Cousins

All of the kids in the orphanage refer to each other as "primos" (cousins). I don't know if that was taught or one of them came up with it at one point. There are about 25 kids there divided in 2 houses, one for babies and boys and one for the girls. The teenagers each have chores, cook, go to school, listen to music and just plain hang around (by the way, mark added a link to a video of her "cousin" Jesus on the "Bittersweet Day" post. Take a look!)
There is even a 22 year old who is living in an apartment on the third floor of the orphanage building with her sister. They are now out of the orphanage care technically, but the mission that supports it pays their schooling and oversees them still. They are both going to nursing school.

They're of legal age. Now, the orphanage is their home.

Like the 3 sisters that have been there for 5 years now. Their mother died at a young age and their father developed cancer. When he couldn't care for them anymore, the orphanage was his only choice. He always came by before he was bed ridden, bringing cookies and treats. The girls gladly skipped the orphanage's Christmas parties and toys to spend it at his house. No party there, of course. He passed away 2 years ago now and Peru has still not signed their certificate of availability, so they can't be adopted.

They were never abandoned. They were loved very much. So would they even want to be adopted at 13, 11 and 9? Now, the orphanage is their home.

In Peru there is no legal way for a woman to give over her child for adoption. And a child that is found or abandoned at the hospital cannot be available for adoption until an abandonment decree is signed by a government organization. Jorge was found at birth, taken in and cared for, and now has a Peruvian family waiting to get him under foster care.

They can't. His abandonment decree is not up yet. He's going on two.

That was Cecilia's story too.

I could very well still be waiting. I could have met her in her teens when adaptation in a new county and to a new language would have been next to impossible (rehearsed speech to self every time I think of the girls). Or I could not have had her at all if her birth mother had made a more desperate choice.

Tomorrow we go to court and finalize the adoption. She will be legally ours. I am daily humbled by this gift, by God's sovereignty in choosing Lia for us, and by how little I have brought about on my own (I packed...). But after a week at the orphanage I know I am receiving more than one gift. I am taking all Lia's cousins in my heart to love from a distance. That memory is a gift, but it's still not the last one. The last and biggest is hope - that Lia and we and all her cousins will one day be united in a perfect place. No one will be there because of tragedy, abandonment or desperate choices. It's being prepared for us right now. And we will all finally feel at home.