Adoption

Illinois: Bill Allowing Religious Groups to Deny Gay Adoption Killed in Committee

By Aaron Blumer Thu, 04/14/2011 - 5:45am

“The bill, an amendment to SB1123, would have protected the right of a child welfare agency that is religiously affiliated to reject gay couples seeking to adopt or be a foster family if acceptance meant violating its religious beliefs.” Christian Post

Ark. supreme court says cohabitating adults must be allowed to adopt

By SharperIron Sat, 04/09/2011 - 6:09am

“More than two years after Arkansas voters prohibited adoptions by cohabitating couples, the Arkansas Supreme Court reversed that ban April 7 in a ruling that could have national implications.”
Cohabitating couples must be allowed to adopt, Ark. court says in reversing law

Catholic Charity Loses Bid to Refuse Adoption Services to Gay Couples

By Aaron Blumer Mon, 08/23/2010 - 8:24am

Regulators in England have decided that limiting adoption to heterosexual couples is a violation of “a fundamental principle of human rights law.” More

An Interview with Anne Sokol, Part 2

By Keri L. Wed, 01/20/2010 - 12:00am

Read Part 1.

Keri: I know that you and Vitaliy both have a lot of ministries going on and you had talked earlier on about your nurse midwife dream and I’d like you to tell the listeners about how the Lord is bringing some of that to fruition in your life now.

Anne: That desire to be a midwife has never really left me. You know it goes under the water for a while but it always resurfaces. It’s like it follows me. About two years ago I started studying to be a doula and childbirth educator. I started studying with a Christian organization called Charis Childbirth. I never really saw how I could do it here because birth here is kind of a mystery for me. I knew women usually have horrible experiences, but it was hard to get any real details and to really know what it looked like. But I started studying this class and through women in my church, I started teaching them childbirth preparation classes. Then I was able to accompany them at their births.

That has been a major eye opener—seeing an actual birth in a birth house. Other women choose to have home births and I have watched how those things happen. The women in my church, and the husbands too, have been so thankful for this ministry that is unique and something that not very many people do. They are so happy to be having happy birth experiences.

Now I’m starting to get clients who are not Christians, and it has been wonderful to have chances to witness to them. Lately, I’ve been working with a couple from Belgium. They are English speakers. Vitaliy and I went out to dinner with them and he presented the gospel to them. It’s neat how childbirth is such an open time in people’s lives. Being educated about it and serving people makes them so open to listen to you about any area of life. It has made people really open to the Lord. I’m really thankful for that.read more

An Interview with Anne Sokol, Part 1

By Keri L. Tue, 01/19/2010 - 12:00am

Keri: So, Anne, I’m excited to talk to you. This is the first time we’ve ever spoken.

Anne: I’m excited to be here with you!

Keri: I told Anne she was my guinea pig, because I’ve never done an interview on my blog before. Why don’t you tell us just a little bit about how a girl went from Chattanooga and ended up in the Ukraine?

Anne: When I was in high school we had a lot of missionaries come in and out of our church. That was also the time when the wall of Communism fell in Eastern Europe. I’d heard a lot of things about Russia and the former Soviet Union, and my dream became—well, let me back up a little bit. I had a lot of other interests. I was also interested in the pro-life movement and I was involved in that in my hometown. I also wanted to be a nurse midwife. That was my dream.

So I combined all these things, and I wanted to be a missionary in Russia and help women who were having abortions because there was such an astronomical abortion rate in Russia. My dream was to have a home for women who were in crisis pregnancies and I would be their midwife and help them be able to work, go to school, and not have to abort their babies. This was my whole dream.read more

"Adoption...is gospel"

By Greg Linscott Tue, 02/24/2009 - 8:47am

Russell Moore on missional adoption

  • 519 reads

Pure Religion and Cold, Hard Cash

By Beth M Mon, 02/26/2007 - 1:00am

Adoption and the Blessings of God

For five days in September 2006, I saw the keen blade of SharperIron being used, not to draw blood (however beneficial bloodletting can be) but to pluck fruit that will last a lifetime. We were about $7,000 short of a $13,000 fee that would allow us to kids1.jpgbring home our daughter, Chloe Jane, from Korea. The agency had given us great leeway, but time was running out. We were on the verge of saying, “No, I’m sorry. Here’s her file back.”

In one sense, the adoption process began in March 2006 when we first inquired about her. But it really began in 1999 when I saw an ABC news piece about Russian orphans. The sorrow I felt at seeing those little ones who could not stand up or walk due to a lack of adult interaction sent me to my computer to learn about adoption. For four years, that was all I could do—research adoption. Part of that time was spent discerning whether Mick, my husband, and I were on the same page about adoption. The rest was spent praying for the money to adopt. Our church could not help. (RIGHT: Chloe, David, and Bailey)

I looked at page after page of children’s faces and checked out country requirements for adopting couples—Russia, China, Vietnam, Korea, the Philippines, Cambodia, Romania, and more. I called agencies for information packets, attended informational meetings, and even selected the agency I would use, if we were ever able to adopt. My husband insisted that we should have the money in hand before we started the process; but looking at our finances, we realized this condition was an impossible dream, apart from an outright miracle. We pursued a couple of domestic opportunities, but they fell through.
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