Help to get my brother home

I am starting this fund to help my brother and his family permanently return to the US, having now completed their ministry to help neglected and abused or orphaned children overseas.

My brother and his wife have been serving in China for the past several years now and served in Eastern Europe for 15 years before that. Their work in China has continued to expand their adoption ministry by seeking out and developing close relationships with many Chinese students at the university where my brother has been teaching. Over these past couple of years, he has built a very successful teaching career, putting him in a position to be able to reach out to these students and to develop extremely close relationships in a non-Christian environment.

I have continued to see my brother and sister-in-law work tirelessly, often in quite challenging circumstances. They have done so in conditions that most Westerners would find extremely uncomfortable to nearly impossible. But nevertheless, they have ALWAYS put the needs of these children and students ahead of their own, always being motivated by showing God's love to them.

After much prayer and soul-searching, my brother has concluded that it is time for this final stage of their ministry to close. In the face of many complications and discouragement, my brother has, without ceasing, fought for and has finally secured all the necessary documents required for he and his family to return to the US. It is time to provide a stable life for his (now) four girls. Due to his overseas work for the past almost 20 years now, his family has never had a place where they could settle down and officially call "home".

Many of the costs involved with returning to the US are due to the fact that the two eldest girls (who are adopted), are currently citizens of their country of origin (and not the US). In order to avoid being forced to return to their original country, they must now immigrate to the US, which is a very costly process. Upon arriving in the US, they will immediately and automatically become US citizens. This is the last phase of a legal process that began seven years ago to rescue them from the terrible life circumstances they experienced before they were adopted.

Despite the somewhat meager salary my brother has made in China, he has still managed (with extreme hard work), to set aside money for this return trip home to the US. Unfortunately, the process of securing all the necessary paperwork for his family of six, along with airfare costs, has nearly wiped out those funds. He has hardly any funds now available to him to actually start his family's life once they return home, and there remain a number of costs that he still has to pay associated with the necessary documents and travel for bringing his family over to the US.

I have struggled many times with wanting to do SOMETHING to help my brother's family, but living so far away, I have usually felt helpless to do very much. Establishing this fund is a way I hope to be able to do something tangible for them. Thank-you so much for any help you might be able to give to make this possible for them. God Bless!