Anna's New Endeavor

My beautiful 11 year old daughter, Anna, has started a new blog called "Heart of Missions"!!! This is something she has wanted to do for a long time. I'm so proud of her!

She is handcrafting items to sell in order to help different missions. Her first mission to support is for our dear friend, Max, missionary to his native people in Ukraine. I intend to do a much more involved blog post about my time in his city while I was in Ukraine.  But for now, please check out THIS POST on Anna's blog to find out more about his ministry and specifically, the new building to support orphans who are "aging out" of the system. Normally, these kids are destined to a life of crime, drugs, prostitution and suicide, but this building and ministry seek to break the cycle and give hope to these teens.

Here are the first few items Anna has for sale to raise funds for Max. Please check them out and leave her a comment. More items will be added soon, so be sure to come back. Thank you so much!

"Anti-Depression Kits"



Cotton Potholders - This is one of many different beautiful color combinations

Giving Tuesday - Can You Help?

Some of you may have seen the buzz about "Giving Tuesday", which is today.  You know, Black Friday, Cyber Monday, and now Giving Tuesday.  I think the timing is poor because it should have been the week BEFORE everyone spent all their money over the weekend. :-) Anyway, I have a special little project I'm asking you to help me with.

You may remember a couple weekends ago, I was privileged to travel to Krivoy Rog to visit our friend, Max.  Max's ministry continues whether he has guests or not, and I wouldn't have it any other way!  I was able to tag along on one of his ministry visits out to a village to visit this family.  If you click over, you'll see this family has 12 children and sadly, the single mom is an alcoholic.  The youngest boy prefers to sleep with the dog as he has no bed and it's warmer out there...Max, his team, and I brought lots of blankets, some clothes, and food when we went out. We met the mom and 4 of the kids.  Here's some pictures.

Max is gathering up some of the blankets we took to the family. These are blankets from us, that a very special lady named Betty sewed together for Max!  This is half of Max's storage area - many tubs from our church. :-) It's very well organized and everything is labeled.

Max with 3 of the kids

The room these 3 were hanging out was very warm, thankfully, as it was heated from a wood stove in the next room. But at night, it gets cold when no wood is added.  The smell in this room was like nothing I had ever smelt before. It was all I could do to not gag and leave. :-(  Max and his team hope to take a few of the kids at a time and give them baths and wash their hair. Their hair felt like straw. Totally heartbreaking.

Max insisted I join in too. :-) The kids are obviously not as thrilled to have me there. LOL They LOVE Max though...most kids do.

Since they are in a village, they have a bit of land to grow veggies thankfully and they have chickens and goats.

A man helping her had planted winter carrots that day and garlic was planted too. 

The dog house...where the little 4 yo boy sleeps with the dog :-(

A brick addition has been started for more bedrooms. The windows need glass, and obviously a roof would be great too! Someday Max wants to contrast this photo with one of him looking out the window of glass with a roof over his head. He's a visionary! The rest of the house is built from clay.

I asked Max how he found out about this family. He said the mom had contacted Social Services for help. They have nothing to offer her, so SS called Max as they do almost everyday. Thankfully, not every case is this needy.

This family literally has nothing. Nothing at all. And winter is coming. The kids need protection from the cold. The winter in that part of Ukraine is about like ours in Wisconsin...cold! Unfortunately, Max didn't have any coats or boots in his inventory of donations. His ministry doesn't have the funds to buy them right now either. So, that's where YOU AND ME (and Pat and Sarah too)!  Pat has just safely arrived in Kyiv (YAY!!!) and with him, he has several hats that Sarah (and I'm assuming Rachel too!) made for the girls in the family, as well as most of the boys too!  What she didn't have time to make, they bought. They also purchased gloves and mittens for the whole family. Awesome!

Now, onto coats and boots. If you have a few extra dollars after the weekend :-), and if you want to help keep these kids warm this winter and protected from the cold, please feel free to send me a "personal gift" through paypal to my email - deut4.9@gmail.com. By making it a personal gift, no fees will be taken out. It would be fair to say that if no one helps, which I understand and would be ok, I'm still going to buy coats and boots. In fact, I bought 8 coats today at a second hand store I found.  8 coats for 700 grivna = $85.  Yay me! I still need coats for the 7 yo twin girls and possibly the big boys. I'm using the cash we had reserved for an expediting fee but thankfully we did not need to use it. We are putting that money towards Sarah's ticket to come back with me on the 2nd trip.  (She's excited and so am I!)  The money for the coats and boots will just come out of our family's account.  So, if you want to help, great! If not, that's fine too. I understand.  I'm not sure I'm going to find much for 2nd hand boots. I was glancing at prices at the market today, and new boots worth anything will be at least $25-$30/pair. That will add up. I will probably give Max a call and see if he talk to the vendor and get a good deal for me. :-)  He's good at that sort of thing...really good.

