Adoptees to visit Asian orphanage

Adoptees to visit Asian orphanage
By Rich Davis (Contact)
Friday, April 3, 2009
NEWBURGH, Ind. — Except for the Russian accent, Alex and Oksana Wicker appear to be your typical American teenage brother and sister — with Alex involved in school sports and dreaming of becoming a police officer and Oksana learning the clarinet and seeing herself as a nurse.
Until the conversation turns to the fact Alex is 16.

RICH DAVIS / Courier & Press Linda Wicker sits outside Castle High School on Thursday with Alex and Oksana, the children she and her husband, Larry, adopted three years ago from an orphanage in Kazakhstan.
If You Go
What: Fundraiser for Myanmar trip
Where: Family Christian Bookstore, 701 N. Green River Road
When: 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. Saturday

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Does he drive?
Not yet, he replies.
Linda Wicker coaxes her son to talk about the time they first met, three years ago in an orphanage in Kazakhstan.
Wicker and her husband, Larry, were a pair of Newburgh empty nesters with three grown children in their 20s.
They'd flown to the Central Asian republic for a monthlong visit, hoping to adopt.
Alex and Oksana were brought into an office to meet the Wickers.
A translator asked Alex if he had any questions.
"What kind of car do you drive," he remembers asking in Russian.
Today it prompts him to grin sheepishly, but Alex also recalls how he and his sister lived on their own for weeks, at age 8 and 6, when their grandparents died.
And how he once ran away from the orphanage when another couple showed interest in taking them to the United States.
"I'd heard Americans only wanted to adopt so they could sell your organs or give them to their children," he said.
That was a lifetime ago, or so it seems.
Today, Alex and Oksana — who attend Bethel Temple and a Russian-language church on Washington Avenue — are gearing up for an early summer trip to an orphanage in Yangon, Myanmar, bordered by Thailand, India and China.
It's part of a missionary venture by members of Bethel Temple. The orphanage there, explains Linda Wicker, focuses on older children.
This will be a chance for Alex and Oksana to meet a girl the Wickers sponsor and to offer hope and understanding to orphaned children age 6 and older.
The Wicker family will be taking donated items, from toothbrushes and footwear to soccer balls for the youngsters.
Oksana says, "They will know they are not the only ones who are orphans and there are people who love them and watch over them."
On Saturday from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m., Alex and Oksana will be at Family Christian Bookstore, 701 N. Green River Road, selling matted copies of a poem and a drawing of Jesus on the cross that Alex created.
They're hoping to raise $2,000 to help defray travel expenses and buy additional items they can donate.
Larry Wicker has been to Myanmar with his wife and said he's "humbled" by the people there and "their immense gratitude. I gave an individual a small pocket flashlight, and he was so thankful. The flashlight would provide a small beam of light for his family when the power would not be available for days."
Linda Wicker noted people sometimes will say, "You can't save the world by sponsoring or adopting a kid." She tells them what an adoption coordinator told her: "You're not going to change the world, but for that one child the world will change."
Lately, Alex and Oksana have been bugging their parents to adopt another child.
"My brother has his sports, I'd like a little sister," said Oksana.
"I tell them, 'Talk to your father,'" said Linda Wicker.