Happy Easter

Happy Easter!  I hope all of you have had a wonderful day.  It has been a different kind of Easter for us.  Last Easter, I absorbed everything, wondering if it would be my last Easter.  This Easter, I absorbed everything, wondering how Sasha and Vitalik would enjoy our future Easters.  Will they understand the significance of the holiday?  As I watched Jocelyn, Ellie Grace, and yes, even Carlie hunting eggs in our back yard, I thought of how different next Easter will be with two boys out there too.   Will they enjoy dying and hunting eggs?  I wondered throughout the day how they celebrate Easter in their orphanage.  I wondered if they had someone to tell them that they love them today.  Or someone to tell them that God loves them.   Or even someone just to hug them.  It makes me want to go now.  I am not a patient person!  It is a bittersweet experience, enjoying your children's joy in the celebration yet grieving for the children who are not with us yet.  Sasha and Vitalik are never far from our thoughts and prayers.

We have finalized a path for those who want to contribute to our adoption in a tax-deductible way.  If you are interested in donating to our adoption, you can mail a check to:

Share the Hope
P.O. Box 85
French Camp, MS  39745

You just need to write in the memo section that it is for the adoption fund(not our personal fund). Then let us know that you have sent a check so we can let the board members know to be on the look out for it and to apply it to our personal fund.  This organization is run by volunteers so we need to make it as easy for them as possible!

We have been so blessed with people contributing things and money to help cover our adoption costs.  When we started this process, we were not sure how it would all work out, but it is, slowly but surely.  Thanks to all of you for your support and praise God!  We are getting closer!  What a wonderful Easter!!!

Updates

We have several updates - most of them not directly related - so please excuse my jumping around in this post!  Last week was a very busy week for us as our big kids were home for their spring break and I made a quick trip to Houston for appointments.  But even though we were busy, there were some steps made in our adoption process.

We received our marriage licenses with the apostilles from Arkansas.  An apostille is like a more formal notarization.  All of our papers will require one but I will be able to take them directly to the Secretary of State's office in Mississippi.  Since we were married in Arkansas, the apostille had to come directly from there.  So we have that checked off!  Our last two documents we need for our dossier are in the works today and we should have them by the end of the day.  Then we will only be waiting for our I171 to come in from our government.  We also got our appointments for our biometric fingerprinting which has to be done for the I171.  Carlie will have hers done next week and Scott and I will have ours five days after her.  So that is a big step.  When we get our I171, we will have a complete dossier and will send it to Ukraine.  Then we will get our first appointment in Ukraine and can make travel plans.  I think....

Fund raising is going well.  Jewelry sales have been good and we set up an Etsy shop last week to sell through.  The shop name is 2Less.  We are very fortunate that friends have been helping with sales too.  Some are showing it around to their friends, at work, and to family members.  I can not express how appreciative we are!  We placed a t-shirt order earlier this week.  We ordered 130 and have 35 or so spoken for already.  We are steadily taking in donations for our garage sale that will be next Saturday, April 6.  There is a budget line set up for us at our church, Meadow Grove Baptist Church, where people can make anonymous donations, and we are very close to having an account set up with an organization called Share the Hope where people can make tax-deductible donations to our adoption costs.  Once that is completely ready, I will post more information on that.  And of course, I am busy applying for any adoption grants I can find.  I have never in my life tried to raise this much money in this short of a period of time - it feels like a full time job!

Then there is my health.  I went to Houston last week for tests and scans and there continues to be no sign of cancer.  Praise God.  I am going into all this, fully aware that the statistics are stacked against me.  Melanoma is a very serious thing.  There is a 10 - 20 % 5 year survival rate (depending on whose stats you go by).  But we have decided that I can not sit back and wait for death.  I have to live my life like I feel God is leading.  And there are people who never have another recurrence.  So no, I am not hiding my head in the sand.  But I am also not dwelling on the numbers.  I am choosing to trust in God and live out my faith like never before.  This is my eighth week off treatment.  I am feeling better every day.  I am cooking and cleaning (who would have thought I would have missed that?!)  I am exercising daily again, and I have not thrown up in 8 weeks!  Big, big steps.  I am hoping to start juicing soon (Gelaina, I need you to get home and teach me how! In all the free time you will have.  :)  )  I appreciate all of you that continue to pray for me and our family.

