Meet Our Family

Faske Family - 2022

Greetings! We are Jay and Suzanne Faske of Burton, Texas. If you’ve seen a photo of our family, you may be wondering how our family came to be.  We are blessed with three birth children, Jacob, Joshua and Gabriella.  We also have adopted twenty-three children, Elizabeth, Rebekah, Andrew, Naomi, Abigail, Phoebe, Julia, Samuel, Hannah, Sarah, Nathaniel, Tabitha, Lydia, Joseph, Rachel, Olivia, Miriam Grace, Joy, Jonah,Bethany, Sophia, Caleb, and Jayson.   We are also fostering Lillian, who we hope to one day make a permanent part of our family.

We first considered adoption after watching a documentary on orphanages in China.  As we watched, the Lord spoke to our hearts and both of us realized that we had a desire to adopt.  From that point on, adoption became a part of our life. We feel that there are so many children in this world who do not have the opportunity to know the love of a family or the chance to know their Heavenly Father.

In the Bible, God calls us to take care of orphans, whether that be adoption, foster care, child sponsorship, missions, or prayer.  With the number of orphans there is in this world, it is clear that the "harvest is great, but the workers are few."  It is our hope that by sharing our family and adoption stories, others will be encouraged to consider adoption or serving in orphan ministry. Adoption has been a rewarding experience, as well as very humbling.  Like most adoptive families, we have had our "labor pains."  We have never entered an adoption knowing how we would finance it, but God has always provided. There have  times when trusting in the Lord was a struggle for us, but through these times He has molded us. As we wrote each of our children's adoption stories, it was a reminder of the many blessings the Lord has bestowed upon our family. Through the good and the bad times, He is always there with us.

Adoption is not new to my (Suzanne’s) family.  My  father and my sister were also adopted. Our adoptions were the first international adoption in my family though. ; For Jay’s family, our adoptions we are the first. Our extended families have not always understood or embraced our calling to adopt, but over the years we feel they have also grown from the adoption experience. We have experienced adoption of older children, siblings, infants and children with special needs. Our children are from India, Russia, China, Kazakhstan, Colombia, Ethiopia and the United States. We've adopted seven children who had been through disrupted adoptions, which can be very challenging because it is another layer of pain for them to work through. Each adoption has come with its own challenges, but the blessings far outweigh the struggles. The changes that we have seen in our children over the years sometimes seem unbelievable. Adoption has brought our family closer together and given each member of our family compassion for those children still waiting for families.  Parenting children from hard places has brought us to our knees on many occasions. There have been times that we've wanted something so different for our children than the paths some of t hem have chosen, but I'm sure many parents feel this way.

At times, we feel like our hands are full, but then we realize there is always room in our hearts for one more. We did not "plan" our family.  In fact almost every time we have adopted, we have thou it was our last adoption. When we travel abroad and see all the faces of the children living in orphanages, we realize that God will tell us when our family is complete.  Having a large family has been a beautiful experience for us as well as our children. We've learned to depend on each other.

God has a plan for each of us. Having the ranch has been a tremendous blessing.  It has given our children an outlet to love and nurture animals and has been very therapeutic for all of our children.  Through caring for their animals, they've learned a tremendous amount about responsibility and trust.

It is our hope that as you read the stories of our family, that you will better understand adoption and be encouraged.