Picker Point
  • Adoption

  • November15th

    You Can Help

    Author: Mary Beth | Posted in: Adoption

    Did you know that November is National Adoption Month? And you can’t think about adoption without thinking about orphans. Although I wish that all of the 140 million orphans in the world would be adopted into permanent, loving homes, the reality is that most of these children will grow up in some kind of orphanage system. I’ve been to several orphanages in Romania and know that many of them do not come close to meeting children’s needs, and when the children finally age out of the orphanage they are left with nothing: no skills, no connections, no friends.

    Children’s HopeChest is a ministry that seeks to unite churches with orphanages, and they have recently started work in Ethiopia! Through orphan sponsorship they address five major areas of need: spiritual, physical, educational, medical, and emotional. Children’s HopeChest usually works with physical congregations in the U.S., but, to kick off their Ethiopian program, they are starting an online community of believers to sponsor an orphanage in Ethiopia. This is the perfect opportunity for those of us who are not able to participate through our churches to get involved.

    Since we have decided to adopt our little boy from Ethiopia, Casey and I have felt God calling us to a lifetime commitment to Ethiopia. We’re not exactly sure what that is going to look like, but we are committing to be involved in this sponsorship, and we are praying, praying for these children, for their families, for their nation.

    When I watch this video of these beautiful orphans in Ethiopia, I can’t help but think of Caleb, of my nephew and niece, and my nephew or niece on the way, the sweet little children in my Bible class, and all of Caleb’s little friends. What would happen to them if all of their parents were wiped out by a terrible epidemic and famine? I have no idea; I only pray that God would provide for them through His people.

    Would you consider joining us in sponsoring one of Ethiopia’s orphans? The cost is $34 a month per child, starting in January ’09, and they are asking you to make a three year commitment. If you are interested, you can find more information here. I know this is short notice, but they would like to hear from you by Monday, Nov. 17. Please consider reaching out to an orphan in this way.

  • November3rd

    Recent Happenings

    Author: Mary Beth | Posted in: Adoption, Home Life & Family, Travel

    We haven’t posted much in the last several weeks, so I thought I would post a Picker Family Update. October was a very busy month for us, and now that it is finally over, we are spending the next few days lying on the couch, trying to recuperate.

    In mid-October, Casey tore his Achilles’ tendon while playing basketball with some buddies. The next weekend we were supposed to go to Chicago with Allan and Lindsay to visit Billy. After several doctors appointments, the doctor determined that Casey’s tendon was completely torn and gave him permission to go on the trip, provided he wear his walking boot and schedule surgery for a few days after we came home.

    So we were able to go on our trip as planned. We were so glad to see Billy since it had been almost three months since we had seen his face. We all had a great time seeing all the sights in Chicago, and Casey was able to hobble around with his walking boot. While we were in Chicago we took the opportunity to try our first Ethiopian food. I’m not really much for any kind of ethnic food, unless you consider Tex-mex ethnic, so I was a little skeptical about whether I would like it or not. I have to admit that it was better than I thought it would be. All the food is served on Injera, which is a pancake-like sourdough bread. We tried several different entrees which included chicken, beef, and lamb dishes. Overall, it was a good experience, and I’m so glad that we got to try Ethiopian food before we go to Ethiopia. Allan, Lindsay, and Billy were great sports to go with us and even pretended to enjoy it a little bit.

    Casey had his surgery after we got home and is now hobbling around the house with crutches. We hope that in two to three weeks he will get another walking boot and be done with the crutches.

    Last weekend we had a HUGE garage sale to raise money for our adoption. My mom and I have worked for several weeks cleaning out her attic, so we had lots of stuff to sell. I also cleaned out SIX boxes of Casey’s old toys and sold the ones that he didn’t want to keep. Since Casey has been incapacitated, I needed a lot of help pulling the sale together. I had many precious friends volunteer their time and energy to make sure our sale was worthwhile. We had friends bring tables, transport stuff, donate stuff to sell, and help us run the garage sale. My sweet friend Kasie helped my mom and I sort and price a mountain of garage sale items. Isn’t the body of Christ wonderful? I really don’t know what we would do without our friends. The sale was very successful, and we were able to raise a chunk of money for our adoption. We are considering having another sale this spring.

    We took a break from all of the garage sale festivities to let Caleb celebrate Halloween. He was the cutest cowboy I have ever seen. He let me paint a mustache on his face, and every time he looked in the mirror he would say, “I like your mustache.” Even though he didn’t quite understand the trick-or-treating part of the evening, he had a great time dressing up and playing with his buddies.

    We polished off our very busy weekend by having our Home Study on Sunday afternoon. We have been waiting for over a month for our social worker to have time to do our Home Study, so we jumped at the opportunity to do it Sunday even though our weekend was already so busy. The study went really well and wasn’t nearly as scary as I thought it would be. We are very blessed to have such a wonderful social worker; she was very easy to talk with. She will hopefully have our Home Study report written in the next couple weeks, and then we will submit our Dossier to Holt and begin filing paperwork with Immigration. I’m not quite sure how long all of this will take, but I’m hoping we can get on the waiting list by the first of the year. After that we will just be waiting to be matched with a child.