That is about it as far as updates go.  If you want a t-shirt or some jewelry, give me a call!  And drop by our garage sale next weekend if you live in the area.  We have some cool stuff being donated!!!

T-shirts

All our kids are home for spring break so we took some pics of them in our t-shirts we are selling as adoption fund raisers.  They are $20 each and we have sizes S - XL.  We can order children's sizes as well but the children's shirts are solid blue - not the heather blue.  We are happy to ship for an additional $2.00 per first shirt and $1.00 per additional shirts.  The front has an outline of Ukraine with 'Two Less' across it and the back has the outline of the world with John 14:18 across it.  Thanks to all of you who have already purchased shirts!  We really appreciate all of your support.  We will be placing an order on Monday so let me know!  (You can pay us in person, with a check or cash, or using the donate button on our blog.)

Changing Course

Have you ever read a verse that just sticks with you?  That you just can not shake?  Several years ago, I read a verse that I had read many times before.  But it just really got me thinkings.  It was Ephesians 5:1, "Therefore be imitators of God, as beloved children."  Such a simple verse.  But Scott and I could not shake it.  I do not think any verse in God's Word is inconsequential so even though this verse is short, I think we can read it very literally.  So we started thinking about it and since we are to be imitators of God, we started thinking about exactly what that meant.  We are major list people so, of course, we then started a list. A list of the characteristics of God.  Every time we read another passage in the Bible, there were more characteristics.  What resounded with us was how much He cares for the poor, the needy, the orphan, the widow.  I mean He really, really cares!  I have heard there are over 2000 verses that reference these people groups and I can believe it because they were popping up all through our readings.  We realized we really did not have a heart for any of these groups, at least nothing like God does.  And if we are to be imitators of God, we needed to check our hearts!  We had two children by the time Scott graduated from college, and 4 by the time I graduated from college.  We spent years just in survival mode!  Orphan care and adoption had been nowhere on our radar.  I really admire people who can say they have always had a heart for those things.  That just was not us though.  But as we prayed about it and thought about it and talked about what we should do, the seed started to grow.  Scott and I were taking a trip to Nevada and looking for some podcasts to download for us to listen to on the plane.  We settled on a series by David Platt on the book of James.  We decided on this because it fit into the time frame we would have to listen, not any divine word from God.  (Can you tell we are very straight-line thinking, practical, engineering type people?!)  So we are sitting on that plane, listening to Platt, and he gets to James 1:27.  "Religion that God our Father accepts as pure and faultless is this: to look after orphans and widows in their distress and to keep oneself from being polluted by the world."  Then he told how he had come to know how many children in the Birmingham area were in need of foster care and announced his plan to get enough families in their church licensed for foster care so that they, as a church, could cover that need.  We sat there in tears, knowing that was our calling.  And we have covered the rest of the story in past posts.  So in a not-so-nutshell, that is how one verse has altered our course.  It always amazed me to look back, and see how God lays the breadcrumbs for us to follow.  Then, we were just booking along in our nice, comfortable, happy life.  Not a tear shed for orphans - ever.   Now,  we have a tremendous burden for orphans and children in need and almost daily tears.  Mark Batterson calls it a 'divine burden' in his book, In a Pit With a Lion on a Snowy Day.   And that is what we consider it because we would never have felt like this on our own.  We are not all called to adoption - certainly.  But James 1:27 does apply to anyone who calls himself/herself a follower of Christ.  We all have a part to play.  Have you considered what your part is?  We would love to hear from you about what verses have impacted you or altered the course of your life.