Thanks so much for your consideration.  Either way, I would appreciate your prayers for this family, and esp for the mom. Pray for the Light of Jesus to penetrate her heart!

Catching Up

Well, wow!  Sorry for the long lack of updates! It's been just a week since we met Grace, and in some respects, it seems much, much longer. What a week it's been!

Our visits with Grace have been going pretty well. We've seen some behaviors we expected to see adopting an older child, but that is ok. We still love her all the same! I've seen her interact with other children and she is very gentle with them for the most part...unless she wants to be on the swing at the same time and then there may be a bit of a shove...totally normal. :-)

On Tuesday, we had the extreme pleasure of being able to visit with Elijah's biological family. It is always such a blessing and honor to be with them. Mama Tanya spoiled us with so many gifts. We are so grateful for Elijah to have this relationship with them (through us). I grieve that Jonathan and Grace will not have that with their birth families, but that is just the way it usually is over here. So, thank you Mama Tanya for making the huge effort you did to come and see us and for all of the beautiful gifts you brought for us and the children.

We have court date! Woohoo!!!  God did the miraculous and our MAF (most awesome facilitator) was able to get all of our paperwork gathered to submit to the SDA on Wednesday. Unfortunately, the SDA now takes 2 weeks to process their consent that we need for court. (It used to only take one week.) So, court will not be quite as soon as we had hoped, but there is still a fairly strong glimmer of hope we can be outta here by the end of the year and the New Year's shutdowns.  We were so thankful the orphanage director and Social Services were so easy work with in getting our paperwork gathered in just a couple of days.

Let's see what else..right now I'm not actually not "home" but in Krivoy Rog visiting Max!  Check out his website at http://truehopeukraine.com.  I know I've blogged about him several times. He really is the "real deal" and his ministry is making the difference in the lives of 1000s of children, teens and adults.  He said right now is a very stressful time as the nights are getting colder and the kids from the streets need a warm place to sleep. Hmmm...what was the last thing you worried about? After this weekend, I hope to do a single post about Max and his ministry and ways you can help.

Early Wednesday morning, Pat and our MAF traveled up to Kyiv to return our rental car and submit the documents. Yes, every adoption brings something new for us and this time it was a rental car! And yes, Pat did drive in Kyiv!!  Are you impressed? You should be! LOL  It is no easy feat, but he did great!  Our MAF did most of the driving though and it was indispensible in going back forth between the city she is living in and the city she was born.  Anyway, we decided it would be best if Pat went home to be with the kids for Thanksgiving, so he totally surprised them on Thursday afternoon!  They were shocked!!! How fun!  :-)

So, I'd appreciate the prayers as I go it alone for a couple of weeks. I feel very safe and with only one visit per day, I'm home several hours before dark. I'm not concerned at all, but a little extra prayer support doesn't hurt.

This week, I'm looking forward to meeting up with a Canadian missionary family - you know, that speak English. :-)

I'm so very, very thankful for our caregivers at home. Even with Pat home, we will still need help during the day for school and what not. We could NOT have done this without you! Thank you so very much to the O and G families!!!

Thank you everyone for your prayers, love, support and encouragement. We deeply appreciate it!

Help Bring Maxim Home!!!

This is Maxim!!!  He is a very special little boy and has a wonderful family working very, very hard to bring him home ASAP.  Maxim is special to me for several different reasons, most of which I can't really share here. But one reason is that he shares a name with our amazing friend, Max, who has an awesome ministry helping the hopeless of his country. 

Anyway, Maxim's mom, Stephanie, is hosting a blog auction HERE.  You know how much I enjoy blog auctions! :-)  Many, many wonderful things have been donated and some even have no bids! I strongly encourage you to go check it out, bid on an item (super simple, just leave a comment with your bid and email), and help bring this very special boy home. Stephanie was hoping to raise $12,000 during this auction, but unfortunately, it is well short of that right now. Please go and help! Thanks so much for your consideration. Oh, don't wait too long as the auction ends tomorrow night at 10pm CST!

One Year Ago Today - July 6 - GOTCHA!

One year ago, I posted this from Vanya's apartment: (I added some notes in yellow.)

