“Stephanie Fast is the name she was given in America. She does not know her original name, birth date, or place of birth, other than that she is Korean. Because she is biracial, Stephanie Fast was abandoned, left in a strange place to fend for herself, likely to die of starvation, disease—or worse.
Stephanie has made it her life’s work to try to help rescue every orphan out there—terrified, hungry, hurting, abused. If you believe that how we treat the most vulnerable among us determines our own humanity you will want to read Stephanie’s book—you will want to get to know Stephanie’s story.”
The almost unbelievable and harrowing story of a Korean war orphan, abandoned by her mother and unknown to her American GI father, She is Mine is an amazing testament to the courage and endurance of the author, but even more to the grace of God in her life. Her website says “Stephanie’s story will leave you moved—and changed.” It left me moved, yes, and puzzled. I was puzzled by the mercy of God and by His sovereignty. Why was Stephanie spared the fate of another child she writes about in her memoir, a baby who died abandoned on a trash heap after seven year old Stephanie, or Yoon Myoung as she was known in Korean, had tried to mother her and save her life? Why was Yoon Myoung/Stephanie adopted by an American couple and brought to the U.S. while other Korean orphans languished in orphanages or scavenged on the streets? I don’t know, and author Stephanie Fast provides no answers to those troubling questions. She can only testify to the fact that God saved her, and “in every instance of my life, whether I knew it or not, there was a greater, higher, wiser power propelling willing hearts to rescue me.”
Maybe God is “propelling” us to rescue just one, or to help, and we are not listening?
I recommend the book, but I do warn you that Stephanie’s story is a very difficult one which includes physical, emotional, and sexual abuse, abandonment, and violence. Stephanie eventually is rescued, and her message is that there is hope. However, reading this book can be emotionally draining. Even if you don’t choose to read Stephanie’s story, please take this blog post as a cue to pray for Stephanie Fast and for the millions of orphans and abused children who are struggling for survival and hope even today as you are reading these words.
Called to Love is a ministry designed to encourage and support adoptive and foster moms by providing an annual retreat.
Chosen International is a faith-based organization whose goal is to encourage teens who have been adopted to embrace God’s plan of adoption for their lives, and grow into spiritually and emotionally healthy adulthood.
Christian Friends of Korea: hope and healing to the people of North Korea in the name of Christ.
New Beginnings International Children’s and Family Services. (adoption agency)
Kazembe Orphanage, an orphanage in northern Zambia run by my friends, the Morrow family.
Years ago when Rosalind Goforth was recounting her family’s miraculous deliverance from the violent Boxer rebellion, someone asked why they were delivered when so many other missionaries perished. She couldn’t answer that and was troubled. She searched the Scripture and found, not answers, but examples of similar situations. In Acts 12, James was put to death while Peter was delivered. In Hebrews 11, many experienced miraculous deliverance and answers to prayer, while “others had trial of cruel mockings and scourgings, yea, moreover of bonds and imprisonment: They were stoned, they were sawn asunder, were tempted, were slain with the sword: they wandered about in sheepskins and goatskins; being destitute, afflicted, tormented; (Of whom the world was not worthy:) they wandered in deserts, and in mountains, and in dens and caves of the earth. And these all, having obtained a good report through faith, received not the promise: God having provided some better thing for us, that they without us should not be made perfect.” I think of righteous Uriah who gets killed while King David gets his wife and a long life. All we can do is trust that God has His reasons and His purposes for each individual, and that this life is not all there is: some who received the short end of the stick, so to speak, here, will be compensated There.
I agree, this was hard to read in some ways but riveting in others. And I agree, too, that stories like these raise awareness of ways we can pray and minister.