Caring For Kids in Crisis

"CARING FOR KIDS IN CRISIS"
By Rev. Don Schink, © 2006, 2007, 2008
Sonlight Ministries of New Mexico

[Pastor Don, an ordained minister, has ministered in fulltime Christian service since 1975, pastoring churches since 1980. His current ministry, Sonlight Ministries of New Mexico, is an evangelical, non-denominational, Christian outreach ministry fellowship, in Tijeras, New Mexico. Also, the Schink family attend Calvary Chapel East in Albuquerque, New Mexico, where they are supportive and enjoy participating in a loving fellowship where Gary Cowen is their favorite pastor.]

Chapter One:

This particular segment is about how my wife [Kathy] and I became involved in foster care and adoption. To date, we have fostered three [3] different sets of siblings and then went on to adopt four [4] siblings. We love kids and are very thankful for each one that the Lord has allowed to come our way. We love those whom we have adopted as much as we could love any kids. We thank God for each of them.

It all started in the spring of 2005. My mom showed Kathy and I an article that she found in the Albuquerque Sunday newspaper that caught her eye regarding siblings who were up for adoption. They were sisters. Their picture accompanied a short write-up about them. Mom thought that we might be interested in possibly adopting these girls. She didn’t know that we had already discussed the possibility of becoming involved in either foster care or adoption. She also was unaware of the process involved in making such a thing happen.

Kathy and I had discussed our interest amongst ourselves a few years earlier as a result of visiting with workers at the State of New Mexico’s Children, Youth and Families Department [CYFD] booth at the New Mexico State Fair, in 2001. However, at that time, we were not in a position to follow up at that time. We both agreed that if the Lord provided the opportunity in the future that we were both open to it.

Kathy was adopted as a baby. Also, her mom who raised her was also adopted. Shortly before Kathy and I met one another, Kathy had been contacted by a social worker from the State of Minnesota, asking her permission to allow siblings to contact her. She had been unaware of her birth family’s information. So it came as quite a shock. As she got over the shock, she granted permission for them to contact her. She discovered that she had two brothers, one in Florida and the other in Minnesota. It wasn’t long after that that she and her siblings got together. It was a great reunion.

Kathy’s parents had a natural daughter of their own. They adopted Kathy. They also adopted another child, named Steve, who has been a great brother ever since! Suddenly, as a result of that phone call, Kathy discovered that she had the other brothers! You can imagine the excitement that this event generated as they discovered and met one another!

My own interest in foster care and adoption began as a result of meeting a man who worked with my dad in a machine shop in Elmira, New York. Suddenly, the Meredith Wheelock family made an impact on my dad. Then, as I met this family, my own heart was deeply touched, as a young boy.

Meredith and Shirley Wheelock had three natural sons and three foster girls when I first met them. Meredith had extended an invitation to my dad for our family to spend a Sunday with them, which we did. It was a very impressive meeting. We went to church with them that morning, shared Sunday dinner together, and then we went back to church that evening where we kids were included in an old-fashioned taffy pull after the evening service. It was a great day that I would never forget!

What really impressed me was when I discovered that the girls were in foster care, yet seemed to have blended so nicely with the Wheelocks. I would never have known that they weren’t their natural daughters if they hadn’t have told us.

Over a period of several years, the Wheelocks fostered and adopted a number of children. Then Shirley became ill and went to be with the Lord. In time, Meredith remarried. I met his second wife when they came to visit me while I was pastoring a church at Watkins Glen, New York. She struck me as being a very nice lady and an answer to the prayers of the family. She was very supportive and continued foster care and adoption with Meredith.

As I relate this story to you, my mind goes back to an obituary in the Elmira Star-Gazette that I read over the Internet when Meredith passed away. It glowed with his greatest achievement. It was that of reaching out and trusting the Lord to enable and equip him with the gift of loving and caring for a large number of children that his heart and life had touched and rescued over the years. The obituary listed his survivors, which included his natural sons and also a large number of other kids that had become an important part of his family through the foster care and adoption process! The legacy that he left behind is very precious. It is very impressive.

The Meredith Wheelock family’s successes spoke to my heart and impacted my life from childhood to adult. I knew that if the Lord ever allowed me to be in a position to do so, that I, too, would become involved in foster care and adoption. So when Kathy and I met and discovered that we had this common interest, we realized this to be a part of the Lord’s guidance for us as a couple. Mom’s sharing the article about the siblings from the Albuquerque Sunday paper stimulated renewed interest in both Kathy and myself.

Our own natural kids are grown. We are both very glad that we decided to take this route. It is full of both trials and blessings alike. However, the blessings outweigh the trials. We plan to continue reaching out to kids in crisis in various ways as long as the Lord allows us to do so. We also encourage others to do the same.