Advocating for Children with Special Needs with Brady Murray

0:00Welcome to the Open Adoption Project. This is episode 73. We're the Nelsons. I'm Shaun. And I'm Lanette. Today, we have an episode all about special needs adoption. And it's a really beautiful episode. We are excited to be talking to the founder of Rod's Heroes. His name is Brady, and he is an adoptive dad. He's really genuinely invested in helping kids who need families find families. So, we wanted to start this episode off with just talking briefly about the history of

0:34international adoption, because that's a theme in this episode. So recently, the last few years, international adoption has been decreasing. But the beginning of international adoption started in about the 1950s with the Holt family. And they were an evangelical couple in Eugene, Oregon, which is where I'm from. I had no clue about any of this. Shout out to the hometown. I guess. I didn't even know. And they began sending supplies to Korea to help children who were orphaned by the Korean

1:05War and eventually this like spurred an act in Congress to create legal framework for international adoption. And they ultimately founded the first adoption agency for international adoption in the United States. Who knew? I shouldn't say that. We should have known. So this really set the legal and cultural groundwork for international adoption for years to come after that. And so international adoption increased for quite a while, reaching its highest point in 2004.

1:35I think there were about 23,000 adoptions that year. And it's been declining since then. So in 2008, the Hague Convention was established. At this point, there was quite a bit of corruption and coercion, exploitation among adoptions happening internationally. And different countries recognized that there were some issues that needed to be taken care of. So this large group of multi-countries came together creating the Hague Convention where

2:06they established some international law around international adoption so that it would be better for the adoptee. Making sure that adoptive parents had more training, making sure that things were more transparent and above board as much as possible. Yeah, really making it more child-centric, right? So really, over time, it's become a lot more understood and clear that it's in the best interest of children often to preserve families if possible or keep a child within their birth

2:41culture. But that's not always possible, right? And so international adoption is usually seen as kind of a last resort for children who would otherwise not be able to find families. Yeah, we've had a lot of international adoptees and some that have had really great experiences and some that have had really difficult experiences. We're not trying to establish what is right and what is wrong. Yeah, yeah, I think it's really important just to recognize that it's a complicated thing. There are lots of different stories.

3:12But today's episode, we're going to be talking about different situations where children would have remained institutionalized if not for adoption, right? And I really like the thought that when you're building your family, there's this ideal and you can picture things just being so picture perfect. But in the reality, it's never like that, whatever your path is toward growing your family. But for prospective adoptive parents, I think it's just really important to remember that

3:44if we stay informed and educated, then we can really make this a good experience for the children, right? Or it's child centric where we're focused on helping to improve situations. Yeah, as we were preparing for this episode, doing a little bit more research, we learned that around the world, there are nearly 8 million children in orphanages. And we knew that the number was large, but maybe not not quite that large.

4:14And despite more than 90% of them having at least one living parent, they're still in an orphanage. So it's a huge number of children in orphanages, but also most of them aren't orphans. Yeah. Yeah. So perhaps their parents can't care for them correctly right now, or there's extenuating circumstances that the child just can't be in the home, so they're in an orphanage. And special needs children are overwhelmingly part of these institutions, and often they

4:47remain in those institutions for life, because the countries that they're in and the facilities they're in just don't have the resources to give them proper and adequate care. So that's really why there's such a large advocacy for international adoption of special needs children. Yeah. So we're super excited for this interview that we have with Brady. He does share about international adoption. He does talk a lot about special needs adoption, and he is really fun to talk to. Yeah. Such a nice good guy.

5:17So all right. So we're going to jump in now to Shaun's conversation with Brady. We are now on the podcast with Brady Murray. Brady, thank you so much for being with us. Yeah. Great to be here. Excited to be able to visit about a topic that I'm very passionate about. Awesome. Well, help us get to know you just a little bit. Help our listeners get to know you. Yeah. So I would say start from the beginning. I would say I am a byproduct of the budding metropolis of Preston, Idaho.