Well, today was a big day:

• Our marriage licenses came in.  We ordered them from Arkansas two months ago, and had been waiting and waiting for them.  Finally they arrived.  We were starting to wonder if perhaps we were not legally married after all!!  Now we will have to send them back to the Sec of State's office in Arkansas to get apostilles.  So.....more waiting.
• Our home study came in.  Hip hip hooray!!!  We have known that was coming all week, so we have been eagerly awaiting it each day.  That means we could file our I600A.
• We got our information and home study to UPS to send off our I600A.  That is a big step because it can take between 6-8 weeks to get approval.  So we wanted to get it in as soon as possible.  Huge!
• We got another - yes another - wire transfer to our facilitator in Ukraine.  He is working hard for his money so we do not begrudge that at all.  We are grateful to have him.
• And we were finally able to file our taxes.  We always file right at the end of January so it is not hanging over our heads.  But this year, because we adopted J and E last year, there were necessary forms that just became available through the IRS this week.  We will get a bit of a refund from the adoption tax credit for their adoption, which we are hoping will help fund S and V's adoptions.  Now we need prayers that it is processed quickly and we get that refund soon!
• The jewelry sales have been good this week and have greatly helped cover some of the adoption expenses that have come up this week.  We are so very grateful for everyone's support!
• We have the first order of t-shirts on the way.  Will post pictures and more information when they are in.
• We have started accepting donations for our garage sale.  We have set the date of the sale for April 6 and have been busy pricing things as they come in.  If you are doing your spring cleaning and clearing stuff out, we would be happy to come pick anything up that you would like to donate.  All proceeds will go towards the adoptions.

Thanks so much for all of your prayers and support.  We feel very blessed by the people in our lives!

"I will not leave you as orphans, I will come to you."  John 14:18

Waiting...

We are waiting.   Waiting on our finished home study.  The last piece of the puzzle came in the mail on Saturday and we immediately scanned it in and emailed it to our agency.  Praying we will have the home study in hand within a few days!

Yesterday I was going through our Sasha and Vitalik file and came across some early correspondence we had about them in the fall of 2011.  I thought sharing pieces of that would help you get to know them a little better and give you a glimpse of why we have fallen in love with two boys we have never even met.

"Even though Sasha and Vitalik are not biological brothers, they are best friends and share a special bond.  Vitalik has some warning about his transfer to their current orphanage, but for Sasha the move came suddenly.  His group was moved without warning.  One morning they were told to gather their things (which fit into a small plastic bag) and get on the bus.  They were taken 4 hours away and were dropped there to start their new life in a new place.

Their orphanage is out in the middle of nowhere.  There is a tiny town nearby but it has only a few hundred people that live there.  The building facility is nice and it seems that the children have clothes and food.  The staff seem to be caring and interested in the children's lives, but there are not enough adults for each child to be loved as an individual, and the kids will still be under-educated and ill prepared for life when they leave the orphanage.

Vitalik is in 3rd grade.  He is a sweet little boy.  He is full of energy and loves to talk.  He has a cute little kid voice and sometimes can't quite pronounce all the syllables of words.  Vitalik is also very outgoing and friendly.  Whenever new people come to visit the orphanage, Vitalik is usually the first person to run to them, give them a hug, and then start asking lots of questions.  (From what I understand from Vitalik's host family, this all sounds very true!)  

Vitalik loves to be helpful and after we are finished with a craft project he always wants to help clean up.  He also appreciates order and tries to keep his things neat and tidy.  He has a positive attitude and not many things can get him down.  He is well liked by his teachers and the other kids in the orphanage.

Sasha is in 2nd grade this year.  He loves the art projects we do together.  Each week he is very careful to follow all the instructions to complete the project.  He has a long attention span and enough patience to finish what he starts.  When Sasha is busy with his work of art, he usually sits quietly and concentrates really hard, but even when he is done, he is able to sit still and wait to hear the instructions about what to do next.

Sasha also loves hugs and loves to be cuddled and held.  He doesn't talk very much but his eyes always seem to be filled with emotion.  He is a little boy with so much potential, but he needs a safe and loving family environment to really grow and mature.

Both Vitalik and Sasha have the same desire to have a family but they express it in different ways.  Vitalik is very vocal about his wish to have a family.  He wants to be adopted, prays for a family.  He has asked, 'When is my mommy coming to get me?'  Having a family is his deepest wish and prayer.  Sasha is quieter about his desire to have a family.  He is sometimes hesitant to even say the words out loud.  Even at such a young age he has given up hope that anyone would ever want him."

For all of you adoptive parents, you know how we treasure any tidbit into our kids' pasts since we have so little.  Thanks for enduring the long post!!!