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| Left to Right: Kole (8), Luke (14), Jason, Nina (6), Clay (11), Nancy |
For those of you that don’t know us, my name is Jason Damkoehler. I am the privileged husband of my beautiful wife, Nancy, and the father of four amazing children. Nancy and I were married in 1994. I work full-time as a business analyst at State Farm Insurance Companies. I also serve an amazing group of people as the senior pastor of Journey Family Fellowship, a church my wife and I planted back in 2005.
God began to work on Nancy’s and my heart back in 2001. We had been happily married for eight years and had two children. No one we knew was adopting at that time. It was still a very foreign concept to us. However both of us began to feel a tug to explore the adoption process and discover what it would take to bring a child home.
Well, we discovered it took a lot ☺. But amazingly, neither one of us were worried about the process, financial cost, and sea of paperwork . . . God has led us through much. And our entire married life we have had a great confidence that God will always supply our every need. He’s never let us down.
In 2004, we made the decision that we were going to adopt and began the home study process. We had just added another biological child to our family and felt a release to begin pursuing adoption. At that time several of our friends began to adopt children as well, bringing more faith that the decision we made was truly from the Lord.
Over the next two years God led us through a process that would bring us to our daughter Nina. It’s an amazing story, but is too much for this short post . . . if you’d like to read more, here the address of our Journey to Nina blog. Suffice to say that adopting Nina revealed to us so much about the heart of God that it ignited a desire to continue adopting children as long as we feel the Lord allowing.
The little girl we are adopting from Columbia has an amazing story as well. She was born in late July of 2010. Her mother abandoned her at four days old into a very bad situation. After four months, she became very ill. The woman who was taking care of her brought her to a local hospital and explained that she could no longer take care of this little girl. She was diagnosed at that time with multiple severe medical conditions.
Back in the US, Nancy and I were feeling it was the time to adopt again. We were asking God for a child between zero and three years old that would be brought to us, rather than us going through the standard referral process. We were open to special needs.
Just by happenstance, my wife called an obscure agency in Florida called Adoption by Shepherd Care that she had seen on the Internet. She inquired about domestic adoption was told that Illinois residents could not adopt from a Florida agency. My wife thanked them and just before she hung up she was told by the agency that there may be little girl in Colombia that is available, but that they had very little information and that we would have to be patient. They also mention the child was suffering from numerous serious medical issues.
Until then, we have never considered a special needs child, God gave us both a peace that we should pursue this little girl. Several weeks later we received a referral picture of Nola Mercy and began the process of adopting her.
We still did not know the extent of the illnesses that she had, or how she was recovering from them. But we had faith that God’s hand was in all of it.
In early March my family and I were in our living room having a night of prayer and worship together as a family. As we prayed, my eight-year-old son Kole all of a sudden said, “guys, I think God just told me something.” He was very excited! We said, “what did he tell you Kole?”
He said, “God told me that Nola is going to be fine and that she is not sick anymore.”
Just a few days later I got a call from our agency. The agency director herself called and said, “are you sitting down?” She took a breath and said, “we just ran a bunch of medical tests on Nola and received the results today. She has no more signs of the sicknesses. Kole went nuts and so did we ☺
God is so good! The reality is that Nola may very well still have the ill affects of her medical conditions. . . . only time and tests in the U.S. will tell. But we are grateful to have a very strong support group in our church (many have been adopted or are in foster care), a great network of doctors that are dear friends to us (who have also adopted children) and a powerful God who is already moving miraculously in our little girl's life!
Nancy and I desire more than anything to raise children who have a passionate love for Jesus Christ and the fervent desire to serve Him well with the life that He has given them. We are so proud of Luke (14), Clay (11), Kole (8) and Nina 6). God has really grabbed a hold of their hearts. And we are committed to do everything in our power, while leaning on God's supernatural power to " train them in way they should go, so when they are old they will not depart from it."
So much more we could tell you, but will leave it with this… We serve a mighty God . . . and He is MIGHTY to save!
P.S. We're raising funds to bring Nola home right now. If you feel led to help or know others that might, please read Can you help us bring Nola home? Blessings!
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