5:51I grew up in tiny southeast Idaho, was fortunate to live in that amazing place and have some great memories from there. I've been happily married now for 21 years. We've been blessed with seven amazing kids, three of which are adopted. And we hope by the end of this year, we'll have four more. We're in the process of adopting a group of four siblings from Columbia. So that will give us 11, which is a lot. They don't make a lot of vehicles that fit that big of a family out there.

6:23I can find anyways. Yeah, that's true. Well, I'm sure we'll jump into more of the specifics on that. I'm so curious. We know that you have a couple of different touch points with adoption personally, professionally with your family. So let's just kind of start with your story. How has adoption been part of and how has adoption weaved itself into Brady Murray's story of life? Yeah, absolutely.

6:53I actually was born Brady Gomez. And so my mother, Elaine Whitmore, and my father, Danny Gomez were married at a young age. And as oftentimes is the case with new young married couples, it unfortunately didn't work out and they were divorced when I was around two years old. And then my mom later remarried a man by the name of Reed Murray, who immediately just treated me as his son and took me in and helped me to grow and coached all my baseball and

7:27soccer and football teams. It was just an incredible father. And I was fortunate to be adopted by him, my stepfather, when I was 13 years old. That's when I became Brady Murray. Something that's unique about my story though is I've got a wonderful relationship with both my adoptive father and my birth father. And so I consider myself one of the lucky few that has a relationship with two fathers and just love and appreciate both of them.

8:00Awesome. So you mentioned in your introduction that three of your seven children were adopted. Do you want to share a little bit about that thus far? And then we'll talk about where your road is leading in the potential adoption of these four others. Yeah, absolutely. So we were blessed to have four biological children. Brinley, my daughter, who is 16. Actually, she's 17 now.

8:31My goodness. Then we've got Nash, who is 15. And my son, who is Nash, actually has Down syndrome. So we found out he has Down syndrome after he was born. And that was a tremendous, tremendous blessing for our family. And then we have Ridge, who is 13, and Mason, who is eight. And so those are our four biological kids. And in 2016, we added Cooper, who is a little boy from China that we adopted, who also has

9:03Down syndrome. We adopted him when he was four. And he's 11 now. So pretty incredible to be able to see that. And then a number of years ago, maybe four or five years ago, probably five years ago, Andrea felt strongly that we should do foster care. And that was not something that I was honestly super open to. In fact, I was quite against it. But with some time and with some active patience, I would say, by Andrea, and encouragement for me to really search my soul and why I would consider this, I really had a change

9:38of heart. And we went for it and became foster parents. We fostered our two little girls for three years before we had the chance to be able to adopt them. And that was a tremendous blessing in relation to getting to know their birth mother and having a relationship with her. And we still have a great relationship with her. And so that gave us our lucky number seven right there. Awesome. That's wonderful. And it all comes together in unexpected ways.

10:10I'm sure that obviously there are there's so many aspects of that, those stories that we could dive so deep into. But so now you're this family of seven and we are looking at adoption again. Tell us how you got to that point and maybe a little bit about this particular experience. Yeah, of course. So after Ash was born, so that's our son who's 15 that has Down syndrome. We got really involved in the Down syndrome community and we learned over a decade ago

10:42that it's not uncommon for a child when born with Down syndrome or another special need that they are immediately abandoned and left. In the case of our son, Cooper, he was found on a street corner in Tianjin, China, a city of 16 million people. When they guesstimate he was six months old. And so when we learned about what happens with these children and knowing just our son Nash, who is our flesh and blood and just an amazing young man, we felt super called

11:14to help. And so in 2012 we founded the nonprofit organization Racing for Orphans with Down Syndrome or RODS Heroes as it's now called, short for acronym for Racing for Orphans with Down Syndrome to be able to advocate for kids that have Down syndrome and other special needs that need a family. And so it was through this advocacy over the last decade that we've been able to travel internationally multiple times, be able to go in country and meet children that are there,

