God's Love

The last month and a half has been very hard emotionally. I have felt abandoned, forgotten, and questioned why God did not move in our behalf knowing that He could have made things so different for us.

Today as I sat having brakfast with Nina I saw it. I saw God's love. It was all around me, being shown to me through the Ukranian people, through the German people. I saw it, I felt it, and I cried. Because God has been with us all along.

Through Jerry and Kim, through the Ukranians at the airport, through the Germans at the airport and hotel. All around, God's love. "I will never leave you nor forsake you." Those words are wrapped aorund me today.

I am spent, physically and emotionally, but God's love is wrapped around me.

We are coming home. Tonight, I will finally get to see my family.

Public Adoption Blog

Our adoption blog is no longer private, I will be updating there if I get the chance as we travel.

It is snowing quite a bit here, so please keep us in your prayers!

We have a Visa

We have a Visa and we are headed home! Later this evening for you we will be picked up and our journey back home will begins. Our flight departs at 5:30 am our time, which means 9:30 pm your time.

45 days, I have been gone for 45 days! I cannot wait to be home, see my husband and my two beautiful princesses. This has been a hard journey, but it was worth it!

Prayer requests

-Please please please pray for a safe travel home

-Pray that Nina does well on the flight

-Pray for safe travel for Andy as he comes to pick us up at the airport

Hooray, we are almost there!

Our adoption blog will no longer be private, so if you cannot log in right now, try again in a couple of hours and it should work!

3 days left to go

It is Saturday evening here in Kyiv. We only have 3 days to go. Early Tuesday morning we finally get to go home!

Yesterday we were not able to get Nina's medical as the place was closed due to Christmas (even though it is a Ukranian clinic) It means that on Monday we have a marathon day getting thigs ready. I think we leave at 7:30 so we can get visa applied for and medical so that we can get that visa later on Monday.

Yesterday was Christmas day, and it did not feel a lot like Christmas, but, our wonderful friends that are here as missionaries invited us over and let me tell you, the food was delicious! They have become dear friends and I think we will always be so thankful to them. They have been wonderful with Nina and Nina adores Kim!

We did spend the morning listening to Christmas songs and dancing around, then we took a short nap and we got to go to our Christmas dinner.

We are counting down the days.

Hope you all had a Merry Christmas!

Redemption by Derek Leux

Derex Leux was a man that loved God and followed Him. He worked for the International House of Prayer and had a heart for adoption. His journey led him to Reece's Rainbow where him and his wife Renee adopted 3 children from Ukraine last year. One with Spina Bifida, and 2 with Down syndrome. Yesterday, Derek was killed in a car accident, our Reece's Rainbow family grieves his loss. As I have struggled with being here for so long, I found this post by him, written last year, when he was here in Ukraine.

Allow the words from this man to touch your hearts. Have a Merry Christmas!!!

Redemption by Derek Leux (bold added by me)

Friday, December 12, 2008

Renee' and I are sitting in the office of a telephone company in Novograd Valenski, Ukraine, using wireless internet. We are in the middle of adopting three special needs boys from an orphanage here. Two of the boys have Down Syndrome. Roman is high functioning, energetic and happy. Dimitri has serious mental retardation, failure to thrive, and though he is five years old, he is the size of a 1 year old. He has sores on his face, a distinct smell of death on him, and yells out if we try to do anything with him other than hold him. Because he has less ability to respond and learn, he naturally gets less attention and care from the orphanage workers in this world of limited resources. The harsh reality of the "survival of the fittest" principle is a life and death struggle that this little boy is losing fast. Our third boy Sasha, is a brilliant six year old who has Spina Bifida (the condition our son Josiah died from in 1996). He is like a learning sponge that can't get enough! He is happy and alert and thirsty for knowledge and experience. So with two of our boys, we get an immediate return on any investment we make. With Dimitri, there's not much immediate gratification. In fact, it's unknown when and if there will be a return at all. This is the kind of situation that makes the carnal, fallen, human reasoning think, "Why try? What's the point? What will this produce? What good will this do? Why not select a boy who has more potential? This looks like a lost cause.

Two days ago we drove for hours into the Ukrainian countryside to the village where Dimitri was born. We met with officials there and signed papers and answered their questions. We also went and saw Dimitri's house. The day had been long, we were still recovering from jet lag, I was beginning to really miss my six daughters at home and all the familiar things our fragile human hearts entangle themselves with in feeble attempts to feel secure. Sitting in the dark on our very long drive back to Novograd that night, the Holy Spirit began to whisper to my heart, and new understanding about redemption began to take shape.

I was thinking, "Man, adopting this little boy has been so much work. This is exhausting, expensive, uncomfortable… and it doesn't feel very rewarding right now." What am I doing in some little Soviet car in the dark, in the middle of rural Ukraine in frozen December, as the driver dodges cats and potholes? What if Dimitri doesn't improve at all? What if we get "nothing" out of this? Ahhh, there it was; that dark, fallen, unreedemed, selfish human love, rooted in the tree of the knowledge of "good and evil". The love the Greeks called "erao" love. The love where we treat someone as precious and treasured for what we can get out of it. This is unlike "agapeo" love, the God kind of love that treats someone as treasured and precious for their good, not for my good. It's when I love a person in order to meet their needs, having no expectation of them meeting any of my needs. At a whole new level, God is working His kind of love into my weak heart, and He's using little Dimitri to do it.

On the drive home that night, the Lord whispered in my ear, "This is Redemption. Derek, do you know how far I travelled to get you and bring you back? I had to be separated from my Son, in order to get you, just like you are separated from your children in order to get these boys. Do you know how expensive it was for Me to purchase you? It cost me everything. Do you know how broken, sick, damaged, twisted, dirty, smelly, and hopeless you were? And at the end of it all, you had nothing to give me or add to me. I did it for you. I emptied myself and became nothing so that you could have it all. This is redemption.

My friends, adoption is redemption. It's costly, exhausting, expensive, and outrageous. Buying back lives costs so much. When God set out to redeem us, it killed Him. And when He redeems us, we can't even really appreciate or comprehend it, just like Dimitri will never comprehend or fully appreciate what is about to happen to him… but… he will live in the fruit of it. As his Daddy, I will never expect him to understand all of this or even to thank me. I just want to watch him live in the benefits of my love and experience the joys of being an heir in my family. This is how our heavenly "Papa" feels towards us.

Today, settle your busy heart down and rest in the benefits of redemption. Enjoy the fruits of His goodness, and stop trying to "pay Him back". You'll never get close you goofy little kid.

You can visit their family blog HERE.

We have a passport!

We got our passport today! As I got back on the taxi I couldn't help but cry, we are getting closer, we are going home, finally. This time the end is in sight!

Tomorrow morning we get Nina's medical done so on Monday when we go to the Embassy we will have all our documentation ready and we should get our Visa that same afternoon. Then we can come home Monday night or Tuesday morning!

Language

I now know that Babushkas yelling at you here is normal, so I no longer take it personal :)

On a different note, I wanted to share this video of Nina talking some. Even though language is a barrier right now, after a week with her mama, she really is doing fantastic. Enjoy her cuteness! And even though she does not know what "go potty" means, it is cute to hear her say it (She thinks it either means bathroom door, or simply go to the bathroom, as in the actual room, not to use it)