"Today went great so far!!! Right now, we're hanging out at Vanya's apartment (since he conveniently lives in the same city as the passport office and the train station) while we wait to leave on the overnight train to Kyiv in a few hours. So, yes, that "we" is Vanya, me AND Jonathan!!!!! Our day went great with obtaining the court decree (This took a bit longer b/c we needed about 10 copies, and they only made seven. Thankfully, Vanya usually requests the court decree to only have 2 sides, thus one piece of paper, so they don't have to sew the 2 sheets together. If you've never been to Ukraine, you are laughing. But it's true - any official document containing more than one sheet of paper is sewn together with a string. No, I'm not joking!), his new birth certificate, closing out J's bank account and getting the one-day red passport! Praise God!!!! The Lord worked out all of the details with everything. He is SO good to us. Oh ya, the "Gotcha" part of the day went great too. We got photos of his crib and his play area, as well as group photos with the nannies and one with the director. The Lord also gave us favor with the director to let us see and take photos of one of the very special little ones here, so I'll be passing those on to his mama as soon as I get home. 

Jonathan is doing well. He wasn't too crazy about his bottle at first, but managed to drink down 6 oz of it. Right now he's laying on the couch next to me, cooing and smiling at me. He's a little love. :-) I'm going to try and give him some cereal here in a bit before we get on the train, so I'd best sign off and get back to being a mommy. I'll post photos when I get home too. (While I typed this, Vanya had run to the grocery store to buy some baby food for him. Love it! Vanya went way above and beyond. I couldn't carry any over as I didn't check any luggage, and I had no opportunity to stop at the store. Vanya did a great job with his selections, as I think this may have been the first time he bought baby food. :-))

Thank you to everyone for praying about this day. God is faithful and has blessed me tremendously today. Please continue to pray for a smooth train ride tonight, smooth processing at the embassy Thurs and Friday, and of course, a quiet, uneventful trip home with no cancelled flights! Love to you all!!!"

Ok, here's the photos! (This post is a bit picture heavy as I nearly lost all of these photos shortly after we arrived home due to an "operator error". But we recovered them and I'm SO thankful!)

A shopping mall near the apt

Outside of the HUGE market

Front of the city Social Worker's office

J's "locker" just outside the main grouppa room.
I'll give a special gold star to the first one to  leave a comment  with the English pronunciation of Jonathan's last name. :-) I'll give you a hint - his first name was Kiril, thus the initial K at the end. Oh, and it's Russian, not Ukrainian...

The nannies working this day. The lady on the right was the "head" nanny as we usually saw her doing paperwork and bossing around the young one in the red. :-)

Every single time we came to visit Jonathan, we was laying in this play pen - flat on his back - if he wasn't eating. :-(   There is no padding, it is just hard wood. :-( :-(  No toys to play with, just the ones hanging in the air to look at.

The wall of toys...

It was actually nap time when we came, so you can see the babes in  the cribs. J's was in the back left corner. 

Jonathan's crib!

As I mentioned above, the director gave us permission to visit this precious little one...his story is not mine to tell, but his mama tells it so very well here - http://savenathaniel.blogspot.com/2012/05/one-year-ago-today.html . My heart breaks completely in two for him...I debated about posting these or not. But I feel it's important for us to be reminded of what the lack of medical care for orphans really means...his condition is VERY treatable..

Ok, it was time to pull it together and sign off with the director (right). I have no idea who the lady on the left is, this was the first time I saw her.

Leaving Antoshka!

Oh...my poor baby's eyes...you know, once he got home and they cleared up, he's never had a single problem with them since!

This is how we traveled via taxi to Donetsk. Yes, no carseats...just LOTS of prayer! This is still his favorite cuddling position.
Some of you Ukrainian veterans may have noticed how big this car looks, and it was. Funny story...when Max came to visit us, this same taxi brought us to Celetano's. The driver was astute enough to give Max his number in case we needed a taxi again. :-) He pointed out he had AC. Sold! We saved his number and Vanya called him for our trip back to Donetsk. I can't remember exactly what we paid, but we figured it barely covered his gas, esp since he had to drive back 1 1/2 hours to Kramatorsk. Nice guy!

 Cuteness!

On the train!!!
When I look at this photo, I'm shocked at how skinny his legs look. His legs are NOT skinny anymore!

FREEDOM!

He conked out like this shortly after we got on the train about 8pm I believe. By the way, he still sleeps exactly like this - always the first 2 fingers on his right hand - in his mouth. I figured he would wake up in a couple hours for a bottle. Nope! He slept like this until 2 or 3AM. I tried to sleep with my legs around him so he wouldn't roll off. Have I ever mentioned I hate sleeping on the train??? But a sacrifice WELL worth it!

Tomorrow - our first day in Kyiv!

