Jonathan Bellamy spoke with Chris and Rachel Yeatts on their mission to feed, father and educate youth in need in the USA and around the world.

Chris and Rachel Yeatts

There are an estimated 138 million orphans worldwide! The need is huge and across the world the church is responding in many, many ways to try to meet that need and to rescue young lives so they have a future. One such organisation is Kids In Crisis led by Chris and Rachel Yeatts and based in the USA.

Jonathan: First of all, 'kids in crisis' or 'kids in need', what do you mean by the words "in crisis" or "in need".

Chris: Our vision statement is feeding, fathering and educating kids in crisis in the US and around the world. The fathering thing is something that, if you look at a lot of the crises in our inner cities and also the places that we go, a lot of that you can trace back to the absence of a father - if the father has left due to death or incarceration or illness or even just plain ignorance. There's a lot of issues that we come across in our organisation where just showing the Father's love to some of these kids is a huge transition for them and helps them tremendously.

Jonathan: You've just returned from Nicaragua. Can you share what you were doing and outline the bigger project that you're doing in Nicaragua.

Chris: Our story in Nicaragua started about seven years ago. My wife and I were leading a church in the house and a man came and visited us named Erik Sampson. He runs a ministry called Flutemaker Ministry. He told us a story about a man he had met in Nicaragua called Carlos Baez and how he was trying to reach out to 25 young people, some of them very young - kids that were in a garbage dump, that were abandoned. And we started our journey there.

We went about three months later and visited them. These little children would sift through the garbage all day and they would pick out little flecks of metal and they would save them up in a bag and go sell them. It might take a week to fill up this bag and they might sell it for six American dollars. A lot of them slept there in the garbage dump. There was a lot of abuse going on. It was a very tragic situation.

To see them now and what they've come into - it's truly amazing. Seven years later we have helped to build a house and some property. Other people came alongside and helped us. You see these young men now that are in their early twenties and the impact of the act of kindness is overwhelming. They have taken in 30 children and they have a facility in Somoto, Nicaragua where there's orphans there. Then about two years ago someone bought them some land in Jalapa, Nicaragua and they have a farm there. They have a vision, which we really encourage, for self-sustainability and they're growing some of their own food and doing some other things...it's really neat to see the progress.

Jonathan: Rachel, you're the President of Kids In Crisis. I understand you're really passionate about adoption - in fact you and Chris have adopted three children yourself. Can you share something of your heart on this?

Rachel: Yes, Chris and I have adopted three children from China. We have five children in total, two are our biological sons. After we had our two sons, we journeyed through the idea of adoption and looked into the need of kids here in the US and around the world, and God just really laid on our hearts 'orphans in China'. Through the journey of our three adoptions, we've travelled out to China three times and visited with the orphans - and our hearts have been really softened towards the needs of orphans around the world, here in the US and in other countries.

The need is great. There's an estimated 156 million orphans in the world. Some have living parents who are unable to take care of them and some are truly orphaned with no parents living. So the need is great, but the good news is that the church is big, and God's church is big. Not everybody is called to adopt but everybody is called by the Bible to take care of the orphan in some way. Whether it's supporting others through adopting, giving in to orphan care, helping orphans in countries through financial aid, prayer, just anything, everybody has some role to play. So at Kids in Crisis, one of our priorities is really to promote the need of the orphan and to provide opportunities and ways that people can help and support those who are helping orphans directly.

Jonathan: And are you focusing on Nicaragua with adopting orphans as well?

Rachel: No, not necessarily. Nicaragua doesn't allow international adoption so you cannot go to Nicaragua and adopt orphans that are there. Quite a lot of countries are that way, some do allow adoption, and some don't. So orphan care really is two-fold; it is about adoption but it's also about taking care of orphans in countries in other ways.

We feel very strongly that orphan prevention is a huge part of orphan care. The ideal way, and what God has created, is for children to stay in the family that they were placed. That's the ideal. Often children become orphans just because the mother or the father or the parents have no ability to take care of them any longer. So they're pushed into a situation where they have to give up their children. They feel they have no other answer, no other choice or option. So orphan prevention is something we really have a heart to move more into and that is helping families be able to keep their children, by helping provide income and jobs and ways that they can provide for their children.

In Nicaragua, this is something we feel strongly about. We have identified and are working with a local group in Nicaragua to help financially support 195 children right now that have developmental and physical disabilities. These children all have one or two parents, so they're not orphans, but if the mother cannot financially afford to take care of that child, that child does become orphaned and left and abandoned. So we are working to help provide income for that family, micro businesses for those mothers, so they can take care of their own children.

Jonathan: Can I ask you about physical disabilities - is that a big root cause of a number of orphans? In some of the developing world, if a family has a physical disability child, is that such a pressure and an issue that means that they often do get orphaned?