Today we’d like to introduce you to Lisa Murphy.
Hi Lisa, so excited to have you on the platform. So before we get into questions about your work-life, maybe you can bring our readers up to speed on your story and how you got to where you are today?
My husband and I were called to build our family through adoption, and our love crossed oceans for all five of them. The best part of our story began in the exam room at my Ob-Gyn. She asked me, as I approached 40, if I wanted a family. My response was unsure – I mean, I was happy with our life, but deep down I knew my husband needed to be a dad. She left the exam room and returned with a packet saying, “We just got this in the mail this week. It’s from an adoption agency, take it home.” I took it home and that was one of many “nudges” from above. That one encounter led us to our first child- our daughter, Madi, whom we adopted from China in 2006 as an infant. Our second child, Daniel, joined our family in January of 2010. He was a beautiful little two-year-old boy who had been living in a Chinese orphanage with a broken heart, yet he faced every obstacle with brave determination and a smile on his face. We enjoyed so many “firsts” with our first son – my protective “Mama Bear” nature trying to keep him in a bubble, and his Daddy’s rough and tumble nature trying to give our son all the simple pleasures of boyhood.
After four months of embracing new life in our family, Daniel’s heart surgery took place in May of that year, but much to our sadness, his body just couldn’t recover from the open-heart surgery that he desperately needed, and left this earth on May 30, 2010. Our son made a lasting imprint on many hearts in our community, and ours are forever changed because of him. We traveled back to bring three more amazing children home from Chinese orphanages, but after our last adoption in 2016, my husband and I knew we could no longer continue to go back – our family was complete. There was one BIG problem though – our hearts had been cracked wide open to the orphan crisis. With over one-hundred million orphaned or abandoned children scattered all over the globe, we couldn’t pretend that the orphan crisis didn’t exist, so our charity, Open Hearts for Orphans, was born that year in Daniel’s memory. It is our greatest desire to keep making a difference in the lives of vulnerable children around the world, wherever we are called to serve, and our entire existence has been about turning adversity into a beautiful opportunity to pay the gift of our son’s life forward into this world.
Would you say it’s been a smooth road, and if not what are some of the biggest challenges you’ve faced along the way?
Child loss was the greatest struggle we ever faced. It absolutely wrecked us, yet we were not without hope. Slowly, the weight of grief became outweighed by our overwhelming gratitude. Our hearts will always long for our son here on Earth, but we trust that we will be reunited with him someday. There are many struggles in the adoption journey that cannot be ignored, include long periods of time and uncertainty in the process, financial burdens, and trauma that comes with adopting children from hard places. Having lived these journeys firsthand helps us serve adoptive families better in our work at Open Hearts for Orphans, as Adoption Assistance is one of our pillars.
Appreciate you sharing that. What else should we know about what you do?
Open Hearts for Orphans was created to provide hope for orphaned and abandoned children around the world through medical intervention, meeting basic needs, and adoption assistance. To date, we have given over 175 of our adoption grants, supporting families across the U.S. as they have worked to bring home children with special needs from 27 different countries. We have helped countless children in our medical and orphan care pillars through surgeries, medical equipment, education, and providing homes for orphans and widows. This past year, we even funded the refurbishment of the pediatric ward at a struggling hospital in Uganda. “Josiah’s Hope” was our largest project to date, and Phase One (construction) was completed within a year. We are now onto the next phases of providing medical equipment and staffing. I am proud to do this work every single day, and we are becoming known for the impact we are able to share. What sets us apart is, undoubtedly, is our team, operating as beauty out of ashes. Our WHY is the fuel behind every move we make.
Before we go, is there anything else you can share with us?
We would love to gain your support! It’s pretty simple: No money, No mission. And we aren’t planning to stop anytime soon. We encourage you to follow our social media handles and subscribe to our monthly emails. Our monthly dose of goodness is too positive to pass up! We thank you in advance for joining our Open Hearts Community – it’s a beautiful place to be. Visit www.openheartsfororphans.org to learn more.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.openheartsfororphans.org
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/openheartsfororphansorg
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/openheartsfororphans
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/openheartsfororphans