Update, Prayer Request, and Another "One Year Ago Today"

Update: Elijah's ear tube surgery last Wednesday went very well. He was in and out of OR in less than 15 minutes, woke up fine, and we were on our way home by 8:30am.  The next day he seemed a little less frustrated, so I'll take that as a good sign! He'll have his hearing tested again at the 4-week post-op check up.

Prayer Request for Jonathan: Jonathan will have his ear tubes placed at about 10:30 tomorrow (Wed) AM. The ear tube part of the procedure should be quick, but they are conducting a sedated hearing test. This may take up to 2 hours. Please pray for him to handle the anesthesia ok. He did get a clearance letter from the cardiologist, but a little extra prayer never hurt. :-) Also, he won't be able to have a bottle after 4:30AM.  I have a feeling he won't be a happy camper...so prayers for contentment and peace (for both of us) would be appreciated too.

One Year Ago Today:  "Auntie Debbie" FINALLY made it to Elijah's city after a nightmarish trip to Ukraine through snowstorms across Europe in which she "visited" France, Italy, Germany and finally Ukraine, including a night in the Milan airport, as well as a night on the lovely Ukrainian train. I was never so glad to hear someone's voice when she called from Max's phone. But whatta friend, huh? I'm SOO grateful for Max as well. He gave up a few days of his very, very busy schedule to pick up Debbie in Kiev and then guided and protected her on the 15-hr train ride. I chronicled her journey a bit HERE, HERE, HERE (which also includes an update about sweet Shea. I'll tell ya, there is nothing like shouting about a child that you've met and then seeing a family commit to him while I was still in country! What a joy!!!) and HERE.   I'm forever grateful to Debbie for willingly giving up her Christmas with her family to spend it with me and Elijah. I can't even begin to tell you how much more difficult it would have been to be away by myself over Christmas. As I'm hearing Christmas songs this year and finding myself getting weepy, I'm realizing those emotions from last year are still pretty fresh. Having Debbie with me on the way home was a HUGE help too of course. After coming home alone with Jonathan, it made me realize how much more difficult the trip home with Elijah could have been.

So, thank you, Debbie, aka "Auntie Crackers", for giving of your time, friendship and all that you gave up physically, mentally, and emotionally to travel half way across the world to be with Elijah and me. You and your family will always have a very special place in my heart. :-) Debbie did a guest post for me last year while in country. You can read it HERE. Maybe I'll ask her to do a follow-up post in the next couple of weeks...the Lord has done AMAZING AMAZING AMAZING things in her family over the past year!!!

A Visit from a Good Friend!

Lots of things to catch up on here! Yesterday came and went w/ no phone call from the judge. Vanya said it's not uncommon for them to forget to call. Sigh...he called the social worker today, who in turn spoke to the judge's assistant. We're still on the calendar, so that's GREAT news!!! The social worker, who has been wonderful to work with, has to be at court too, so at this point, no news IS good news. That's not always the case, but today it is. So, we should have court Saturday morning at 9:30AM, 1:30AM back home. Please pray!!! We'll take a bus/taxi to the bigger city in this region, then fly to the capital, and fly home Sunday AM. YAY!!!  Please continue to pray for the kids back home and for my mother's sanity! :-) We are SOOO appreciative of what she is doing for us! We couldn't do it without you! Thank you, Mom!

J's hat yesterday morning. Lovely lace with a pink ribbon on top. :-)
We missed our afternoon visit as it was raining when we got downstairs, so we headed back up. I was surprised how much I missed seeing our cute munchkin. It will be hard being gone for those 10 days! Good to see the other kids of course!

A few days ago, we called our friend Max, to tell him we were in the country. We were shocked when he said he was going to get a bus ticket to come and see us. I never dreamed we would see him on this trip. He got in before 8AM this morning after being on the bus for 11 hours. Whatta guy, huh? We are so incredibly blessed he would take time out of his very busy schedule to come and see us and Jonathan. It was SO nice to see him!  We were able to chat with the nannies a bit through him, as well as ask to come in early to see how and what Jonathan ate. (We were going to have Vanya ask, but it worked out just to have Max do it.) Max left about 1:30 to head back home. It was such a joy to have him here with us, even if it was just for a few hours.

He's gotta learn early how to use the cell phone, right???

Love those baby blues!

So, we went in early at 2pm to see how Jonathan eats.  Well, not so good. :-( The first day, the doc told us that he didn't like to eat, even though he certainly looks like he does.  Leah left a comment that very often tongue thrust is mistaken for lack of interest in eating. I think that is pretty true. That along with the amount he was fed in one spoonful...definitely more came out than stayed in. He needs to learn how to get the food to the back of his mouth to swallow it. He went through 3 bibs. Poor thing...I guess I'll leave it at that for now.

