Marcel's Testimony...what Amazing Grace!

Marcel, our ten year old son, was baptized yesterday. It was so special to hear his explanation of how he was lost and then found. Marcel is incredibly articulate and described beautifully first how God found him physically through adoption, and then how God found him spiritually. He has such a precious heart and truly loves the Lord. I am so thankful for the gift he is to us. (Okay, enough of the proud-mom bragging). 

I am also very thankful for my grandfather, Arnold, and my father, Dennis. This weekend was their 35^th anniversary of committing their lives to Christ (they both answered the same alter call 35 years ago during a simple sermon at a small church in Rhode Island and dedicated their lives to Christ). Both my grandfather and father are heroes to Marcel (and myself!) and it was so special for Marcel to have two great grandfathers, a grandfather, and his father present. He is surrounded by wonderful men and quickly growing up into one himself.

Here are some excerpts from Marcel’s testimony that he read on Sunday. It was very powerful to witness and I hope it encourages you. Every word here is directly from Marcel's mouth, I just helped him with grammar and asked him a lot of questions to help him brainstorm all of his thoughts. He gave me permission to post this because he said he wants as many people to hear about how wonderful God is as possible:

"My Testimony" by Marcel Vermon Pierre

“My favorite song is “Amazing Grace” and the song says, “I once was lost, but now I am found. I was blind, but now I see.” I like these words because it describes me becoming a Christian.
    First, I was lost.
I was lost in real life, but also spiritually. I was lost in real life because I had a family that couldn’t take care of me. I was born in Nevada and the first 6 years of my life were abusive, but I was taken care of too, especially by my Grammy. But I was also lost spiritually. I knew that there was something that ruled over the world, I wasn’t an atheist, but I didn’t know that it was the God of the Bible that ruled the world. I used to have a lot of anger and even though I was an ok kid, I had an extremely bad temper.
    Then God found me.  First, God found me a family. Basically, I remember one day that I was playing with my camera robot when this couple named Dennae and Vermon came over. When I first saw my dad, Vermon, I thought that he was a giant compared to me and was a little afraid of him getting me. Then, I wish I would have jumped up on my dad, Vermon, and begged him to be my daddy, but instead I hid from him and waited for him to find me. But that’s okay that I didn’t beg my daddy to adopt me, because my mommy and daddy, Dennae and Vermon, had already seen me and they were the ones begging God to let me be adopted.  So God found me a family and let Mya and I stay together as brother and sister and then gave me another brother, Judah.
    Before I was a Christian, I didn’t understand why my life was so torn up and messy, but God took something really terrible and made it into something really wonderful. This is the first way that God began to show me his love by giving me a Christian family.
    Then, after God found me a family and saved me from my bad situation, God found me spiritually….and this makes me think of the part of the song that says, “I was blind, but now I see.”
    This is the main sermon I heard that helped me become a Christian. I was at Grant Park in VBS and Mr. JJ was talking about being blind. He had a candy bar and held it in the field while a blindfolded kid tried to find it.  The point of Mr. JJ’s story was that our sin makes us blind to God but Jesus is the one that can take off our blindfold so we can see God clearly. So I went home and I didn’t know if I wanted to be a Christian or not.
   The next day I went to my room and I was crying because I was thinking all about the sad things in my life. But God softened my heart and I realized I needed Jesus to be the king of my life. Becoming a Christian didn’t fix everything in my life. I still had some problems with anger and missing and worrying about my birth family. But what is so wonderful is that now when I do get angry or sad, I know God is forever my father and that I can stay in God’s family no matter what I say, or think, or do. Also, God has turned a lot of my anger and sadness into joy when I think about what Jesus did for me on the cross. And I am very thankful for my church family that I am going to get to play forever with in heaven…
 Being friends with God is so wonderful because like Psalm 23 says, “Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil. Because God is with me.” I am very glad “I once was lost, but now I’m found, was blind, but now can see.” 

Foolish to Foster?

On Wednesday, our family will be opening our license for foster care again. We will be getting a baby girl somewhere between the ages of newborn and 3 months old. It has been interesting to hear people’s reactions as we share our “exciting” news. I have learned quickly that what is “exciting” for Vermon and myself is not necessarily “exciting” for everyone around us (although, we are very thankful for those who have supported us despite their loving concern for us).

