I've posted this over here as well. Usually I would just link to it to drive some blog traffic over to The Works of God Displayed, but this is too important to chance one of my readers here missing it because you don't want to click the link. (No hard feelings for that - sometimes I don't want to bother with links either!)
My husband and I plan to adopt. We'll begin that process once we finish renovating our third floor in the next couple years to add a couple additional bedrooms in what is now attic space. And our plan is that we'll adopt either a sibling group of 2-3 children or a child with special needs (and possibly a sibling group with a child with special needs). God may circumvent those plans, which is a-okay with us because we want Him to reign in our lives. He has placed this desire and passion in our hearts and the Bible is clear about God's love for adoption, though, so we expect that our family of four will be growing in that way in a few years' time.
As such, we prayed along with a sweet family from our church last year when they had major challenges cutting through the red tape to bring home their Ugandan daughter Edith. And we rejoiced when she joined the rest of the family almost a year ago!
And we are praying now for the Davis family and sweet Kirill in Russia. The picture to the left, which I found
here, is of Gary and Tesney Davis with Kirill, a sweet boy who they expected to adopt in a court visit on St. Patrick's Day during their second visit to Russia. (He also happens to have Down syndrome.)
Instead, in a part of the world where children with Down syndrome are generally hidden away in institutions,
the judge rejected their petition for adoption on the grounds that his disability made him better suited for an institution than an adoptive family. The Davises were told that they were suitable to adopt in every way and that they would be approved to adopt a "typical" child instead if they wanted.
The thing is, though, that they
want Kirill. They
love Kirill. They already consider him to be part of their family. They posted the two pictures below on their blog, in the same way that I post pictures of our children on our family's blog.
They have experience with young children - Tesney's degree is in early education - and with people with special needs - actively working with several special needs groups in Alabama. In other words, they aren't naive in their desire to adopt a child with a disability.
Before they left Alabama for Russia earlier this month, their four-year-old son Clayton - without prompting from Tesney or Greg - dumped out his toys and separated them into two piles, one for him to keep and one to give to Kirill. Clayton still doesn't know that Kirill might not being coming home with his mommy and daddy, because Tesney and Greg know it would devastate him and because they are still hoping and praying that he
will be coming home.
Right now, they are in the process of appealing to the Supreme Court in Russia, and they expect the date for that will be in the first week or two of April. Two more families who haven't had court dates yet are currently trying to adopt children with Down syndrome from the same part of Russia and are expected to have the same judge that denied Kirill's adoption.
I don't know this family, but I've done enough fact-checking on the case that I feel confident about sharing this with y'all.
(Side note: isn't it sad that I need to fact check for something like this? But I do know that some people takes advantage of others, so - when I heard about this a week ago - I wanted to get more details before I was willing to share it.) As I write and speak about special needs ministry in the church, I'm not talking about one church building or one denomination.
Church, in a biblical sense, is much bigger than that. We don't just
go to church; we - the body of believers in Christ -
are the church.
So please join me in caring about this part of our church body, even though I don't know them and you probably don't either: Pray. Fast. Ask others to pray. Share this information. If you have contacts who you're willing to contact, please do so and/or pass them along to Tesney through the email option on her blog (link below).
And stay informed:
The Facebook page
The Davis family blog, with the specific post about the judge's rejection
here
(And here's another
great post about this from my bloggy friend, Tammy.)
Thank you.
Here's a marvelous update to this story over at my other blog.
I’ll share more details in my next post, but please pray. Pray for Zoe, pray for Taiwan, pray for us. I’ll also be sharing information about specific prayer, financial, and practical support we’d appreciate (