Mariah Gossett
speaker
292 appearances
2 recordings
1 series
first heard Jan 2025
last heard 19 Jun
Mariah Gossett’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
Trend
recordings per month · last 12 monthsRecordings per month over the last 12 months — 1 in all, peaking in Jun 2026 with 1.
Appearances
So again, they looked on their website and even today they have, you can go online and make a gift, but then you can also designate it for specific missionaries. And from what I understand, too, is that a lot of times you can, you know, home church, you can kind of send money to support missionaries.
But it is interesting that in these days when, you know, she was in Zambia, fundraising was second nature to her. And it's certainly something that we do see throughout the entirety of this case as more and more fundraisers start to emerge.
It's important to note that Sophie began the adoption process prior to Zambia joining the Hague Convention, which puts into place kind of stricter standards around inter-country adoptions. But prior to the Hague Convention, here are just a few things that needed to be in place and requirements. So the first is that the child has to be fostered for three months.
The second is that the adopting parent has to be 25 years old and at least 21 years old older than the child. Another criteria is demonstrating adequate finances. So think if you're a missionary, right? That could be a little hard. Finally, there has to be an acceptable home study.
So the other thing that was really interesting to note from the guidelines are that and it says prospective adoptive parents should be aware that not all children in orphanages or children's homes are adoptable.
In many countries, birth parents place their children temporarily in an orphanage or children's home due to financial or other hardship, intending that the child returns home when it becomes possible. In such cases, the birth parents have rarely relinquished their parental rights or consented to their children's adoption.
And I make note of this because in the memoir, Sophie talks about needing to wait for paperwork and there was twin girls that she thought that she was going to be able to adopt, but lo and behold, they didn't have the file and the file got lost. And Sophie goes into kind of this tailspin of questioning the Zambian social workers and administrators, the veracity of their claim.
And also pondered at some point if they, you know, if the file was really lost or if they just were trying to bribe her for more money. So from what it sounds like is in this case, it could have been that, yeah, there wasn't paperwork to actually determine whether or not their true orphan status. It could have been a situation where the parents had put the child in a children's home temporarily.
in the hopes of taking them back. So I just think it's important, especially when we think of orphanages, we think of 100% total abandonment. But in this case, really, I think it points to the fact that it's more of what we understand perhaps as a foster care system.
But she gives a very interesting summary of how it happened. But she said, this case was an incredibly unique situation due to my age and to the Zambian situation. adoption laws requiring a prospective adoptive parent to be 25 years old and 21 years older than the child being adopted.
After eight unfavorable court hearings and an agonizing battle of four years, with an absolute determination to uphold proper ethics while fighting for the best interests of my daughter, on May 7th, 2015, the law was legally bypassed. Ella's adoption was finalized. Yeah. Yeah, just like just illegally and ethically.
I was like, that's just an interesting way to summarize it.
Showing 281–292 of 292 · page 15 of 15
← Previous