{"id":756,"date":"2010-11-03T09:22:39","date_gmt":"2010-11-03T09:22:39","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/redletters\/2010\/11\/a-russian-adoption-success-story.html"},"modified":"2010-11-03T09:22:39","modified_gmt":"2010-11-03T09:22:39","slug":"a-russian-adoption-success-story","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/redletters\/2010\/11\/a-russian-adoption-success-story.html","title":{"rendered":"A Russian Adoption Success Story"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>There are so many stories of Russian adoptions that have been difficult and deemed &#8220;unsuccessful.&#8221; Ours is <i>not <\/i>one of those. I ran across this very heartwarming story about a Russian girl who was adopted in Ireland. Her story starts out the same as many Russian orphans:&nbsp;<\/p>\n<div><span class=\"Apple-style-span\" style=\"font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;font-size: 12px;line-height: 18px\"><br \/><\/span><\/div>\n<div><span class=\"Apple-style-span\" style=\"font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;font-size: 12px;line-height: 18px\">&#8220;How she came to be working as a nanny in Dublin at all, after being taken as an infant from her alcoholic parents by the Russian authorities, is an extraordinary story, and one whose effects she still feels.&#8221;<\/span><\/div>\n<div><font face=\"Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif\" size=\"3\"><span class=\"Apple-style-span\" style=\"font-size: 12px;line-height: 18px\"><span class=\"mt-enclosure mt-enclosure-image\"><img decoding=\"async\" alt=\"StBasils.jpg\" src=\"https:\/\/wp-media.beliefnet.com\/sites\/104\/import\/StBasils.jpg\" width=\"540\" height=\"399\" class=\"mt-image-left\" style=\"float: left;margin: 0 20px 20px 0\" \/><\/span><\/span><\/font><\/div>\n<div><span class=\"Apple-style-span\" style=\"font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;font-size: 12px;line-height: 18px\"><br \/><\/span><\/div>\n<div><span class=\"Apple-style-span\" style=\"font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;font-size: 12px;line-height: 18px\">The life of an orphan living in an institution is hard. Harder than most of us can imagine.&nbsp;<\/span><a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Reactive_attachment_disorder\">Reactive Attatchment Disorder<\/a>&nbsp;is a common disorder that occurs in Russian orphans:&nbsp;<\/div>\n<div><\/div>\n<div><span class=\"Apple-style-span\" style=\"font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;font-size: 12px;line-height: 18px\">&#8220;At the orphanage where she was taken, 600 miles from Moscow in the forests of rural Russia, children were given minimal care, and sufficient food and education, but never love. Nobody exclaimed when Zina took her first steps and she didn&#8217;t know what Christmas was. Physical punishment was so routine that Zina and her friends instinctively protected one another. If one got into trouble, the others would move to do something worse to distract the attention of the adults in charge.&#8221;<\/span><\/div>\n<div><span class=\"Apple-style-span\" style=\"font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;font-size: 12px;line-height: 18px\"><br \/><\/span><\/div>\n<div><span class=\"Apple-style-span\" style=\"font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;font-size: 12px;line-height: 18px\">Imagine being a child in this situation. You&#8217;re sent far away and put on things you&#8217;ve never seen before like large buses and airplanes. But for Zina, this experience would change her life forever.&nbsp;<\/span><\/div>\n<div><span class=\"Apple-style-span\" style=\"font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;font-size: 12px;line-height: 18px\"><br \/><\/span><\/div>\n<div><span class=\"Apple-style-span\" style=\"font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;font-size: 12px;line-height: 18px\"><\/p>\n<p style=\"line-height: 18px;margin-top: 0px;margin-right: 0px;margin-bottom: 18px;margin-left: 0px\">&#8220;Zina has no idea why she was chosen to visit Ireland, considering how bad she was always told she was. What she does remember is landing at the airport in Ireland, walking down a set of stairs on to the runway, and looking out for a sign with her name on it &#8211; Zina Kurashina. When she found the sign, she ran towards it, reached for the father of the family and instinctively said &#8220;papa&#8221;.<\/p>\n<p style=\"line-height: 18px;margin-top: 0px;margin-right: 0px;margin-bottom: 18px;margin-left: 0px\">She was as surprised as he was when she uttered this word. She&#8217;d never called anyone papa in her life and had no concept of the term that she was consciously aware of. &#8220;It was weird &#8211; to this day, me and dad are so close.