  

The reality of foster care is that over the next year we may have one child or we may have ten children. We may have each of them for a short period of time or for a long period of time. We may get the opportunity to adopt or we may never get that chance. We will bond, love, and care for every baby as though they belonged fully to us, knowing full well that child may end up in a different permanent home.

This raises a lot of concerns for those who love and care for us. Such as: “How can you do that, won’t the loss be too painful?”  “Drug babies have huge problems, why would you knowingly enter that world?” “You already have three children, you can't save the whole world you know.”

My temptation is to complain and wish people could think and feel the same way our family does about orphan care; however, the past month has been a great opportunity to go back to the drawing board and remind ourselves why we are setting on this path. If I start by listening to people’s objections or concerns, I find myself anxiously trying to defend our decision to add child #4 to our family. But if I start with our motivation for orphan care, then draw implications from those motivations, I find myself at peace and able to rest.

So why are we choosing to do something that has the potential to be painful emotionally and physically? Why are we doing something that may be very, very hard and may cost us much?

#1) I was adopted and therefore I want to adopt.

I am a child of God. This is my primary identity thanks to the death and resurrection of the Lord Jesus Christ. Because of Christ’s work on the cross and his resurrected body, I can now live eternally as a daughter of God Almighty. I will spend the rest of my life meditating and thinking about the endless implications of that reality. I was an orphan, now I’m orphaned no more. I was an enemy of God, now I am his child. I was the chief of sinners, now I have the righteousness of Christ imputed to me.

Because of that reality, I can do hard things. I can do painful things. Not by my own strength, but by the power of the Holy Spirit within me. Not every Christian is going to be involved directly in orphan care, but every true disciple of Jesus, every true Christian is to pick up his cross and follow Christ. Every Christian is to be willing to leave comfort, ease, pleasure, desires, or dreams in order to follow the path God has called them to.

  

    For us, at this moment in our life, that is foster care. Fortunately, while there are hard and challenging things about this and even though it may mean leaving things behind that I find comfortable and enjoyable, I am confident that the path we are taking is blessed and our reward will far outweigh all that we give up. Perhaps in this life, but most definitely in eternity.

#2) God has given us a love for children, gifted us with the ability to care for children, especially hurting or broken children, and given us an amazing extended family to help care for those children.

Often people assume that I believe every family should adopt children. I do not believe that. There are many worthy causes in which Christians should participate and God’s word calls them to be actively engaged with. The theology of adoption is a beautiful strand within gospel message and therefore has wonderful implications for every believer. But it will not lead every believer to adopt children because some people just don’t like children, or are trying to make their marriage healthy, or are living in a city with little extended family, or are involved in many other great ministries. A lot of times when people imply how crazy and/or foolish we are to do what we are doing, they forget that it may be crazy for them to attempt, but that does not make it crazy for us.

    The reason our family has chosen foster care and adoption as a ministry to be actively involved with is primarily because of my first point, but also this second point. If we did not love children (lots of them!) and if we were already exhausted/ overwhelmed and having challenges in our marriage with the children we currently have, then we would not be able to foster and/or adopt more children. So I praise God that he has given us this burden and equipped us to do it.

   But the reality is, even that would not be enough for us to move into the realm of 4 children without losing some of our sanity. We have been blessed with an amazing church community and a large extended family who have come around us to create one large Pierre family. We have biological aunts, uncles, grandparents and many church aunts, uncles, and grandparents all of whom support us through prayer, finances, home-work help, tutoring, doctor visits, house repairs, and most wonderfully…baby sitting! By God’s great grace, Vermon and I have a wonderful, healthy marriage and I know that a large part of this is because of how our church community and our extended family have helped us transition into parenthood. Vermon and I would never see each other if we were the only two people raising our children, but thankfully-our children have an army of people who love them, care for them, and treat them as though they were their own children.

So, for those who’ve implied how crazy/insane we are to have a newborn baby enter our home this week…just know your support is probably partly responsible.

J So bring on kid #4, #5, and #6 (just kidding Vermon ;))…