MARILYN HAGERTY: Room for more — from Africa — in Grand Forks homes
5K Walk/Run will help Kim and Dave Adams as they help infant from UgandaThe twin girls — Kylie and Jensen — are 4 years old now. Their little brother, Caleb, is over a year. One would think their parents, Kim and Dave Adams, have reached the point where they can sit back and raise their family.
By: Marilyn Hagerty, Grand Forks Herald
The twin girls — Kylie and Jensen — are 4 years old now. Their little brother, Caleb, is over a year.
One would think their parents, Kim and Dave Adams, have reached the point where they can sit back and raise their family. But the couple says they feel the call of God to open their hearts to orphans in Africa.
They know they cannot solve the problems of all starving children. They wonder if they can make a difference in the life of just one infant.
So they are in the process of adopting a child from Uganda. They have been to Africa and they are going back.
“We decided. We prayed,” Kim Adams said. “This has been in the back of our minds since Dave and I met at a youth gathering at Red Willow Bible Camp eleven years ago.”
Friends are organizing an Adoption Awareness 5K Walk/Run fundraiser to be held Oct. 8 to help send the Adams’ back to Uganda. The family is working toward adoption requirements with the help of Lifeline Children’s Services in Alabama.
Kim Adams looks at her three healthy children in Grand Forks and thinks of the 2.5 million orphans in Uganda. She and her husband feel called by the orphan crisis in the world.
They are not alone. They have a circle of friends at Calvary Lutheran Church in Grand Forks where Dave Adams is a youth pastor. These friends include Jenny and Bryan Hanson, who are in the final stage of adopting an infant in Ethiopia.
The Hanson’s son was abandoned. He will have a home in Grand Forks with Veronica, 5, and Isabella, 7. The Hansons have been working with Sixty Feet, an organization in Atlanta that helps children in Ugandan rehabilitation centers. They are places that have been described as children’s prisons.
The orphan crisis has been in the heart and mind of Jenny Hanson for years. She shares it now with her husband and her two young daughters. They have been to Ethiopia and they have seen the needs, the heart break.
“I feel God is guiding me and our life is changing,” Jenny Hanson said. “He is opening our eyes.”
So the Grand Forks family is leading the way. But Jenny Hanson said it is only with strength from friends. “You need support… and prayer.”
Friends of the Hansons threw an African Awareness Party for them a year ago. They sold t-shirts as a fund raiser for the Hanson’s journey to Africa. Jenny Hanson is helping lead the way with the Adams family benefit. The Adams family has a blog: www.walkinghumblyinlove.blogspot.com
Among the other friends surrounding the Adams family are Kristi Okerlund, Becky Hanson and Naomi McGaughey.
They all feel the Bible’s call in the Book of James to “serve orphans and widows in distress.” It doesn’t mean, they say, that we all should adopt infants. It does mean we can lend support.
Kim Adams believes the Adoption Awareness 5K Walk can put a local face on international adoption.
“If my husband and I who are Joe Schmoes can do this, we can all bring an awareness to the need for adoptions,” she said.
Jenny Hanson keeps remembering the words to a hymn she sang in church as a child: “I will go, Lord, if you lead me; I have heard you calling in the night.”
Reach Hagerty at mhagerty@gra.midco.net or (701) 772-1055.
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