11:46be able to interview those children, capture amazing content about these children, to tell their story with the hopes that we'll be able to inspire a family to be able to answer that call to be able to adopt. And it was actually on one of our projects in Columbia this last year that we flew into Bogota and we got on another plane and flew all the way to Paso, which is the very southern end of Columbia. We went there and spent a week there and traveled all around into some pretty extreme rural

12:19areas in that part of the country. And we went to this one area where there was a group of siblings that we were supposed to go meet. We knew that there was four kids. We were aware of their story and Columbia was really pushing for us to go and get their stories so we can try and hopefully have them find a family. When we met them, you could just tell these were special, special kids, ages 16, 14, 11, and nine, two boys, two girls, very close sibling group.

12:51And there was significant urgency around this because they were literally running up against the clock of being separated as a sibling group and not being able to stay together. And so we came home, we made great content of them and started to advertise that and promote that to our network. And we had probably close to a dozen families come forward and say, like, we are interested in adopting these four kids. And we kept advocating and advocating and one by one those families fell off.

13:21Those families fell off. And it was actually right here in this office, Andrea and I early one morning were studying and just thinking, man, the feeling came over us that we should consider adopting again, which was definitely out of our comfort zone. We had just finalized our adoption of our two little girls a month before that. And so it was jumping out of the frying pan and fire. But we knew what that feeling was. We knew where that was coming from and why we were feeling that.

13:56And we knew the experiences that we had when we followed that feeling. And so we talked about it. And honestly, I did not have in my mind to adopt these siblings. I was thinking more of like, OK, we'll adopt a child from Colombia because we've met amazing kids. And then Andrea suggested that we consider adopting that sibling group. And I'm like, holy smokes, that's a lot of kids. But as you do when you make those important decisions, we took the time and we did what

14:32we do and we make those decisions and it just felt right. And so we went for it. And that was in August, September timeframe. And here we are now in January. We're hoping to have them home by August of this year. That's our goal. One year goal. That is wonderful. So what type of contact are you able to have with them now? What does the what does that look like between now and then? Yeah, this was a unique scenario because we when we met them, we were not thinking we

15:04were going to adopt them by any means. We're just, you know, we're there on our service trip trying to get footage of them. And so we really didn't talk to them about adoption at all. And that's really not something that we would talk to those kids about anyways. We're just there to get to know them. And so it's probably going to be a couple more months before they find out because we have to wait until we're formally matched with them by Columbia. But we are making great progress. Everything's looking great. And I really feel strongly that it's going to work out.

15:36I hope it's going to work out. But it's going to be a fun day. We get to zoom with them and say, Hey, you guys remember us and you want to come to Utah and see how they react? Yeah. Wow. Again, I think we could probably do a whole episode on that. And maybe we'll do one down the road after things pan out and see how things are going. Wonderful. What an amazing family and what an amazing story. Thank you for sharing all that. I'm really curious about your nonprofit, So Rod's Heroes.

16:09Tell me tell us about the origins of that. I think that my mind is going there because I'm an avid marathon runner, a triathlon guy. And so I think that there's some strong ties there. I'd love to know more. Yeah, yeah, that was something that was a, I would say very clearly was a miracle and something that I learned through this experience is that when we allow ourselves to get caught up in a cause bigger than ourselves, that we will witness miracles. And Andrea and I have witnessed many miracles with Rod's Heroes.

16:41How it started was back in 2011, we were very involved in the Down syndrome community. We believe in this concept of serving the pain that we know best. And I know for me, when I found out that my son has Down syndrome, that created very raw emotion for me. And that was a painful exercise and not in a painful bad or painful good. It was just very raw in that emotion.

17:11And I desperately lean into that and be an advocate for other fathers who have children with Down syndrome and other families. And it was through that advocacy that we learned that when children are born with a special need like Down syndrome, they're immediately abandoned in many developing countries. And we saw pictures of kids that were the same age as our son, that were 10 or 15 pounds, four years old, 10 or 15 pounds, just completely deprived of any love, any nutrition.

