Lesson Learned

We didn't go anywhere over Spring break, but it has been a very nice week. The girls wanted to go to the beach because I think they felt a little left out that many friends were going somewhere. I put on a CD of sounds of the beach, but I don't think they were impressed. I tried to give them the feeling of being wet when I got a squirt bottle and while the whole family was watching TV, I started squirting everyone. This bottle could shoot 20 feet it was great fun. That got everyone up and chasing everyone else around the house. It became really hysterical when Brett's puppy Ryder got in on the action, and grabbed my bathrobe and was hanging on for dear life as I ran around after Zhenya. It was not quite as funny for me when they wrestled the squirt bottle from me, and even Mark then got in on the action. I ended up soaked and with holes in my bathrobe but it was so worth it.

Yesterday we went to our favorite second hand shop to buy some spring clothes. It is fantastic, they have all these wonderful, expensive if you were to buy them new, girls clothes for 5 and 10 dollars. Lena found a great overnight bag for next to nothing, and she was thrilled, because today she and Julia are going with the youth group on a trip to Dallas.

Oh my, I just have to tell you about Lena and Julia for a moment because sometimes when I am ready to do them both in something great happens. These two have so much in common, they are both very outgoing girls. They laugh a lot, they both love singing and music. They both have the ability at times to be little girls and enjoy the simple things. Yet they seem to hate each other, and it is so frustrating to me.

I am always trying to teach the girls that many hands make light work and to offer to be helpful, even when it isn't our chore. I brought a basket of laundry out the other day and it belonged to Julia. I said, OK everyone lets dig in and get Julia's laundry folded. We all started and Lena stood there. I said, Lena come on and she walked over picked up a piece of laundry held it out like it stunk, dropped it back in the basket and said, "I not help Julia with laundry, she not help me." I said, "oh really, maybe she didn't help with your laundry, but if I recall she helped paint your room all day one Saturday." I said, she made chocolate chips cookies that you will eat tonight. She shrugged her shoulders and refused to help. Now normally defiance is dealt with in a big way here. This time I felt the Lord giving me a peace that said, let this one go we are not done here. The next morning Julia got up first and we talked about giving and giving to Lena because we need to teach her, and the way we do that is by showing her. Julia put away all the dishes that were Lena's chore that morning. She then went in and got Lena's clothes and folded them. After they were folded she put the laundry fairy on top and left them on the table. We talked about how you attract more bees with honey than vinegar, and if she was nasty back it just keeps the cycle going. We talked about how people hated Jesus and he loved them anyway.

When Lena got up she barely acknowleged what had been done for her, that was OK God wasn't done with this lesson.

The next night Julia was in tears she said, I just asked Lena to move the dog gate for me so I could go upstairs because my hands were full. She yelled at me, and told me to do it myself. Mom I just hate her, and no matter what I do it doesn't matter. She then said, can we get Lena and go to your room and talk? I was so impressed because I am usually the one who says lets go talk.

Well, it started off with accusations and tears, the tears on Julia's part. They went back and forth for a while and then they started yelling in Russian. I said, you need to lower your voices, but you can continue. I sat there and said not a word, but at one point I wanted to jump up and say I am finished I can't handle this anymore I am sick of your fighting. I wanted to scream at them and rip my hair out in front of them. Instead, I intervened and quietly said, girls God put you in this family for a reason he brought you safely here, and I expounded on all of it. Then I was quiet, while they continued going at each other. I was just about ready to say, I am done with this you two you are hopeless and leave, but God spoke quietly, Rhonda you need to pray while they argue. Thanks God, couldn't you give me a little quieter venue than these two jibbering in a language I don't even understand. I did not want to pray for them, I wanted to bop their heads together. I am sure God was patiently smiling at me as I wanted to be defiant to him, can't you see this is hopeless I am giving up on these two, and I don't really feel like praying for them right now! But I did what he wanted, and guess what happened, for the first time since Lena arrived I could tell the conversation was taking a turn. I could see the expressions and the voice inflections. I could tell that each girl was pouring her heart out to the other and really talking and sharing all the hurts and slights they had inflicted on each other. Praise God!! This went back and forth until they were both spent, and then they started laughing and sharing. At one point Lena looked over and said, mom you so quiet. I said. Lena I have been praying for you two while you were talking. She said, I know mom, I at the orphanage 8 years it hard for me to learn in family, only other kids, so we fight all time. I learn here, have family loves me, I hear about God at orphanage but I like you talk about God." Then we went on to talk about a bible story. Julia asked, how can I know for sure about Jesus? which led us into a long dicussion about so much and they hung on every word and had many questions. I prayed with them and at the end Julia said, OK group hug!

At the end Julia said, I am so glad we talked I feel a huge pressure has been taken from me. This was an amazing accomplishment these kids come and they can't talk they only solve problems by fighting and being mean to each other. I told them they needed to sleep together last night and they were both very happy to continue their conversation upstairs.

All is peaceful and I praise God for nudging and pushing me to do what I really didn't feel like doing. He knows what is best I just need to listen the first time. How very similar I am to my children I bet sometimes God just shakes his head, but unlike me he never feels things are hopeless and how thankful I am for his guidance and wisdom. Lesson learned-never ever give up unless God is the one who changes your course.

