A few years ago, a friend of mine came back from an orphanage in Africa with this picture. There were about 80 kids and 4 caretakers. That means that these orphans were probably not held very often unless they were having a diaper change or being fed. I began to think, "what is the difference between those little babies and my little girl"? It bothered me to know that I would forget about them shortly. It bothered me that I felt helpless to assist them. I wanted to do something to make life better for them. Frustrated with my own inability to help and with the seemingly broken orphan system, I set out on a faith adventure with my family in July 2010. I wanted to help these orphans and others like them in our own country. Little did I know that the story was about to be re-written in my own family.
August 2010, my second child was born and we were told the following day that he had a cleft palate. Not realizing it at the time, we thought that it was one future surgery (which was bad enough), but it turned out to be a little more complicated than that. We spent the first week of his life in the hospital- in and out of the NICU. The Dr.'s at Scottish Rite told us that he had something called Pierre-Robin Sequence. PRS is a connective tissue disorder that can potentially affect many of the major organs. Our son had a mild set back chin at birth along with a cleft soft palate. He would choke on his tongue because of the PRS, so his mom and I were on call all day and all night. We had to monitor him at all times because when he did choke, we had to be there to get him through it. It was such a terrible sight to see our little boy try to communicate without words that he was not breathing. On top of all that, when he came out of the hospital, he had a very low heart resting heart rate. This would cause his apnea monitor to go off all the time. You can probably imagine the stress that we felt for his first 7 months of life. We struggled daily to do all we could just to get him to eat, keep him from choking, and just help him cope. 
The non profit idea was on the shelf for almost 7 months while we took care of our son.
God sovereignly placed a cleft kid in our family.
Fast forward to 2011. Our son passed the genetic and sleep apnea tests at Scottish Rite Children's hospital. And, he had his palate fixed in March by our new hero, Dr. Burstein. As difficult as recovery was with the arm restraints, feedings by syringe, morphine, codeine, tylenol, no sleep....we made it. Judah learned to eat by chewing on his special needs bottle. He learned to sleep on an elevated mattress. We were excited at his progress and sent his apnea monitor packing at about month eight. He still has an uphill climb in some areas, but we are hopeful in his recovery. The way he his walking now, he'll probably climb that mountain in no time.
We would have never chosen this road for ourselves, but we realize that God always has a purpose. We've witnessed, first hand, the suffering of our baby boy. Countless times we've run from one room to the next to help each other as he choked on his tongue and fought for air. It took both my wife and I giving him full time care on a radical "no sleep" schedule to get him through this. Now, we can't imagine what it would be like for a little child to go through life's challenges without a family to take care of them. We are motivated now more than ever having walked through this most difficult journey to call the Church to the forefront of the orphan epidemic, to help orphans in every community.My hope is that more everyday people will join us in saying to the orphan here in America and around the world, "you are no longer invisible...we see you and we are coming to help". There are 143+ million orphans by most expert accounts. That's too many.
Steve Gillis
Founder/Executive Director, Patch Our Planet
Family picture - Fall of 2011.
(Lifesaver for the Gillis'- maybe you know someone who has a cleft palate child or a child with bad reflux)