{"id":254,"date":"2008-05-31T02:00:00","date_gmt":"2008-05-31T02:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/jazztheologian\/2008\/05\/down-by-the-riverside-p3.html"},"modified":"2008-05-31T02:00:00","modified_gmt":"2008-05-31T02:00:00","slug":"down-by-the-riverside-p3","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/jazztheologian\/2008\/05\/down-by-the-riverside-p3.html","title":{"rendered":"Down by the Riverside (p3)"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Parentless children is a global crisis with over 140 million orphans world wide.<\/p>\n<p>One day, I received an email from a woman in our church about a little girl available for adoption in Ethiopia.&#160; At that time my wife, Barbara, and I had four children.&#160; Two boys and two girls&#8211;a complete&#160;symmetrical family.&#160;&#160;As I skimmed the email I prayed that God would provide a home&#160;for this child and then deleted the email.&#160;&#160;A while later the lady asked Barbara what she thought about the email.&#160; Busted!&#160; I told my wife that I thought our family was finished so I didn&#039;t see the need to forward the message to her.&#160; I was wrong.<\/p>\n<p>We entered the process of international adoption.&#160; We were prepared for a long road but as we encountered one delay after another we began to wonder if the Lord was at work.&#160; We prayed and sensed that perhaps we were to be open to adopting more than one child from Ethiopia.&#160; After all, how could we travel half-way around the world to a country with 500,000 orphans and only bring back one!<\/p>\n<p>We told our agency that if they could find another child we would be open.&#160; They identified a little boy and we were off to Ethiopia&#8230;<\/p>\n<p>After all, how could we be in a country with half a million orphans and not do all we could?<\/p>\n<p>Do you know how many orphans there are in America?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Parentless children is a global crisis with over 140 million orphans world wide. One day, I received an email from a woman in our church about a little girl available for adoption in Ethiopia.&#160; At that time my wife, Barbara, and I had four children.&#160; Two boys and two girls&#8211;a complete&#160;symmetrical family.&#160;&#160;As I skimmed the&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":79,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-254","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-gods-heart-for-orphans"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v23.9 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Down by the Riverside (p3) - The Jazz Theologian<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/jazztheologian\/2008\/05\/down-by-the-riverside-p3.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Down by the Riverside (p3) - The Jazz Theologian\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Parentless children is a global crisis with over 140 million orphans world wide. One day, I received an email from a woman in our church about a little girl available for adoption in Ethiopia.&#160; At that time my wife, Barbara, and I had four children.&#160; Two boys and two girls&#8211;a complete&#160;symmetrical family.&#160;&#160;As I skimmed the&hellip;\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/jazztheologian\/2008\/05\/down-by-the-riverside-p3.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"The Jazz Theologian\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2008-05-31T02:00:00+00:00\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Robert Gelinas\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"Down by the Riverside (p3) - The Jazz Theologian","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/jazztheologian\/2008\/05\/down-by-the-riverside-p3.html","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"Down by the Riverside (p3) - The Jazz Theologian","og_description":"Parentless children is a global crisis with over 140 million orphans world wide. One day, I received an email from a woman in our church about a little girl available for adoption in Ethiopia.&#160; At that time my wife, Barbara, and I had four children.&#160; Two boys and two girls&#8211;a complete&#160;symmetrical family.&#160;&#160;As I skimmed the&hellip;","og_url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/jazztheologian\/2008\/05\/down-by-the-riverside-p3.html","og_site_name":"The Jazz Theologian","article_published_time":"2008-05-31T02:00:00+00:00","author":"Robert Gelinas","twitter_card":"summary_large_image","schema":{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/jazztheologian\/2008\/05\/down-by-the-riverside-p3.html","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/jazztheologian\/2008\/05\/down-by-the-riverside-p3.html","name":"Down by the Riverside (p3) - The Jazz Theologian","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/jazztheologian\/#website"},"datePublished":"2008-05-31T02:00:00+00:00","dateModified":"2008-05-31T02:00:00+00:00","author":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/jazztheologian\/#\/schema\/person\/5e3ecb360405bd8603a61c7115194e01"},"breadcrumb":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/jazztheologian\/2008\/05\/down-by-the-riverside-p3.html#breadcrumb"},"inLanguage":"en-US","potentialAction":[{"@type":"ReadAction","target":["https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/jazztheologian\/2008\/05\/down-by-the-riverside-p3.html"]}]},{"@type":"BreadcrumbList","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/jazztheologian\/2008\/05\/down-by-the-riverside-p3.html#breadcrumb","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/jazztheologian"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"Down by the Riverside (p3)"}]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/jazztheologian\/#website","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/jazztheologian\/","name":"The Jazz Theologian","description":"Beliefnet Voices - Robert Gelinas on Composing a Jazz-Shaped Faith","potentialAction":[{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/jazztheologian\/?s={search_term_string}"},"query-input":{"@type":"PropertyValueSpecification","valueRequired":true,"valueName":"search_term_string"}}],"inLanguage":"en-US"},{"@type":"Person","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/jazztheologian\/#\/schema\/person\/5e3ecb360405bd8603a61c7115194e01","name":"Robert Gelinas","image":{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/jazztheologian\/#\/schema\/person\/image\/","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/jazztheologian\/wp-content\/wphb-cache\/gravatar\/fbe\/fbe4a8ffc24002390e969652fba5c72bx96.jpg","contentUrl":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/jazztheologian\/wp-content\/wphb-cache\/gravatar\/fbe\/fbe4a8ffc24002390e969652fba5c72bx96.jpg","caption":"Robert Gelinas"},"description":"\"For more information visit: Jazztheologian.com Robert Gelinas is Lead-Pastor (and resident Jazz Theologian) of Colorado Community Church\u00e2\u20ac\u201da multi-cultural, interdenominational community of 3000+ followers of Christ in the Denver area. Author of Finding the Groove: Composing a Jazz-Shaped Faith (Zondervan) and the upcoming, Strange Fruit: The Cross as a Way of Life (2011). Founder of Project 127, a ministry dedicated to seeing the day when there are no children waiting for homes in Colorado's foster care system. Robert deeply desires to see the body of Christ mobilized to serve the least of these. The poor, the down and out, the disenfranchised and disabled, those deemed unimportant and the unborn. He believes that God loves all people yet he has a special heart for the poor and the poor in spirit, the miserable and the marginalized. A Contributing Editor for Leadership Journal and Urbanfaith.com. He acquired a B.A. in Bibilcal Studies from Colorado Christian University and a Master of Arts in World Christianity (Missiology) from Denver Seminary. Robert is married to the love of his life, Barbara, and they have six energetic children (3 boys &amp; 3 girls--one bio, five adopted--two from Ethiopia). Friend of God...Passionate about the Body of Christ...Lover of this thing called jazz! Please visit Jazztheologian.com for contact info., speaking schedule, videos, Facebook and Twitter.","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/jazztheologian\/author\/rgelinas"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/jazztheologian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/254","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/jazztheologian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/jazztheologian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/jazztheologian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/79"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/jazztheologian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=254"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/jazztheologian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/254\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/jazztheologian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=254"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/jazztheologian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=254"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/jazztheologian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=254"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}