Social Worker Visits

Our SW came yesterday to do our homestudy and found us fit to adopt child number 5 bringing the total of our children to 9. He interviewed all the kids and found that they were happy and content. He just happened to come on the right day :)

It is pretty funny the stairs empties into our kitchen so while he was sitting at the table interviewing Mark and I, the kids started coming down one by one from upstairs. It took us half an hour to make introductions as they slowly trickled through. Then they were all standing in the kitchen eating- something they do a lot of around here. The dogs were running around, and Brett's puppy decided to try and lay on the the social worker's feet. Welcome to our house!

Lena thought she was so funny, she said she told him, we beat her and we drank a lot. I could see her smirk, and then she said "seriously" which is such a big word for her. Then she broke into laughter. She has a great sense of humor and is getting more comfortable with teasing. She is still not bonded to us the way the others are, and have been from the beginning. Out of all the issues that they can come with this is the hardest one for me to deal with. She hugs but it is more of a duty sort of hug. The girls (and the boys most of the time) never go to bed without hugging us goodnight and they don't leave the house without doing so. Lena will often leave without hugging us. She rarely chooses to sit by us or allows me to hug on her for long. In church she positions herself in the seat that is always the last one away from us. I will make a motion for her to come sit by us and she shakes her head no. Last week was my birthday and the kids all came home and the girls gave me mushy cards that they made or bought. Lena really didn't even acknowlege it, which is so unusual for our adopted children and the children of our friends who have adopted to not be thoughtful of birthdays. She is not naturally thoughtful and that is a huge contrast to the other girls. We are trying to teach her and set an example but so far the progress has been slow.

This week they went with the youth group from our friend's church to help clean windows and homes for the elderly. They also went to serve them dinner. We believe that children should learn early to have servants hearts and that life is not all about them. Some of ours are still learning how to do that because that is not a natural bent for many teens. We are still praying that they make a profession of faith so far the girls have not done so. All in God's timing.

Alesa, Julia and her best friend that have been adopted from the same orphanage are great artists so they are going to be doing some pencil sketches that we are going to put on notecards tied with ribbon and sell them or ask for donations for them that we can post on e-bay or around town. I will get them run off in sets of six. We are trying to come up with a great title, we thought orphans helping an orphan, but the girls are no longer orphans so that won't work. If anyone has any ideas let me know. We want it to be about them also wanting to bring her home because they have been in her shoes. We are also doing a puzzle of Karina it is a 500 piece puzzle of her and we will be asking a $10.00 donation to buy a piece of the puzzle we will write the name of the people on the back and then when she gets home she can see the names of all the people who helped bring her home. If we filled in all 500 pieces that will be 5,000 dollars towards our adoption. We will also have a website that will show the puzzle pieces as they are being filled in.

We are collecting up all our gold jewerly to take in and see how much we can get for it. We are having a garage sale in the summer when we have a little more time. We have to do things right now that are not so time consuming. Maybe some of you can use some of these fundraising ideas. I got some of them from others who are adopting.

God is calling us to go back to Ukraine so we are placing our faith that he will provide for this girl who belongs first and foremost to him. We just feel privileged to have a hand in it. Praising God everyday for calling us to adopt.

A Week to Cheer About

This has been an incredibly busy week! Now I can sit and breathe quietly and I have a whole week off for Spring Break woo hoo.

People ask me all the time how do you do it with all these kids and a full time job. Well, I don't do it alone I have my sweet husband, but more importantly I have God. Without my great and wonderful father above I can do nothing right for very long.

I am so excited to have this next week off because I can devote time to getting our fund raisers in order for Karina. Speaking of which my friend D just came back from Karina's orphanage and she brought us a picture of her. This was such a gift and she is just as beautiful as ever. She told us that Karina so badly wants us to come and get her. She said she loves us deeply and she doesn't even think Karina would go with another family because she is so bonded to us. To be honest we don't know what to do, there is a part of us that wants to tell her she needs to go with another family if presented the opportunity because what if we can't raise the money we need to go get her. In her loyalty to us if she passed up an opportunity and loses the chance to get out of there and have a great future that would be horrible. Then again at 15 the chance of another family wanting to adopt her is very remote. Please pray for wise decision making on everyones part. This is a silly little thing but you know how you sometimes get glimpses of things for the future. I just have this one little picture that keeps popping up in my head, and it is of me adjusting her wedding veil when she gets married. I haven't had that particular vision for any of my others, just her, isn't that strange? D my friend said she is extremely attached to me and I am to her as well. The first time I ever saw her it was instant bonding and Mark felt the same way.

Kyle is feeling much better thanks for your prayers. He still has to have a test done, and for the life of me I can't think of the name of it right, now but it is basically a brain scan. He also goes back in two weeks to get his blood levels checked again. He has gotten so thin even his brothers were commenting on it and they usually don't notice anything. His appetite has picked back up, so hopefully he will put some weight back on.

