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.

Rachel: Yes it is. It is a big issue in many countries. For example in our own journey through adoption, all of our children from China have some sort of disability; physical or developmental. Our daughter Mia, who we adopted when she was eleven months old, had a cleft lip and cleft palate that wasn't repaired and in a country like China that's a big deal. Any kind of physical disability, something that's obvious, is a reason not to keep them. So a lot of children in those sorts of countries are abandoned for those reasons.

Jonathan: I watched the video on your website, and saw that there's an estimated 138 million orphans worldwide and that would make it the tenth largest nation in the world in terms of numbers. How does the church respond to such a huge need globally?

Chris: I struggled with that for a while, just because it is a big number. But I really feel you have to help who you can, and help them as effectively as possible. I think that as we just do relationships God grows things from one person to another. For us the power of that, the things we've been able to do, despite not being a large organisation, it's really neat when God shows you someone you can talk to and you talk to that person and it leads to another place where you can have an opportunity to do something. Like Rachel was saying, a big preventing factor is really helping families, equipping them so they do not have to abandon their children. When I go to Nicaragua and I talk to these families with special needs children (the last time I was there I met with 50 families that had special needs children), I see my daughter's face in these children, and think of the journey we've been on taking care of our special needs child, I can only imagine the journey for these families - living in extreme poverty where there's not a lot of options with medical care and even food is not always a guarantee. It's something that touches us very closely. So when those needs are provided for them I know it literally gives life to those little kids and gives their parents hope to keep their family intact.

Jonathan: If anyone reading this feels stirred to look into this a bit more, can you help people go through the process of adopting a young person and describe a little bit of what the process would be?

Rachel: Yes. We're not ourselves an adoption agency but we do have a lot of information and contacts and we can lead people in a direction, if they want to adopt and put them in touch with good agencies that can help them to adopt. Pretty much if you adopt internationally, you go through an adoption agency and they take care of all the details and the paperwork for you. So it's a much monitored process. There's been a lot of abuse and misuse in adoption and so there's a lot of discussion out there about adopting ethically. It's definitely very important to go through a very reputable adoption agency if you're going to adopt.

Obviously adoption is expensive. If you adopt internationally it can be anywhere from $20-$50,000 to adopt one child. This is a huge prevention for a lot of families who would love to adopt and help a child so there's also a lot of organisations out there that can provide grant funding. We also have a heart for that. It's a new area that we're looking into establishing, to financially help families that would like to adopt. We were very blessed when we were adopting, we applied for some grants from some other organisations and received financial help.

These are huge obstacles, but also with God we felt we have really seen with our adoption story that when you step out and you say "yes" to God's tugging on your heart and you respond to that, then He opens the way. We certainly never had the money to adopt our children but God miraculously provided in so many ways, through family and friends and jobs and just money showing up. He provided for us to be able to bring these children into our home. So often the first thing anybody ever needs to do is say "yes" to what God is tugging on their heart and take that first step. But absolutely, we would love to hear from anybody that has questions about adoption, is looking for what to do next, please contact us, email us, send us a message on our website, and we will get back to you with information and help you out.

Jonathan: For those who perhaps that's not a step for them now, are there other ways that they can support what you're doing, such as becoming a monthly sponsor of a child?

Chris: Yeah, the monthly sponsorship is directed to the 195 special needs children. And it's really simple, just go to our website and there's a sponsorship link. Go on that and you can just pick at different levels: from $25 a month which would take care of the basic needs for those children for 15 days; then if you wanted to do a whole month, you could do $50; and if you wanted to do two children you could do $100. One of our other needs is that a lot of these children don't have beds that they can sleep on, and so you can donate $130 and that would cover one bed, a mattress and the sheets and the linen for that child.

Jonathan: I expect that the purchasing power of some of our western currencies means a little bit goes quite a long way when you're looking at a country like Nicaragua?

Chris: Yes, the British pound does go very far. The average wage for someone in Nicaragua is probably less than $10 a month. Nicaragua is the second poorest country in the Western hemisphere behind Haiti.

Jonathan: That's a very significant statistic. It's fantastic what you're doing out there with Nicaragua but you're also focusing into the US. Tell us a little bit about your local work with Kids in Crisis there.

Chris: This is something that's very close to my heart because I'm a counsellor and I work in the inner city. I had graduated from my Master's degree programme a couple of years ago and I went into a classroom, thinking I had kids and I would be able to connect with them. I tried to get the kids to sit in a circle to do an activity and 35 minutes later we were still trying to sit in the circle! So I needed to figure something out that really grabbed their attention. I read an article about a drumming programme from Australia called DRUMBEAT. It just connects with the kids. I brought a drum into the classroom and the kids just went crazy for it, they loved it. So we've just started a pilot programme in one of the schools and it's literally transformed these kids' lives. It's been amazing to see these young fourth grade boys and the impact of spending every week with them, just walking through the curriculum, and getting to know them, and seeing how rhythm is something that draws us together. We do a lot of stuff with conflict resolution...the programme forces kids to work together that don't normally work together well. A lot of these kids are referred for disciplinary issues, some of them have low self-esteem so the curriculum allows them to come together and also express some of that individual expression and creativity that really draws some great things out of them.

Jonathan: Can you tell us the website address and any contact details people need to know if they want to find out more?

Chris: Check us out on the web at kidsincrisis.us. We'd also love you to come and check out what we're doing and 'like' our Facebook page. We have a Twitter account and also Google+ - we'd love to hear from you!