awoke on the morning of Saturday, December 2, in a deep despair. Everything looked black and impossible. We were convinced that we weren't going to make it home in time for Colin's appointment. We had already heard from the airline that it would be highly unlikely, if we had to change our return flight, that we could get tickets for all of us before the first of the year, and probably it would be later in January. It all just seemed so senseless to me: more and more weeks of just sitting and waiting while every passing day would undoubtedly mean additional damage to Colin's eyes! The only reason we were going to be stuck there, and the reason Colin's vision would undoubtedly suffer, was that "the system" in Bolivia couldn't get itself moving. It seemed that everyone involved in the process took at least five times longer than necessary to complete each step along the way.

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Church in the sky

The next day, Sunday, we awoke still feeling heavy and apprehensive about getting out of Bolivia in time. But we forced ourselves to get out of bed, knowing that our family had been given the immense privilege of traveling up to El Alto that morning with Dean and Linda to attend a worship service at an Aymaran church which they, Dean and Linda, had helped to establish. The experience was both uplifting and humbling for all of us, and it helped us regain perspective and get our focus back on the Author of Colin's adoption story, and off of our own fears. Once we were all in and seated, Dean introduced us to the congregation, including the fact that we were in La Paz to adopt Colin. We then went through a little ritual in which our entire family stood at the front of the church while the congregation came up front and greeted us, one at a time. The whole group couldn't have been more than about thirty worshippers, and the processional-type greeting ceremony was quite emotional. Many of the women cried openly as they hugged us and thanked us for adopting a little blind Bolivian boy, gently and lovingly stroking his cheeks as they passed by.

The whole experience of worshipping with these Bolivian peasants was, as I said, both uplifting and humbling. For us to see the joy in these weather-worn faces, despite lives that were hard and harsh beyond our imagining, and to see the zeal with which they approached the reality of their faith and the outworking of their Christianity, and to be so embraced by them and to enjoy the brief time of sweet fellowship with them, despite barriers of culture and language, all left an indelible impression on us, and we think we are not the same people—not the people we otherwise would have been—because of the experience.

That was Sunday. Being up on the altiplano at nearly 14,000 feet, worshipping with Believers who serve the same God who brought us to Bolivia, Believers whose lives are dramatically different than our own, was what is often referred to as a "mountaintop" experience. After mountaintop times, though, usually come valleys, and Bolivian adoptions are no exception. As we moved into the final stages of our adoption process, we prepared ourselves for the next valley, and we prayed that God would take us safely through whatever ups and downs still lay between us and our goal.

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