17:43They were malnourished. They were in essence chained in a bed. And our hearts just went out for them. Like we wanted to help these kids because we knew from experience, in particular with kids who have Down syndrome, these kids have a light and a joy, something I like to call a superpower to be able to bring out the best in other people. And so when we saw this, we thought we've got to help. And so we researched and researched and we found out that there are actually families who are ready and willing to adopt kids that have Down syndrome.

18:16They want to adopt kids that have special needs, but the cost of international adoption is just too much for them to be able to take on. And so they're not able to proceed. So international adoption is, you're probably aware, is close to $40,000 is more than that in many countries. And so Andrea and I thought, 12 years ago, we thought, what if one child, that child, we are able to fundraise, create an adoption grant for that child.

18:50And in a way that is able to be out there for a family to come forward and adopt them. And so we chose a child with the waning. His name's Eli, incredible, incredible young man. And he's four years old. We were able to fundraise for him. We saw a miracle happen that year. We fundraised $20,000 for him. We put that out there to the universe that Eli had an adoption grant. And within 30 days, we had a family that had committed to adopt him. That's after four years, not a single family inquired about him.

19:21We put an adoption ground out there and boom, we have a family committed to him. And so that was kind of the inception and saying, hey, I think we're onto something. And Andrea said, well, let's think of other ways we can fundraise and be able to help these kids. And she said, I got an idea. She said, how about you run an Ironman triathlon for these kids, try and raise funding and awareness. I looked at her and I'm like, why don't you run an Ironman triathlon for these kids? And truth be known, I had dabbled in triathlons up to that point and had done some smaller

19:56triathlons and had aspired to do a full Ironman. But that seemed like such a hard and far thing and something I was just not capable of. And I thought about that for a couple of days. And I thought, you know what? If me doing an Ironman meant that we could get one of these kids home, I'm going to go for it. And my paradigm shifted because everything that I was focused on before in say triathlon

20:29was so I could get a medal or a t-shirt that said I was a finisher or hear my name say, Brady Murray, you are an Ironman and you cross the finish line. Those were kind of my motivations. And I realized that only got me so far. But when I allowed myself to get caught up in this cause for these other kids, that just changed my paradigm. So that was kind of the inception of the idea behind racing for orphans with Down syndrome. I love that.

20:59I love that. Oh, man. So many questions, so many things to talk about. But let's maybe shift gears a little bit and thinking about a potential adoptive family who's thinking about adopting a child with special needs. What are some of the things they need to consider before making that step? Yeah, something I've thought about a lot.

21:30The first thing that I would say is mom and dad need to be on the same page. And all too often I see that in most cases, mom is 100% on board and dad's not. And I know that was the case for Andrea and I. I believe that's the case for a lot of families. And so first things first, in particular, all adoption, but in particular in adopting a child with special needs, mom and dad need to be on board.

22:04And then secondly, the rest of the family needs to be on board with it. And when you have unity, that's going to make that easier because one thing we guarantee is we guarantee it's going to be hard. And we also guarantee it's going to be the most beautiful hard that you've ever experienced. But in those hard moments, and in those moments when you're filling inside like you're wavering, like is this the right decision?

22:35Did we really make the right decision? You can go back to those original moments when you were united and you knew why you were making that decision. And so that's first things first, mom and dad have to be on board and they've got to fill it in their heart like this is what they're supposed to do. Yeah. I love that the most beautiful hard you're going to ever experience. Maybe we can talk a little bit more about maybe some specific struggles that you have faced as a couple and maybe what might help others better understand what it's like.

23:10That's a good question. I would say something that is important is and this is speaking for me and for Andrea, I would say is we look at our adoptions as a team effort. And what I mean by that is it's a team effort between me and Andrea. It's a team effort between our children and it's a team effort between our adoptive children

23:41and their parents. And so you take the example of Cooper. We've never met Cooper's parents. We don't know who Cooper's parents are. We don't know who their family is or who his family is. But in our heart of hearts, we are teammates with them and we are doing this and raising this child that they it's kind of like running a marathon, a relay marathon and like they ran as far as they could and they passed the baton.

