Religion that God our Father accepts as pure and faultless is this: to look after orphans and widows in their distress and to keep oneself from being polluted by the world. James 1:27
Imagine you are a 7 year old Ukranian boy living in a remote part of that country. Your mother was killed by a robber and your father also died at a young age of health issues. Your aging grandparents are financially able to care for one child but not two. So they decide to raise your baby sister and trust that the Lord will make provision for you in the school/orphanage that the government runs.
What does your future hold? By the time you get out of the orphanage, it is likely your grandparents will be dead or incapable of helping you. Will you live on the street? Sell drugs? Be a petty criminal? Be a prostitute? The future was bleak.
Sometime in 2010 God put it in the heart of the Funk family in Roanoke Virginia to investigate hosting a Ukranian orphan. The Christian ministry they found, NEW HORIZONS FOR CHILDREN, http://www.newhorizonsforchildren.org/ has a program where the orphan comes to visit your family for a month over Christmas when the orphanage is “closed.” It is kind of a first step and the hope is that many of the children will end up being adopted by a loving, Christian family. So last December, Stas flew to the United Stated and to our neighbor’s home for a month.
God must have handpicked Stas for the Funks and the Funks for Stas. In their Christmas photo, which I took, Stas even looked like a Funk! I would show the Christmas photo card to friends who did not know this family and ask them which child was the orphan from the Ukraine and everyone guessed wrong!
Stas found an immediate place in the hearts of the all the Funks, even their two dogs. The family’s love for Stas was God given. God’s love for Stas was so real and powerful that it transcended the complete language barrier.
Fast forward to August 2011. Dave and Darcy Funk traveled to Ukraine for three weeks negotiating the legal system and complex system of hoops to jump through. The partnered with an adoption agency (email Darcy Funk at [email protected] for more details). Dave and Darcy Funk got to meet Stas’ grandparents and sister. They paid the adoption agency a lot of money that they and many friends had raised. While the grandparents were sad to see Stas leave Ukraine, they came to realize that the Funks loved Stas deeply and that the Lord was opening the door to bless Stas. In true agape love they agreed it was the right thing to let him be adopted by the Funks. The Funks had to return to Ukraine 10 days later for the final court hearing and to pick up their new son. Stas is here. Stas FUNK. Has a nice ring to it, huh?
Is God calling you to adopt an orphan? Host a child or foster child? Before you say a quick “NO,” you might want to pray about it.
Quigg Lawrence is the Senior Pastor at Church of the Holy Spirit located at 6011 Merriman Road in Roanoke. Visit them on the web at www.coths.org
