We don’t often think about what it means to be a family. Sometimes the aspiration to define the family happens by necessity to cope with changes that we face such as a loss or gain of a family member.
I am facing one of those instances. Nobody has passed away and ‘no’ Helen is not pregnant, but we are about to gain a new family member. Fortunately, we can ease ourselves into it, but the twist is that the new family member is a teenage girl. We don’t know how it will it work or if it would work at all, but we wanted to share with you so you can walk with us in this journey.
Papama (fore mentioned girl) has no biological parents and has two younger half-brothers. Helen and I have been her parental guardians for her school for the past two years and we have been growing closer since.
Recently, Helen and I have deeply considered to have her stay with us permanently. Even though she has been spending weekends and school breaks with us, there will be many things that we need to sort out. Especially accepting each other as family. To tell you the truth, we don’t know how it works. A Korean-Canadian missionary family adopting a South African teenage daughter living in a predominantly white SA neighborhood cannot be one of the titles we can find in a Self-help section.
So there you have it. Despite all other things that has happened in the last few months, this is the one thing that we would like you to pray for us. Special thanks to those who started and supported this ministry, Josh Min, Issac Jeon, Paul Kim, Rachel and Dennis Yoo, Jiyeon and Gary Wong.