The Martin Family

By Mark & Esther Martin

Our adoption experience has been a blessing. We as a family had never considered adopting before the summer of 2005. We have 4 healthy children ages 9, 8, 6 and 3, and were very satisfied with where we were at as a family. God had other plans for us! That summer of we had a young man show a short video clip of orphan girls in India at our church. When we got home a couple of our children were talking about this video and couldn't figure out why we couldn't just get a couple of those girls to come live with us. "We have plenty of room for them and a Mom and a Dad we could share with them." So every evening, for about a year, they prayed for a little sister. We looked into it, but let it rest thinking there is no way we can afford it. God just never let it rest with us and finally a year later we seriously started talking about it again. We found out that Family Life Today had an "Hope for the Orphan" conference close by and decided to attend. We learned a lot that day and there was no doubt in our minds what we were going to do when we left that place. We really felt that God was calling us to adopt and now is was our part to get busy with the paperwork!

We had friends that had used CWA a few years ago and highly recommended them. We checked out a couple other places, but didn't have a hard time deciding that CWA was the agency for us. Choosing which country was a lot more difficult. Through process of elimination we decided to go with their new Kyrgyzstan program. About a month after we started our paperwork we got a call from CWA saying they had a little gal that was 3 months old and wondered if we wanted to see pictures of her. Our hearts melted by the adorable little girl and then completely went to mush after we saw the DVD! Another really neat thing was we really liked the name her birth mom had given her. Her name was Aliya and we decided to keep that name. So from that time on we started praying for Aliya and could hardly wait to go bring her home.

Or travel went well and all our flights went smooth. We met up with 2 other families in Istanbul, Turkey. That was exciting! We had one goal in mind and that was to bring our little ones home. After a day of resting (and some shopping) in Bishkek we were ready to go meet our children.

Monday morning our facilitator met us at the hotel and we were off to the orphanage. I remember my heart beating wildly and just being a nervous wreck when we finally got there! If I thought my heart was mush looking at the DVD, it was even more so when I saw her for the first time! We were so impressed with the caregivers; they really love all those little children and we could tell it was hard for them to tell Alyia good bye, even though they were very glad for her to have a family for herself. Our time spent in Kyrgyzstan and Kazakhstan was a wonderful bonding time for us with Aliya.

I can't say thank you enough to Anya, Michael and CWA's Kyrgyzstan staff. They all did a fantastic job! While we were in Kyrgyzstan, we discovered how hard our facilitator works—day and night! And our paperwork was done properly and correctly! It was great to get to know the other families who we traveled with and meet their children. We also felt very blessed by all the prayers and financial support from our families, friends and church family. We could not have done it without their support.

Aliya had adjusted very well for us. We are loving having her as part of our family. She loves her sister and brothers and they think she is just the greatest. She adores her Daddy and always needs some attention from him as soon as he's home from work. It did not take her a long time to catch up size wise. She ate non - stop (or so it seemed!) for about 6 weeks and then she must have finally felt full and decided to be normal!! She loves to talk, climb, and get into things! We all love her and can't imagine life without her. We have been blessed by the whole experience.