Pat Lee’s mission to help others through adoption and relief started with her own calling from God to adopt.

“My husband and I have 10 children,” Pat says. “Four were homemade, five were internationally adopted and one came to spend the night and never left.”

God first called Pat to adopt in 1973 and there were no international adoption agencies in the area. Pat was told to adopt an older child. God was specific about the child he wanted Pat and her husband to have.

“We went to DHR and told them we wanted to adopt a child — an older child,” she says. “They suggested we attend counseling and told us we didn’t need to adopt anymore children because we already had four. I continued to pray about this and someone suggested Catholic Social Services to me.”

This organization got her closer to her answer, but little did she know, she would have to do her research and adopt an international child.

“Catholic Services usually deals with infants, but the director called me a few weeks after our initial meeting and told me she couldn’t stop thinking about us,” Pat says. “She told us to try international adoptions. There were no computers, no programs and no one knew how to go about it. It was basically reading magazine articles and making phone calls.”

In 1975, Pat and her husband came home with their first adopted child from Vietnam.

Of course, people in the area began to ask Pat about international adoptions. An adoption support group was formed by those who had adopted and Pat was writing the newsletter for the group.

“This newsletter ended up in someone hands in Atlanta at a drug conference and I was given contact information for a man from Bolivia,” Pat said. “Long story short, I traveled to Bolivia and it was the first orphanage I worked in. Sure enough the kids were starving to death and had running sores; no shoes or underwear. We went and bought a bushel of apples and the children ate everything — stem, core and all.”

Pat started a sponsorship for the children and also starting a fund to buy milk for the babies.

She also noticed the hospitals weren’t much help to those hurt; it didn’t have any medicine. If you were hurt in Bolivia and needed to be in the hospital, you had to bring your own medicine. Pat worked closely with Thomas Hospital to get old — but still good — machines for the hospitals. All seemed to be well, until Pat received a call from Catholic Social Services saying the Bolivian government was looking for her.

“I thought, ‘Holy moly,’” Pat says. “I was scared. I had the CIA investigate me not long before because I was traveling in and out of the country so much. Thankfully I had a drug administration guy speak up for me. I was not bringing drugs out of the country, just in to help.”

The government told Pat they had been watching her the past six years and felt she was in the country for the right reasons. They asked her to start placing the orphaned children for adoption.

“I was doing 100 percent relief; I told them I would have to pray about it,” Pat says. “I got in touch with the state of Alabama to start an agency.”

In 1988, Pat officially opened an organization to place children for adoption. Since then, she has placed over 1,800 children. Pat says she had no idea when she adopted her first child she was going to be working in this area almost 40 years later.

In addition to working in Bolivia, Pat works in India a great deal. Every June, they travel to south India. Last June, they began to remodel the common room of a girls orphanage. The common room was used for sleeping, eating, school and church on Sundays.

“I felt like God was calling me to do something for these children,” Pat says. “We brought some of the money last summer and bought bunk beds, mattresses, lanterns and things for the walls. The girls will move into the room in December.”

Don’t think Pat’s work stops there.

She also works with a team and cares for members in the leper colony outside of town.

“I’m taking the team back next year and I’m going to teach a clinic about how to take care of themselves, providing them with all the items to take care of their wounds,” Pat says. “They don’t have fingers, toes, feet and hands, but they are the most joyful people you can imagine. They don’t have the proper knowledge or resources to care for themselves. That’s where we come in.”

Pat works to build and repair boys and girls homes in India, puts in water purifications around the world and has started a widow program in India.

There is no such thing as too much help, and Pat just keeps on giving.

Children of the World

Children of the World is a Christ-centered, full-service, nonprofit adoption and relief agency. This organization is licensed by the Alabama Department of Human Resources to place children within the state of Alabama, and through the Interstate Compact, it can place children in every state in the United States. Children of the World can also place children with U.S. citizens living abroad.