foster care

Orphan Care and the Community

Kirsten P.1 Comment

How caring for the orphan doesn’t have to mean adoption for every family.

I have known for a long time that my call to care for the orphan would include adoption. It was hard being 16 and wanting to adopt because I knew that I would have to wait… several years. When I turned 18 I stared exploring adoption as a single (and very young) woman. It was difficult to realize that the best course of action for both myself and a child would be to wait, wait until I was older and wait until I could offer a home, a mother, and a father.

What I learned at 18 was that I was in no way ready to adopt but that didn’t mean I couldn’t still care for the orphan. Orphan care can look like a lot of different things. It can look like welcoming a foster kid into your home, or it can be babysitting for a family with a foster child so they can have a break for a few hours. It can look like teaching a kid who grew up with out a present father how to change a tire or the oil and what biblical manhood looks like. It looks like inviting someone over for dinner whose mom has passed and showing them what family can look like. It can als looks like giving monthly to support a child who lives in another country. It can be supporting a families who live overseas and who are caring for orphans. Orphan care can be giving monetarily or helping fundraise for a family who is pursuing adoption.

The definition of an orphan is “one deprived of some protection or advantage” or “a child deprived by death of one or both parents” by the Merriam Webster dictionary. I think there is a reason why God commands us to care for the orphan rather than adopt the orphan. There are things that we are commanded to do in the bible that we cannot do as a single person, it requires the community of Christ to strive for the same thing together. I believe that this is how we should view adoption.

We believe that our number one purpose for living is to bring glory to God every day with our actions, our words, and our hearts. We can do this through marriage, through our family, through our work, and through ministry. We do not value orphan care above caring for the needy, seeking justice, caring for the widow, or spreading the gospel, but we do feel a strong calling that this is what God has for us. We believe that we will bring glory to God through this adoption and through discipling a child.

The whole purpose of this post is to explain our vision and to ask you to help us raise the funds for adoption. We don’t ask for your help in this way just because we need funds, we ask you to come along side us in this and fulfill your call to care for the orphan. You may not be in a season where you can adopt or you may not feel called to adoption but you know that you are called to care for the orphan. This is just one more way that you can advance God’s kingdom and bring glory to Him.

We are also going to ask that you pray for Dillon and I. What I mean by that is that you surround us in prayer over these next couple months and years. We have a God that commands angelic armies and we know that prayer is one the most powerful weapons against sin and brokenness. We are so excited to see how God will stir in the hearts of those around us and how the call to care for the orphan will grow in others. We are also excited to see how God will work in these coming month and want to thank you in advance for your love and generosity.

And let us consider how to stir up one another to love and good … encouraging one another, and all the more as you see the Day drawing near.
Hebrews 10:24-25

The Pegram Adoption

Kirsten P.Leave a comment

I don’t know when the love for adoption started. I feel like it was always a part of me. I remember walking by signs for a fundraiser to help my High School Pastor adopt their second daughter and thinking “that is what I am going to do”.

I always loved adoption and knew that it wasn’t just another way to grow your family. I knew you were talking care of another mother’s baby because she was brave and choose to give her baby a chance at a life she didn’t think she could provide. I learned that adoption was a way of fighting abortion. I learned that these women who carried these children sacrificed so much. I had and have a great respect for adoption and birth mothers.

Again, I don’t remember when I learned that adoption was a part of what it meant to follow Christ. I do remember learning that every Christian is called to care for the orphan, the widow, and the needy. I viewed God’s command to care for the orphan very highly. In high school I spent a lot of time trying to figure out how to fight against abortion, and sex slavery. Learning that fighting for human rights meant fighting for an unborn life, the enslaved life, the mother’s life.

I read Orphanology: Awakening to Gospel-Centered Adoption and Orphan Care by Tony Merida and felt like I was being spoken to personally. Someone had finally sat down and written a how-to, why-to, what-to on orphan care. Orphan care isn’t just adoption. Adoption didn’t just have to be what you did when you couldn’t have children. Orphan care can be opening your home to kids who only have one parent. It can be sending more to sponsor a child overseas. It can be teaching a boy who doesn’t live with his dad how to change a tire or treat a woman respectfully. It can be helping raise money for a couple trying to adopt. It can be taking care of a foster care child for a little bit while their parent’s figure out how they can parent well. The opportunities are endless.

Orphan care has been a priority to me for as long as I can remember. As I have grown in the Lord and learned more I have come to see that it can fit into my life no matter the season I am in. The love and desire to adopt has never faded in me, it has changed over the years but I always wanted it to be a part of my story. I just never imagined that this is how my story would go. Thanks be to a God who is bigger than my plans, imagination, and desires.

“Religion that is pure and undefiled before God the Father is this: to visit orphans and widows in their affliction, and to keep oneself unstained from the world.”

– James 1:27