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On February 7th and 8th, my family and I had the great privilege to address our county’s Board of Supervisors and a press conference to share our experience adopting our daughter through the Safely Surrendered Baby Law signed January, 2006 to proclaim February, as a month of awareness of this law. According to the California Department of Human Services,
“The Safely Surrendered Baby Law responds to the increasing number of newborn infant deaths due to abandonment in unsafe locations. First created in January 2001, the Safely Surrendered Baby Law was signed permanently into state law in January 2006. The law’s intent is to save lives of newborn infants at risk of abandonment by encouraging parents or persons with lawful custody to safely surrender the infant within 72 hours of birth, with no questions asked.”
California Department of Social Services
My daughter was such a child. Her biological mother chose to giver her life instead of paying someone to take it from her at an abortion mill, or abandoning her at a dumpster, or exposing her to any other kind of unsafe environment and conditions. Her sacrifice allowed her child to find her forever home with us. Adoption is probably the best analogy for the gospel that we have in our earthly experience. Therefore, I intended to go beyond the mere (yet glorious) act of adopting an orphan and speak to the state of orphanhood that besets us all apart from Christ, and the solution to that being the full assimilation and induction into the family of God through Christ. I am thankful to have had the opportunity to share this with our county’s Board of Supervisors and those present. Here is the video of my address (begins at 30:15 and is two minutes long):
A clip of my speech was included in another video from the Official Kern County YouTube channel at 2:29 to 3:18:
Later that day, we also had the great opportunity of recording a podcast for the Department of Human Services to help further raise awareness of this wonderful legislation:
It was our honor to attend a press conference the following day at one of the participating hospitals in the county where mothers are able to surrender their babies without fear of prosecution. It was yet another wonderful opportunity to share the gospel again through the analogy of adoption. Here is a video of my speech (shorter), followed by an audio only recording of it (longer) before the participating entities that day:
Some pictures from both days (click to enlarge):
Here are links to media coverage of the event:
And from Bakersfield Now/Eyewitness News/KBAK/FOX 58 (including the entire video of my speech midway through the article) and El Popular News.
To close out the Safely Surrendered Baby Awareness month, I was invited to speak to the staff at Bakersfield Pregnancy Center. Here is the recording:
Finally, I’d like to take the opportunity to also share in this post a recording of a devotional I gave the day we celebrated our daughter’s adoption. I hope it is of encouragement:
To God be the glory, and may he bless each and every child that rises from namelessness to being fully assimilated into a family, like the Father does to all who come to Him through His Son, Jesus!
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“I will be a father to you,
and you shall be sons and daughters to me,
says the Lord Almighty.” – 2 Corinthians 6:18
“Religion that is pure and undefiled before God the Father is this: to visit orphans and widows in their affliction, and to keep oneself unstained from the world.” – James 1:27
“Father of the fatherless and protector of widows
is God in his holy habitation.
God settles the solitary in a home;
he leads out the prisoners to prosperity,
but the rebellious dwell in a parched land.” – Psalm 68:5-6
“We also, when we were children, were enslaved to the elementary principles of the world. But when the fullness of time had come, God sent forth his Son, born of woman, born under the law, to redeem those who were under the law, so that we might receive adoption as sons. And because you are sons, God has sent the Spirit of his Son into our hearts, crying, “Abba! Father!” So you are no longer a slave, but a son, and if a son, then an heir through God.” – Galatians 4:3-7
“For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life. For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him. Whoever believes in him is not condemned, but whoever does not believe is condemned already, because he has not believed in the name of the only Son of God. And this is the judgment: the light has come into the world, and people loved the darkness rather than the light because their works were evil. For everyone who does wicked things hates the light and does not come to the light, lest his works should be exposed. But whoever does what is true comes to the light, so that it may be clearly seen that his works have been carried out in God.” – John 3:16-21
