Adoption Ministry letter

Dear Family and Friends,
We are writing you today with a special request that God has lain on our hearts.

As you may know our family has a ministry of adopting orphans from China.  We have three special children that God has blessed us with, Hannah Min, Rebekah Lu and Nathan Gouchang.  Even though, the majority of orphaned children are abandoned in China because of the one child policy or the inability to care for their special need, each has a special gift and a special place with God’s Kingdom.

Hannah, who is 8 years old and our first adopted child, was not excluded from the one child policy. She was one day old when she was abandoned. We know this because her umbilical cord was still attached. She was 8 ½ months old when we adopted her. She is a delight to our family and is very bright.

Rebekah, who is 6 years old and our second adopted child, was 3 weeks old when she was abandoned. She was taken to the Chongyang orphanage where she lived until we adopted her.  We remember the day she was given to us. She cried and cried and her clothes smelled of smoke. She was 10 ½ months old. Rebekah is a joy to our family and is also very smart.

Nathan is also 6 years old and our third adopted child. He is a special needs child. He was 2 ¾ years old when we adopted him and only 19lbs.   We discovered that he had a parasite.  He was born with a cleft lip/palate.  Nathan also has a severe language delay and developmental delays.  Nathan’s speech is progressing but requires a great amount of speech therapy.

The Lord has given us the strength and abilities to minister to our children and the faith to take on special challenges.  The Lord has opened are hearts and eyes to the needs of orphans in China.  On our trip to China to make Nathan part of our forever family, we had the opportunity to visit his orphanage in Luoyang, Henen Province.  This was a special needs orphanage with about 600 children.  We were able to visit Nathan’s room which had about 20 -30 special needs children including one blind child.


The statistics of waiting special needs children in China are staggering. According to "Love without Boundaries", 85% of children in Chinese orphanages have some sort of medical special need. Some of the many needs are heart defect, missing fingers/limbs, club foot, cleft lip/palate, deafness, hepatitis, malformed ears, etc.

The Lord has been stretching, growing and stirring our hearts to answer his call that is found in James 1:27 “…taking care of the orphans and widows in their distress.” (NIV). While we were looking at our agency’s website we noticed a cute little boy on their special focus list. He is deaf. Our first thought was no way this is too hard. But the Lord kept tugging at our hearts and reminding us of what his life is like in an orphanage, being alone in the world and in total silence, without hope, without love and without knowing the love of Jesus Christ.

 The Lord has lain on our hearts to pursue the adopting little boy like this one. “Their cries are heard only by God – if we listen with our hearts, we can hear them, too.” – Children’s Hope International.   During his stay in the orphanage he will be provided with the basic necessities, but may not be able to be schooled or trained in any deaf communication.  Even the best institutions can only do so much because the children are so numerous. By the age of 18 he may be sent on the streets to survive on his own.


Although he has been adopted (PTL), the Lord has used him to stir our hearts and pursue adopting another deaf little boy. We would like you to prayerfully consider joining us in this ministry to adopt this 2 year old boy.  If God has stirred your spirit with our story and you would like to help continue his work, then we are asking you to first pray that God’s work continues and He guides our direction and resources to His plan.  Second, please pray and consider helping us with financial resources to offset the monetary burden of this adoption.

In 2 Corinthians 9:12 God says in “This service that you perform is not only supplying the needs of the Lord’s people but is also overflowing in many expressions of thanks to God” (NIV).  When God’s peoples’ needs are supplied, God’s blessings will overflow. The cost of the adoption will be $30,000 plus special medical costs for his condition.  We have been blessed that God has provided the funds through employment and tax credits for our previous adoptions and we continue to pursue these sources for this adoption.  However, even with these resources we are experiencing a financial need.