24:11And we took that baton from our teammate and we're carrying that baton forward. We remember them and we keep them in our prayers. We remember them. We think about them often. We feel like they're part of our team here in the relationship with our girls. We know their mom and we very much are teammates with Jessica, their mom, and we hope to someday be able to know their dad and also be teammates with their dad. And so I feel like that's a really critical piece and that that's not an easy thing for

24:46a lot of families or parents to do. In particular, in situations where kids come from a trauma type situation, which we have experience with and it's very natural as parents, protective parents, to want to villainize, demonize, to look down upon or to have negative feelings towards these parents who treated this child that you love that is your child, maybe even poorly in certain circumstances.

25:18But I feel very strongly that that's not in the best situation, that not the best case for the child because at the end of the day, that child, that is their parent and we have our relationship as a result of them. And they're part of this team that we're raising this child together on. So that would be something I feel really strongly about that is not always easy, easier said than done in certain circumstances. Yeah. Thank you for sharing that. I've never thought of it in that way, maybe using that metaphor, but with our personal

25:53experiences being connected to our children's biological families, their birth families, it's like this beautiful village and it takes a village to raise a child and it takes a huge village to raise four children. Our kiddos having 16 grandparents that they call grandma and grandpa, being able to just support them and love them in meaningful ways is just an awesome, awesome blessing. But sometimes, I mean, it's a lot to juggle and to make work, but it's totally worthwhile.

26:27That's right. Maybe more specific on the special needs aspect of adoption. What if some of the challenges specifically for you guys have been there? Well, so here's the thing that families will know if they're considering adopting a child with special needs. I'll share a story. When Nash was born, we found out right after that he has Down syndrome. I was pretty emotional and my dad came down and he grabbed me and we went to lunch.

27:01We left the hospital, we went out, it was in the middle of the summer, hot summer day, and we're walking up to the restaurant. I'm only a couple hours now removed from finding out that Nash has Down syndrome, walking into this restaurant. Out of the restaurant walks an elderly couple, like in their 70s, I would say, early 70s. Right behind them was their daughter, who I would guess was in her 40s.

27:32I saw that she had Down syndrome. It hit me then. It really hit home in saying, Nash doesn't move out when he's 18. What I normally thought was those years of retirement and travel and service and whatever may be the vision on that, that changes. That's different now that we've gone down this path of having a child that has special needs.

28:02That is a hard thing for families to first and foremost get their arms around is that this is something that you're signing up for that will literally change the trajectory of your family. Here's the flip side to that. That's one side of the coin. Here's the flip side of that is that this child that you will adopt will impact for the good generations to come. There are children that are unborn that are your future grandchildren that will be blessed,

28:40that will be impacted, that will be better people as a result of your decision to adopt this child. Because these children that have these unique abilities, these superpowers that I say have the ability to impact for the good generations to come. There's two sides of the coin on this for sure. For one, I thought, man, how is that going to work in retirement?

29:11Now 15 years later, I love the thought of having Nash with me in retirement and doing service missions and going on trips and different things. I love the idea of that because of just that light and joy that he brings into my life. As you say that, I think of a former neighbor and a member of our church congregation who had Down syndrome.

29:41He lived into his 60s. Just the impact that he had on our community, he worked at the local grocery store and just thousands of people at his funeral. What good that man did. Yeah, you're absolutely right. I love how you painted that picture that it does affect generations. That's right. To the listener who hasn't decided for sure on adoption, they're weighing the pros and cons.

30:11What advice, what counsel might you share with them? Yeah, that's a great question. That's one of my favorite questions because this is a hard question. This is a hard question to answer. It's a hard question to ask ourselves on we're filling something inside. We know that we felt something inside of us that says you should consider adopting. Everything that has anything to do with logic says you're crazy.

