DELHI, March 9, 2012 (LifeSiteNews.com) – Four-year-old Kyle Morlock may not be alive today were it not for the intercession of a compassionate nurse, a network of Christian missionaries, and above all, the courage of a young woman who had come to India prepared to do whatever God asked of her.
Kyle’s biological mother hailed from a remote Indian village hundreds of miles from the hospital where he was born. She was pregnant out-of-wedlock, and her family wanted no part of the shame that comes with that status. They told her to leave until the pregnancy was over, and to come back without the baby. The country’s trash dumpsters were a common fate for such children.
The young mother chose to go to the city of Kalimpong, where she gave birth to a three-and-a-half pound baby boy at the local hospital. Not far away, an American missionary was about to get a phone call that would change her life. A nurse at the hospital wanted to save the little boy, and when she contacted some Christian missionaries, they gave her a name: Becky Morlock.
The nurse was not looking for an institution to put the baby in. Few of India’s crowded children’s homes had the staff or the facilities to care for a newborn. She knew there was a good chance that this baby, most likely born so tiny due to inadequate prenatal care, would not survive such conditions. She was looking, instead, for a mother. She wanted to know: would Becky take this child as her own?
“As soon as I got the call, I just had this peace come over me that this was why God brought me to India and this was what I was supposed to do,” Becky told LifeSiteNews.com in an interview.
The New Jersey native had come to India with the intention of working at a children’s home in the foothills of the Himalayas, and perhaps assisting unwed mothers. She arrived with a special package that she thought was destined for an Indian mother who would cross her path. The package contained baby supplies which, she says, God told her to buy in a dream.
At the time, she never imagined the baby carrier and clothing she brought with her from the United States would be the items she needed herself.
“You just don’t go to another country and expect to be given a baby,” she laughs.
While she didn’t expect such a dramatic request, Becky says she had a sense all along that God was asking something more from her than just her work at the children’s home. She didn’t know what it was, but she told friends that she was praying for God to prepare her for something, and to open doors.
Becky had been in India only a month when she got the phone call that answered her prayers. Her response to the nurse in Kalimpong was unfaltering. Yes, she would take him.
She made the drive early the next morning, so early a friend had to pick her up because the taxis were not running yet. Once there, she was greeted by the sight of a third-world hospital.
“The maternity ward was a mess,” she recalls. “Overcrowded. Women practically going into labor on mats on the wooden floor. Blood all over the place. Really dirty.”
Amidst the squalor was a young Indian woman attempting to feed warmed cow’s milk on a spoon to her newborn. The baby was naked, unbathed, and wrapped in dirty blankets when Becky took him into her arms. It was love at first sight.
“From the first moment I held Kyle in my arms, this sense of peace and love came over me and I just knew, ‘this is my son,’” she says.
The two women sat and talked for a few moments, prayed together, then walked outside. The Indian woman arranged with Becky to sign the adoption papers at a later date, said goodbye, and pulled away in a taxi as Becky watched, clutching her newborn son. Tears were streaming down her face.
“I was thinking about the fact that I had just become a mother, and I was thinking about her and what it must be like for her to just walk away like that, and how she must be feeling,” she remembers.
That was 2008. Finally, four years later, Becky and Kyle will be coming home to the United States next week. They have spent the intervening time in a tiny one bedroom apartment in Delhi, dependent on the financial support of Becky’s church because she has been legally unable to work. Her full time job, besides being Kyle’s mother, has been fighting for the right to bring him into the U.S.
Because their story was no “cookie cutter” adoption case that Indian courts and U.S. immigration usually deal with, it was, in a nutshell, a bureaucratic nightmare.
She recalls one immigration representative telling her during a video conference: “All the documents are there, it’s just not in the order that we usually see, so we don’t know what to do with that.”
“It seems like if they haven’t seen a situation like this, they just deny it right away. They don’t really know how to think outside the box,” Becky says.
It took eight months just to find competent Indian lawyers willing to take their case, and two years to obtain legal guardianship. Kyle had turned three before a verdict was issued, and according to U.S. Immigration, he could not have a Visa until he had lived in India under Becky’s legal guardianship for another year.
Meanwhile, Becky has been forced to navigate the challenges of being a single mother in a third world country. Getting by in a tiny apartment in Delhi was “really daunting” for the new mother, who says she’s not too keen on cities to begin with – much less one where modern conveniences are few and far between.
Safety concerns kept them trapped inside much of the time, where they have no washer, dishwasher, or oven, and unreliable electricity sometimes left them without heat in the winter.
Today, their saga is almost over: U.S. Immigration has issued Kyle a Visa, and they are readying to fly home. While Becky says she’s eager to return home to loved ones and familiar surroundings, she says she nonetheless treasured all the one-on-one time with her son.
She wants any family who is considering adoption or who has begun the process to know that “it’s really hard but really, really worth it.”
“God’s heart is just totally for adoption,” she said. “If anyone is thinking about it or in the middle of it and feeling discouraged or frustrated, just be encouraged because it totally is worth it and God does make a way where there is seemingly no way.”
Becky’s church, New Covenant Community in New Jersey, continues to maintain the fund that has supported Becky and Kyle for the past four years. Tax-deductible contributions will go towards travel, legal fees, and other final expenses. Anyone who would like to contribute can send a check made out to New Covenant Community Church with “Becky Morlock” or “INDIA” in the memo. The mailing address is New Covenant Community Church, c/o Becky Morlock-missions, 701 New Hampshire Ave., Somers Pt. NJ, 08244, USA. An online giving option is available here. Click on WEB GIVING. And put “INDIA-MISSIONS” in the “notes” box under “Tithing Information.” Paypal donations can be made using Rebecca’s email address, bringbeckyandkylehome (at) gmail (dot) com.