Julia announced to me about two weeks ago that she wanted to try out for cheering. I cringed because we are in a big school district where competition is high for a few slots. These children start practicing for cheering by starting gymnastics and cheer camps at about the age of 4 around here. Julia was so far behind I didn't know how to tell her what her odds were. So being very honest I explained the situation. She said she didn't care she was determined to at least try out. She asked me if she could take a class for a week at a local gymnastics center. I didn't want to get her hopes up, but I thought well she will see we are supporting her even though we knew what her odds were of making the squad. The last two weeks I have seen the inner determination of this girl. The whole family and many of her teachers were cheering her on, but I was still planning how I was going to talk to her when she received her rejection letter. We prayed before she went before the NCA judges last night, "dear God be in every movement Julia makes on the floor." She told us she messed up the cart wheel she had just learned while other girls were doing double back flips, but I truly believe the judges saw her heart last night. The policy here is that the girls can't open their letters until they get in the car. We pulled up and she got in with her letter and the cheer sponsors from our school were anxiously waiting to find out if she made it. She had so many people pulling for her. She opened the letter and said, oh my gosh I made it! I took it thinking I hope she didn't read that wrong. Oh me of little faith, when the determination of a young girl and the power of God in even the smallest details of our lives comes together not even the lack of years of training in a gym stopped our Julia from being selected last night to be on next years cheering squad.

I can't help at these moments to think of her stories of her past life that break our hearts. The day she was picked up from her grandmothers house at the age of 6 and put in the man's car from the orphanage and not one person said good bye to her. She looked out the window as they pulled away and she was so sad and scared. At that moment she felt like no one in the world cared about her. Little did she know that a great God had a plan for her life that would take her on a journey to our hearts and our home.

Alesa is running track and has come in last place most of the time, but she stuck with it and she placed second this week. She was so proud of the medal that was hanging around her neck. She worked hard for it.

Lena had a good week too. She had a choir music recital and she is gaining so much confidence. She also made a friend this week at school. Her English is coming very slowly, but she has enough now to make some conversation. We had a meeting with an evaluation team at school. We believe she has some learning disablities. She is on a 1st grade Math level and has not improved much since the beginning of the year. She has problems with short term memory. We are going to take her to get a neurological evaluation done to see if the electrocution she received as a child may have caused some of the learning issues. We also want to have her scarring looked at to see if there is anything that can be done to remove some of the scar tissue on her fingers. She has a huge scar on abdomen that is larger than a dinner plate and the Ukrainian and American doctors can't figure out what may have caused it. Maybe the exit point of the electricity since she has almost no muscle tone in that area. We didn't get all this done when she first got her because we figured we would give her 6 months or so to adjust before we started the intensive physical evaluations.

The kids are all home from school for break, and oh how we love a house full. They even brought their dogs with them, and one of them is a puppy he is so cute. We laugh as we see Brett cleaning up after his "child" he says he has an appreciation for parenting now:) Little does he know!

It is Spring and beautiful outside, my family is home and life is good. Thank you God for new beginnings. Everyday as we see the healing and the happiness of our adopted babies we thank you for giving them new beginnings and for giving us yet another life to nuture and bloom.

All about Karina

This is our new blog dedicated to trying to go and bring Karina home. She loves pink so this is the reason I have changed the colors.

We are officially kicking off our fund raising efforts. We are starting off by planning several fund raisers. I know this is the hardest part of adoption asking for money I really hate it. Everyone is asked to donate to so much and everyones resources are limited. We couldn't do it otherwise so we just pray about it and let God do the rest. Please pray with us as we step out in faith to raise the money to bring this deserving girl home.

Let me give you a little background on Karina. We met her when we went to adopt our other girls. The director would not allow us to adopt her at that time. We then had her come and spend Christmas with us. She came again the following summer. We made plans to adopt her. I will not go into all the details of why we could not adopt her at that time. I will say it is all in God's timing, she had a grandmother that she loved very much and was able to spend much of last summer with her, which wouldn't have happened if we had adopted her. Lena had only two months to go before she aged out of the orphanage and God put her on our hearts when Karina was not ready to make a commitment. If it his will now two girls will have a home instead of only one.

Her grandmother died recently and now she is ready to come and be part of our family. She has no one, not one other living family member. She will be 15 next week and we have one year to get her out before she turns 16. At the age of 16 she will be on her own and what happens when these kids are put out on the streets is something I can not bear to think about in relation to Karina, or any child for that matter.

My friend is at her orphanage adopting now and said Karina loves us so much and is hoping that we come for her. We gave her a Russian/English bible when she was here so I hope that she has been reading it.

I have contacted our SW and he is going to come the week after next to do an up-date on our homestudy. We really are not looking forward to starting all this again but we know the treasure at the end will be worth it.

Come along with us on our new adventure! I will of course still be giving up-dates on how the rest of our bunch is doing. Speaking of that, Kyle's blood count is back up a little and he is feeling better. He has an appointment with a neurologist tomorrow because they are running more tests because his liver and spleen were swollen. He goes back in 2 weeks for more blood work and they are hoping things will appear normal again. Thank you for your prayers I just know God is listening.

Praise God from whom all blessings fall. We have been so blessed beyond measure.