30:44We think why in the world would we do this, especially as men, we immediately go towards the logical side of how am I going to pay for this? How is this going to mess up our family situation? How is this going to work with risks to our other children? What if this kid is messed up? Everything that we naturally think of from a logical standpoint. Here's the thing, has nothing to do with logic. It has everything to do with right and wrong.

31:18Or in other words, are you being asked to do this? And if you're being asked to do this and you know you're being asked to do this, I would counsel and encourage to go forward with faith. I grasp what you're feeling and go for it. Because what the alternative is, is that you feel like maybe this is something that you're supposed to do, but your fear and your logic takes that and makes it so you don't move

31:54forward and you don't proceed with this. And what you miss out on, as I've said before, is generational impact. Going back to the beginning from the standpoint of my own very own life, my father, who didn't look like me, I didn't look like him, this little four-year-old boy that he took under his wing and was able to help him, and that was me.

32:27My dad did that for me. And here I am, 40 years later, and I have dedicated my life to pay it forward because of a man that gave me that chance and gave me that life. And my guess is, is that I've got seven kids that I personally am adopting or have adopted that 40 years from now, my guess is they're going to continue to pay that forward and that that will escalate.

32:57And if my dad would have been fearful and said, how's this going to mess up or what's my neighbor's going to think or what are my parents going to think and but how am I supposed to get my new truck that I thought I was going to get? Because I've now got this little four-year-old boy, if he would have thought in that way and thinking inwardly, what would he have missed out on on what's happening right now? And would these kids that are in Pasto, Colombia, would they be getting a family right now?

33:28And the answer is probably not. And so I really would encourage our listeners that as they contemplate this and they think about this, that they think past tomorrow, they think past the immediate now, and they look into the future as far as they can, because the decision you're making and feeling prompted to do today will impact people you haven't even considered in your life right now.

33:58And that's why I'm so passionate about this. To take it even a step further, I've seen and experienced that children's hearts are turning towards their fathers and that fathers' hearts are turning towards their children and that right now there's literally millions of children that are fatherless and motherless that are part of this amazing gathering and this amazing work that is transpiring right before our eyes.

34:28And we have the opportunity to be a part of it. And all we have to do is take courage and answer the call that we're filling inside of our heart. And that's why I'm so passionate about adoption. Love that. Thank you so much for sharing that. I was going to ask another question and perhaps that answers a lot of it, but how have your perceptions of adoption changed over time or shifted? My goal in life is to try and make, not try and make, my goal in life is to make adoption

35:00cool because you go back a number of years and kids would get adopted and not even know they were adopted ever until they were like adults. Yeah. I've had, we have a situation, you know, with our own family, kind of extended family where like, the lady is in her sixties and just found out that she was adopted and that she didn't know that. And so you go back a number of generations and it was taboo.

35:33You didn't even talk about it. And I know for me in like my childhood, yeah, you could kind of talk about adoption. You definitely didn't have like an open adoption. Like once adoption was done, you never saw, heard, or thought of your prior parents. Whereas right now in my mind, as I shared, this is a team, this is a team effort. And so my goal is to make adoption normalized and cool because right now there's millions

36:04of children without parents. And there are millions of parents that would be amazing adoptive parents if they would just bridge the gap and answer that call. And we know what happens when parents raise children in a loving family and what those children turn out typically to be versus the alternative when a child never has a parent and they end up at age 18 homeless.

36:34Tragic. Yeah, that's a really hard thing to wrap your mind around. Millions of kids in that type of situation. So thinking about your organization and people coming in, considering adopting or partnering with you, what are some of the initial questions that you most often are asked and maybe some of the answers to those questions? Yeah, the biggest question that we have when people hear podcasts that I'm on or they see

37:07the social media posts that we post, they learn about a kid, is they fill in their heart like I want to get involved. How can I get involved? How can I help? And I would say the best way to be able to get involved, the best way to help is to become an unstoppable advocate. Those are the people that are part of Rod's Heroes that are truly making a difference. So what's an unstoppable advocate and how do you become involved as an unstoppable advocate? It's one of three things. Number one, we have individuals that say, I can't adopt and I'm a poor college student.