If God has moved you to help us with financial support, we have a special fund set up with our adoption agency, European Adoption Consultants (aka EAC). The funds can be anonymous if requested and the donation is a tax deduction since EAC is a nonprofit organization. 
To send resources directly to EAC: European Adoption Consultants, Inc. 12608 Alameda Drive, Strongsville, Ohio 44149. Attention: Duryea Adoption Fund, Phone#440-846-9300, 800-533-0098. www.eaci.com
For more information about Chinese Orphans you can visit these websites:

Shaohannah’s Hope, www.showhope.org

Half the Sky Foundation, www.halfthesky.org

Love without Boundaries, www.lovewithoutboundaries.com

Allow us to leave you with some scriptures that the Lord has laid on our heart pertaining to adoption:

“Religion that God our Father accepts as pure and faultless is this: to look after orphans and widows in their distress and to keep oneself from being polluted by the world.” James 1:27.

“I tell you the truth, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers of mine, you did for me.” Matthew 25:40

Seek justice, encourage the oppressed. Defend the cause of the fatherless, plead the case of the widow. Isaiah 1:17

A father to the fatherless, a defender of widows, is God in his holy dwelling. God sets the lonely in families. Psalm 68: 5-6

You can also follow us on our BLOG at For the Least of These: http://fortheleastofthese-duryeafamily.blogspot.com/
 This child's life will change forever through adoption. He will have the love and care of our family and his medical, educational, and nutritional needs met and most importantly he will know the love of our Savior, Jesus Christ.
May God bless you and we thank you in advance for all your support and prayers.
David, Laura, Adam, Ethan, Sarah, Hannah, Rebekah, and Nathan Duryea

Nathan Gouchang

Well after adopting our two beautiful girls, Hannah and Rebekah, I knew that God was speaking to my heart again. We could either say no to God's calling and instead fill our lives with all kinds of material stuff that moths and rust will destroy anyway or listen to our hearts and the call God has placed on our lives. How could we turn our backs to the cry of orphans and think only of our selfish desires.

So, we had to make a decision. Do we want to adopt or save our new house that we just built. We couldn't afford both.  When we started down the road to building our dream home we never knew that adoption would make such an impact on our lives. We were your typical American family, living the typical American dream. However, we are Christians and God doesn't call us to live like everyone else in American. God doesn't call us to live a comfy, narrow minded life, that when we accumulate all our wants and desires we say "is this all there is" or "what did I do with my life". He calls us to live beyond anything we can think or imagine. A life full of eternity in our hearts.

We weren't sure if we could adopt from China again, but the Lord opened the door again. China was just opening their special needs program and they were using our agency as a pilot for the program. When we called Zhou from our agency to see if there was any way we could adopt again, the agency had our family in mind to be help began this program. (Our friends, the Hedden's were the other family that the agency had chosen). God is so Awesome! We were traveling with our very special friends who we met while we were in Rebekah's travel group!

The agency had a 2 year old little boy with a repaired cleft lip/palate. Remember when we were adopting Hannah we saw 2 toddler boys with repaired cleft lip/palate at her orphange. We flew to China and on July 29, 2007, Nathan was placed in our arms. He was 2 ¾ years old when we adopted him and only 19lbs.   We discovered that he had a parasite. Nathan also has a severe language delay and cognitive developmental delays.  Nathan's speech is progressing but requires a great amount of speech therapy.

He is a happy little boy, loves baseball, riding his bike and dogs. He enjoys being home and schooled by mom. He is such a blessing and brings joy to our lives.

Rebekah Lu

Adopting Hannah changed our lives forever. We were totally unaware of the impact that adoption would bring to our lives. When you stand in the middle of an orphanage and see the sad, lonely faces of babies and children, how could our lives not be changed. We knew that God had a calling on our lives.
We weren't sure if we would be able to adopt again from China since we now had four children, but God opened the door and China said "yes".God is so good.

So 6 months after arriving home with Hannah we started the paperwork again. We only had to wait 6 months for our referral for Rebekah and everything went smoothly.

Rebekah Lu, who is 6 years old now and our second adopted child, was 3 weeks old when she was abandoned. She was taken to the Chongyang orphanage where she lived until we adopted her.  We remember the day she was given to us. She cried and cried and her clothes smelled of smoke. She was 10 ½ months old.

Rebekah is a joy to our family and is also very smart. She loves playing dress-up, having tea parties, dancing and riding her bike.