She just turned one and is waiting for her family to find her.
Gerri is a sweet, chubby little girl that anyone could fall in love with. You may wonder why it is so urgent that she find a family.
The pictures in the rest of this post are harder to see than the picture of a cute chubby baby. But they are also real and precious children.
Well, in the same region Gerri lives in, there are little boys who look like this.
Ivan is 7. His picture may be out of date... or perhaps worse, it may not be. He is painfully skinny. He looks to be "stimming"--behaviors children who are severely neglected develop to amuse themselves. He seems to be patting or rubbing his head. At 7 he now probably does not understand how to give or receive touch and affection. He may have behavioral problems Gerri's family will not have to deal with if they go for her soon. He is listed as happy and cheerful. If that is still true it is a miracle.
And there is a little girl who looks like this.
"Alexander"--I'll call her Lexa-- is a girl, aged 9. I have no way of knowing if her picture is up to date. I have no way to know if she is even still alive. She looks almost skeletal. She would need lots and lots of help to learn how to interact with people, to overcome the emotional wounds of living for almost a decade without a family, to learn that she is a human being deserving of love. She desperately needs someone to care enough to commit to a lifetime of helping her to see that she will always be loved. Lexa's family will need to be willing to go through the hardship of rescuing her not because of anything she can give them, but because she is a priceless human being, created in the image of God, who deserves love, a family, and life.
Ivan and Lexa are not even listed separately on Reece's Rainbow. They are "additional children" in a region known anonymously as Region 8. Gerri is also still listed as an additional child under a different name--probably this is an error, not an identical twin. There is still hope for Ivan and Lexa, however, as they are available for international adoption. If you are interested in becoming their mommy, you could commit to them (I am not sure whether a homestudy would be required before commitment to these children--it is not for Gerri).
I don't know if Gerri is in danger of ending up in the same mental institution as Ivan or Lexa. I don't know what her conditions are like now. But I do know that no child should go through what Lexa has gone through. I know Gerri needs a family now, to help her grow and develop into a person who knows her value. And Lexa and Ivan need families now too, to help restore to them their birthright--to be a son and a daughter, to be loved, to be valued.
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