37:38I don't have any money to be able to donate either. What do I do? And we say, perfect. You can buy the gear. Share the gear. Tell the story. Share these children's social media posts about or about these children because you'd be amazed at how many families we've found from little Johnny who's in his high school English class and posts about a child that we're advocating for and a family sees that and they adopt that child. So be an unstoppable advocate, share it, be a part of the tribe, be part of that tribe.

38:12Number two is this costs money. On average, we are funding between 10 and $15,000 per child that we're advocating for as an adoption grant to help bridge that gap of the cost of adoption, in particular, international adoption. So those individuals who maybe are not adopting or in the space of adopting, yet they're in a place where they can actually help fund and make it possible to bridge the gap for somebody. That's a tremendous way to be able to get involved.

38:43And then number three, the best way, in my opinion, to become an unstoppable advocate is if as you're listening to this, you feel in your heart that maybe as crazy as that sounds, maybe our family should consider adoption. I would encourage you to take courage on that. Absolutely embrace that. Grab your courage, Wolf, and go forward with this and explore what that might look like. And I get it. Maybe you're going to explore it and it's not a good fit, but at least you'll know.

39:15Whereas those individuals that feel something and shy away from it because maybe they're a little bit fearful, you'll never know. You'll never know the impact that you could have had on future generations had you just proceeded with that. So that's how people can best get involved. Awesome. So if our listeners are listening to this and they want to know more about your organization, where do we direct them? Where should they go? Absolutely. Best thing to do, you can check us out online at Rods, r-o-d-s dot org.

39:47You can follow me on social media. I'm posting all the time about these kids. BradyMurray21 is my Instagram handle. You can also follow our Rods Heroes Instagram. So that's at Rods Heroes. And that's the best way to get ahold of us is through our direct messages on Instagram and through our website. Okay. Well, we'll put links to all of those in our show notes for this episode. As we wrap up, any other parting words or feelings that you would share with our listeners

40:21that we haven't covered yet today? Yeah, I'm a firm believer that the person we become is determined by the books we read and the people that we surround ourselves with. I've had experiences and I know probably all of us have had experiences that we would just consider absolute tender mercies. Right now is the opportunity that you've been entrusted with to sing the song you were meant to sing. And that song has to do with helping others, whether that's adoption, whether that's in service in some other way in which you've been entrusted with life experiences that

40:54will bless the lives of others. I just encourage you to take charge of that opportunity and move forward because you won't regret it. It's so fun. It's a lot of work, but it sure is rewarding. That is awesome. Well, Brady, thank you so much for being willing to be on the podcast for sharing about your amazing organization. And again, we love to help promote that. And we'll include that in our notes for this episode.

41:24And thank you so much for sharing your personal experiences. And we just, man, we're just really grateful to have you on the show. Thanks so much. Thanks, Shaun. Thank you so much for listening to this episode of the open adoption project. So I was looking at the Rod's Heroes website. It's rods.org and I loved their vision for the future.

41:57I just thought it would be a really good thing to share as we wrap this episode up. So I'm just going to read it just so I'm not putting in my own words and spinning it differently. It says Rod's Heroes ultimate vision for the future is that families, communities and nations will see the light the individuals with special abilities have and will choose to keep these children and allow them to thrive in their home communities. We realize there is much that must transpire before this vision becomes a reality. Our vision for the immediate future is that together with the work of our unstoppable

42:28advocates we are able to find a loving home where every superhero child can thrive and achieve their potential. I loved that. That's really great. And so yes, of course, their goal is to help kids thrive. And that might look different in the future, but I love the work they're doing right now. And I just loved hearing from Brady and his passion for helping these children. Yeah. There were so many parts of the conversation where I just felt uplifted and to just feel

42:58that really good work was happening and really helping individuals. Yeah. Such a good, good organization. Great guy Brady is and just love what they're doing. All right. Well, thank you so much for joining us for this episode and we'll be back in a couple of weeks.

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