The Importance of Family

Greetings on this Labour Day Weekend!

It was a momentous Sunday afternoon in July this year when our son-in-law, Chris along with our daughter, Sara, and their three daughters journeyed to Fort Erie, Ontario to meet his birth mother plus a brother and sister for the first time. Chris had earlier on located her and realized they had lived in Fort Erie for many years just around the corner from one another. He had been given up by this pregnant teenager to be set upon a different course for his life. A whole new world with interesting relationships to be developed was happily opened for these two families just in time as this now senior lady has cancer. Family with its own unique set of roots is extremely important to each one of us.

We adopted our youngest from South Korea when he was just turning six years old. Lee Chul Min had been abandoned as a baby on a doorstop and put into a Christian orphanage. He has never been able to meet his birth mother. We soon learned from the adopting agency that he had always wanted a “fambily”, ate rice three times a day and wanted to become a soldier. Upon the finalization of the adoption process we picked up Lee at LaGuardia airport in New York City in 1987. He had travelled in a “shipment” with an adult and five other children his age. It was one of the scariest days of all of our lives; however, a very good decision had been made to choose Lee to become a member of our family. He, too, was set on a course that only God knew about. Today he has a lovely family of his own – Melissa, Aiden and Sophia. In a crowd we often forget that he doesn’t look exactly like the rest of us; but he has been accepted and loved from the first day we met.

One of the questions on our church survey that we are asking people in Milton is, “If you were to look for a church to attend, what kind of things would you look for?” Hands down the dominant answers are “friendly” and “community.” Without realizing what they are saying they are looking for God’s family even though they have no idea what that would look like until they come out for a visit to one of our church services. They don’t want superficiality but an opportunity to develop authentic relationships and achieve a sense of belonging. Thank you for your ongoing prayers for Hillside as we embark on an exciting autumn season with all of its changes for everyone. We long to see our church grow and affect many people’s complicated lives for the good so that they can understand what a real, loving family is all about.

Blessings,

Wendy

Wendy.carter@kainos.org