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p><\/span><\/div>\n<div><span class=\"Apple-style-span\" style=\"font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;font-size: 12px;line-height: 18px\"><\/span><\/div>\n<div><span class=\"Apple-style-span\" style=\"font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;font-size: 12px;line-height: 18px\">Things are still difficult for orphans in Russia. Today,&nbsp;<\/span><a href=\"http:\/\/www.hopechest.org\/\">Children&#8217;s HopeChest<\/a>&nbsp;is helping orphans in 41 orphanages throughout Russia. To find out more about how you can be involved and what is happening in Russia, please&nbsp;<a href=\"http:\/\/www.hopechest.org\/russia\/\">visit our Russian website.<\/a><\/div>\n<div><\/div>\n<div><a href=\"http:\/\/www.irishtimes.com\/newspaper\/magazine\/2010\/1009\/1224280420251.html\">please click here.<\/a>To read the whole article on Zina,&nbsp;<\/div>\n<div><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>There are so many stories of Russian adoptions that have been difficult and deemed &#8220;unsuccessful.&#8221; Ours is not one of those. I ran across this very heartwarming story about a Russian girl who was adopted in Ireland. Her story starts out the same as many Russian orphans:&nbsp; &#8220;How she came to be working as a&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":87,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,16],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-756","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-orphans","category-russia"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v23.9 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>A Russian Adoption Success Story - Red Letters<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/redletters\/2010\/11\/a-russian-adoption-success-story.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"A Russian Adoption Success Story - Red Letters\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"There are so many stories of Russian adoptions that have been difficult and deemed &#8220;unsuccessful.&#8221; Ours is not one of those. I ran across this very heartwarming story about a Russian girl who was adopted in Ireland. Her story starts out the same as many Russian orphans:&nbsp; &#8220;How she came to be working as a&hellip;\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/redletters\/2010\/11\/a-russian-adoption-success-story.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Red Letters\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2010-11-03T09:22:39+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/redletters\/files\/import\/StBasils.jpg\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Tom Davis\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"A Russian Adoption Success Story - Red Letters","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/redletters\/2010\/11\/a-russian-adoption-success-story.html","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"A Russian Adoption Success Story - Red Letters","og_description":"There are so many stories of Russian adoptions that have been difficult and deemed &#8220;unsuccessful.&#8221; Ours is not one of those. 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A tireless advocate for fatherless children, Davis has spent most of his adult life calling U.S. believers to become the hands and feet of Jesus Christ to the 143 million orphans living around the world. Through those connections, thousands of orphans now have the bright and hopeful future--one that is filled with opportunities and the love of the one true Father. Davis speaks hundreds of times each year at churches and conferences, mobilizing the church to action on behalf of the poor. He is the author of four books. His most recent novel, SCARED is a fictionalized account of his first-hand experiencing living and working with orphans in Swaziland, Africa. Davis' blog is the premier resource for the latest developments in Christian orphan ministry. Davis also currently teaches courses as adjunct professor at George Fox University in Newberg, OR. When not traveling the globe, Davis resides in the mountains of Colorado in the small community of Palmer Lake. He and his wife Emily have seven children, including two adopted daughters from Russia.","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/redletters\/author\/tdavis"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/redletters\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/756","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/redletters\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/redletters\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/redletters\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/87"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/redletters\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=756"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/redletters\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/756\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/redletters\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=756"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/redletters\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=756"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/redletters\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=756"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}