Imagine you’re out walking one night. The cold wind penetrates your coat and you can see your breath in the air.
As you step forward under the moonlight, you stumble on a newborn baby that has been abandoned, alone and vulnerable, in an alley.
What do you do?
The scenario I laid out might seem improbable, but it’s exactly what happened to Pastor Lee Jong-rak of Seoul, South Korea.
Pastor Lee scooped up the baby, and the baby – and that experience – changed his life.
Since that fateful night, he’s dedicated his life to caring for the most vulnerable children in his community by creating a “baby box” – a warm, safe place where desperate mothers can leave their babies that would have otherwise been abandoned.
So far, more than 500 children have been rescued by Pastor Lee.
Many of the babies who are left in Pastor Lee’s baby box have developmental or physical impediments. To Pastor Lee, though, every human life is sacred and worthy of love.
A Special Movie Event
A 2011 article in the L.A. Times on Pastor Lee eventually caught the attention of a 20-something filmmaker, Brian Ivie. Brian went on to create a documentary that tells Pastor Lee’s story and explores the issues that make baby boxes a sad necessity in today’s broken world. Brian came to Christ as he worked on the film and saw the depth and sincerity of Pastor Lee’s Christian walk.
Brian’s movie, “The Drop Box,” went on to win awards at film festivals – but he hadn’t settled on someone to help him distribute his film. He was holding out for a group of people who shared his heart for the orphaned children Pastor Lee saved.
As providence would have it, some members from our films team met Brian while on work travel in Los Angeles. As they spoke with Brian, it soon became evident that Focus on the Family would be the perfect distributor for this special film. As Brian later explained, “I knew Focus wasn’t afraid to stand up for every life, and for the Gospel.”
And so “The Drop Box” would be the second in our Reclamation Series of video documentaries. (“Irreplaceable” was our first film.) We’re praying this movie will help raise awareness about Pastor Lee and his important work, and about the more than 150 million orphans worldwide. That figure includes about 100,000 children waiting for adoptive families in the U.S. foster care system.
Today is the world premiere of this important film.
We’re debuting “The Drop Box” tonight at the Gwinnett Performing Arts Center near Atlanta to a sold-out crowd. We’ll be releasing the film to U.S. audiences as a theater event across the nation for three nights only on March 3, 4, and 5, 2015 (March 4 and 5 in Canada).
You can learn more about our special movie event by visiting www.thedropboxfilm.com. In the meanwhile, please pray for our work leading up to March’s international release. Please pray God would use “The Drop Box” to help viewers understand the incredible value of every life is.
Please also consider “liking” The Drop Box’s Facebook page and sharing the trailer via your social media channels.
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