PK Ministry Webs / IGAO
Tuesday, September 07, 2010
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Our Kids"...But his delight is in the law of the Lord... He will be like a tree planted by rivers of water…" Psalms 2-3
The Bible
(PowerPoint Presentation) Below are pictures of some of the children who have been adopted through IGAO.
The following letter was written by one of our adoptive families that have shared their journey in adoption.
To Melissa,
"I am an adoptive mom of Sasha, a friend of Misha’s from the orphanage.
I just wanted to encourage you and your family. Sasha has similar medical issues and came from the same orphanage. He was a little younger than Misha when we adopted him. We know that adopting an older child is very challenging, so we wanted to encourage you. After three years, we know that God had purposed for our whole family to grow to be like Christ through this process. We realize now what a gift God has given us. We didn’t always feel that way. I hope you don’t mind hearing a bit of our story. We knew that God brought Sasha into our lives. We also believed that God’s Will would be for us to care for this orphan boy who was placed on our doorstep. I immediately felt a type of love for Sasha (not the same strong emotion as I felt for my natural born children). It might have been closer to pity. I knew that God could grow my heart--- after all He asks us to love our enemies and those that might be unlovable! He was certainly powerful enough to help me love Sasha (difficult as it seemed at times). Through other adoptive parents, books, etc. I learned that this would take years to develop. It helped me to know that it wasn’t going to be immediate. I needed to think long term. I knew that I needed to pray each day for God’s love and keep trying to love him through his stubbornness, lying, cheating, stealing, disobedience, immaturity, anger, and attitude. God reminded me that Sasha was coming from a complete different culture and language, religious system, never been in a family, had been raised by his peers, never felt loved before, physically and emotionally abused, abandoned by his parents, and handicapped! (Sasha used to call himself “trashcan” because he felt that people just threw him away) These orphan kids have a long road to understand Christ’s love for them and our love for them. Sasha would go through cycles of wanting our love and then rejecting us. Even knowing God’s purpose and will, sometimes we just wanted our old life back. Our selfish desires would take over and think “why did we do this” and “this is just too hard”. Well, we knew that this thinking was NOT from the Lord. The Lord tells us that if we want to save our life, we must lose it. We must take up His cross and Follow Him. We had to just cling to the Lord during this whole process (and still do). I’m so glad that God gave us the strength to continue and we trusted Him to grow us and Sasha. I would never trade this experience and growth for anything. We have peace knowing we walked in God’s will---- he was our encouragement and strength. I so desperately wanted the Lord to find me faithful with what He had given me (and still do). I can’t do it on my own strength though. I KNOW that I need Him. It takes time to integrate these children in our family. Our own children suffer initially from all the time it takes. The road seemed so hard at times. We even went to a Christian counselor for a little while to help with some issues. Other people in our life did not seem to understand how we could struggle. I can see the fruit of this “suffering” in my children. I see how they have hearts for handicapped children and compassion for others! They want to adopt children some day. It has helped them to think of things more eternal than their short/temporary thinking. It’s a beautiful and difficult journey. I want to encourage you that God is faithful--- He will bring beauty from ashes. We look forward to seeing how God will continue to grow us through this. God Bless you! Jacque Escue Roanoke, Texas
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