    We are praising God that the adoption process is moving again after what felt like a very long wait and will keep you updated as we make more progress.

  • September12th

    Are you adopted?

    Author: Mary Beth | Posted in: Adoption, Home Life & Family

    Obviously, we have been thinking about adoption in our family a lot lately, and I’ve noticed that adoption is more common than many of us realize. In our last post, we mentioned our spiritual adoption as Christians, but there is another kind of adoption that is also very common.

    I’m talking about marriage. When we meet someone, and fall in love, and eventually marry, we are in essence adopting them. Once our families are established we don’t seem to think about this much, but it is interesting to remember that married people are not related by blood at all. In fact, most of us don’t know and love our spouses from infancy, but we would label this relationship as the deepest and most important relationship of our lives.

    Casey and I had a wonderful time last weekend with the Picker clan. One of Casey’s cousins was getting married, and the entire family came from all over the country to be with each other. As you can see in our family picture, there are a lot of us (and this is only one side of Casey’s family; the other side is as large or larger). The only person in this picture that I am blood related to is Caleb, who is sitting in my lap, but I have come to love the rest of this family very much. I didn’t meet any of them, even Casey, until I was eighteen years old, but from that very moment they have loved me and treated me as their own. They even shared their name with me. I guess you could say they adopted me.

    This all got me thinking about how very few of the most important relationships in my life are blood relationships. Before my blood-family gets all up in arms over this, let me assure you that you all make the list. But there are many, many people that I love like family that are not blood-related to me at all, spiritual aunts and uncles, cousins, and brothers and sisters that I have loved for my entire life, not to mention my own sister and all of my wonderful in-laws. If I can have cousins, aunts and uncles, grandparents, brothers and sisters, and even parents that aren’t blood relatives, my new son is going to fit right in! Maybe blood is a little over-rated anyway.

  • September3rd

    Big News . . .

    Author: Mary Beth | Posted in: Adoption, Home Life & Family, Spiritual

    Prayer MagnetWe’ve been waiting for weeks to share our big news, and the time has finally come. After tons of prayer and thought, and sharing and praying with the people closest to us, we have decided to adopt a baby boy from Ethiopia.

    Ever since I went with my parents to adopt my little sister from Romania when I was eighteen, I have known that I wanted to adopt someday. When we visited the baby orphanage in Romania I was overwhelmed by the rooms full of babies, rocking themselves because there was no one to rock them. Many of them no longer cried, because they knew no one would answer. It breaks my heart to know that my little sister was once one of those babies. At the older orphanage, the children ran to us the moment they saw us; the littlest ones climbed into my arms, clung to my legs, and called me “Momma.” I have never forgotten this. It is staggering to realize that there are over 143 million orphans in the world just like this.

    We know that God has a heart for the fatherless; His word is full of instruction to care for the abandoned. In Deuteronomy, He continually reminds His people to provide food for the fatherless; Psalm 82 says, “Give justice to the weak and the fatherless; maintain the right of the afflicted and destitute. Rescue the weak and needy . . .” and James tells us that “pure and undefiled” religion is to care for the widows and orphans. We have felt God tug at our hearts, and we are finally answering.

    Since we have decided to adopt from Ethiopia, we have been overwhelmed by the incredible need we see there. In 2005, the Federal Ministry of Health reported that Ethiopia has 4.8 million orphans. These children have lost their parents because of sickness and disease and because of the terrible famine that Ethiopia has suffered for so many years. Our adoption agency estimates that in Ethiopia three out of four people do not have enough to eat. It is overwhelming to think of how easily we could change a child’s life simply by bringing him into our home and giving him three meals a day.

    Of course, we believe that we have much more to offer a child than proper nutrition. Our primary goal in raising this child, just as it is as we raise our son, Caleb, will be to share with him the love of Christ and to help him grow into a faithful man of God. We believe that one of the greatest resources we have to share with our new child will be our beautiful family and friends. Can you imagine the overwhelming love and joy that are waiting to greet this lonely child? It can only be compared to the overflowing grace and mercy that, because of Christ’s love and sacrifice, surround us, who were also once so lonely. In fact, we believe that there is no better metaphor for the gospel of Christ than adoption. When we had absolutely nothing to offer Him, Christ gave up everything to bring us into His family. As Ephesians reminds us, through Jesus Christ, God has adopted each of us as His sons.

    Please pray for us as we begin this process. We are told that it will probably take 12-18 months for us to get our baby boy, and we will be traveling to Ethiopia to get him at that time. Pray for safety and health for our little boy, who is probably not even born yet. And please pray for Ethiopia; there is so much suffering there, and our hearts have been burdened by their pain.

    We will have so much more to share as we travel this journey, so expect many more posts to come. We thank God that we have such wonderful friends to share our news with.

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