He did have a smile for the nanny feeding him.

You can see the amount of cereal he was being fed. Looks like a lot to me. Max said they are feeding him barely and/or buckwheat cereal and that it tastes disgusting...
It took Jonathan 30 minutes to eat. The other 2 nannies fed all of the other 8 babies in that time. They seem to love him, but I can see where he might soon be one of those babies that are "too much trouble", esp if he was transferred to a different grouppa. :-(
He didn't get a bottle this time, but does get a bottle at different feedings. They had him drink out of a cup, as did most of the babies except two.

From our afternoon visit...he really enjoys chewing on things, especially the tag blanket.

Elijah's Dedication (Long...)

On May 1st, we had a VERY special day! We had Elijah dedicated to the Lord. That means we pray someday that he will make a decision to follow Christ and be baptized at that time. We also announced our adoption of Jonathan to our church family. AND, we got to hear Max (from Elijah's former country) share about his totally amazing ministry to the hopeless of that country as our "sermon" for the day. I could sit and listen to him share the stories of how God is working in mighty ways all day long. Our wonderful church family blessed Max's ministry will LOTS of money too. They are SO awesome and generous! Remember, this is the same church family that raised over $17,000 to bring Elijah home.

I'm very grateful to "Auntie Debbie" for taking photos of our party here after church. I have over 200 photos from the time church ended until everyone left our home. Awesome! But that is why it was a bit overwhelming to do this post. Don't worry, I'm not posting all of them, but here are several, telling the story as we go. (Sorry some of the photos are sideways...I don't have the time or energy to fix them.)




Our family of 8!

 

Our family with grandparents



Getting some love...this boy loves to cuddle. I love it!




He looks like such a big boy in his new outfit. Thanks Mom for the cute clothes for his special day!



How is it that I'm so blessed to be his momma?

Max, Elijah and I skyping with Elijah's birth parents!

I wasn't going to let this once in a lifetime opportunity go by of having Max, who is fluent in Russian obviously, talk with his parents and translate for us. This is the second time we've skyped with them. Their English is a ton better than my Russian, but it is still hard to communicate. It was a true, true blessing to be able to talk with them. I know they appreciated it deeply too. His mom asked about our Ds support group (how many friends he has w/ Ds) and how Elijah is doing.  I got to ask her if they had any cancer in their family (none), as well as allergies. Elijah's nose has been dripping for about 3 weeks straight, so I'm assuming he does have some sort of seasonal allergies. His mom said she had allergies to a particular plant in the spring when she was pregnant with him. Interesting, huh?
Max was generous to share his cell phone # with them, so she has contacted him a couple times to express her gratitude.

God is so good!!!

Oh, Max also told them about our adoption of Jonathan. He could explain it better than me. I wasn't sure if they would be happy or sad. Maybe happy that Elijah would not be the only child with Ds here, or maybe sad that they might think he would get less attention with a new little one here. They seemed ok about it.  They said we should contact them when we are in country and maybe we can get together if it works out. We will be in the same quarter of the country as last time, but still a long train ride away.

 

We had 2 cakes that day. Isaac's birthday was just a few days before and he shares his birthday with his buddy, Ben. So, I had a birthday cake made for them with their photo on it. :-)



Elijah's cake



Rachel wearing Pastor Dan's tie.  Too cute!

 

Elijah and Max, his godfather

Yes, we asked Max to Elijah's godfather, or sponsor. I just continue to be overwhelmed at the Lord's goodness and perfect timing and how He has woven our story together with Max's. If you've been reading here since the very beginning, you will remember that Pat and Sarah went on a mission trip last summer to minister with Max in an adult handicapped facility (mental institution). It was because of that trip that I was on RR when I saw Elijah's photo and JUST KNEW he was ours.  I just can't even process it all how this all worked out. God is amazing...

For what it's worth, Max spoke Russian to him, and Elijah didn't really want to have anything to do with him. It was pretty interesting. On the other hand, when we skyped with his bio mom, he looks at her very intently. I'm pretty sure he remembers her. This time he sat calmly on my lap for the whole conversation, and it was pretty long - maybe 30 minutes.

Elijah is just not sure about this weird guy who speaks a weird language. :-)



Elijah with both of his godparents
Auntie Debbie and Max

Debbie has played such a HUGE role in helping us bring Elijah home (including spending 2 weeks with me in a foreign country and giving up Christmas with her family), and has been so super supportive since then. We are SO grateful for Debbie and her entire family in our lives. THANK YOU!




Rebekah and Max



Anna and Max

Our neighbors just hatched chicks, so they brought them over to share their cuteness.

This precious child the Lord has given us!  We are eternally grateful!