“They said to Him, ‘Lord, we want our eyes to be opened.’ Moved with compassion, Jesus touched their
eyes; and immediately they regained their sight and followed him.” Matthew 20:33-34.
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| The park |
I want to say thanks for all the prayer support for
Sophia. We have been praying that she
would start to feel better and kick this nasty little midsummer’s cold. Well, as it turns out, He heard us. Our driver was taking a little different
route to the orphanage this morning as he was looking for an Apteka, Russian
for pharmacy. He came back out with a
box of cold/flu medicine and said it was for Sophia. Sophia had a slight fever yesterday and looked
and felt better today. Yevgeny, the
patron saint of orphans in Ukraine.
Thank you Lord for sending your servant.
Now we need to pray for Anya as she has become sick. So sick that we did not see her today.
I want to talk about the value of hosting. Or as I have come to “see” it, the value of
having your eyes opened. Last year when
we started considering hosting, we went back and forth for a couple of
weeks. Could we do it? Do we have room? What if one of us is out of town for a
week? Amanda makes it hard to say no, as
the only criteria is that we love the child while they are here. Seems easy enough. Let me also say that our faith was not nearly
as strong last year as it is today. I
can remember going to an information session and Amanda was explaining how the
children are placed with host families. They look at our wish list criteria and then
pray on it. That’s right. I said they pray on it. I remember thinking we might as well throw
darts blind folded. Why even fill out
the wish list? But that was then. We had just started going to church at Hope
after having moved from Richmond about a year prior. We had attended church, but never practiced or
thought about our faith beyond Sundays.
And please, the church we attended up in Richmond was far from a country
club church, more like a huntin club church.
See we did not live in Richmond, but a small county just outside. Anyway, we signed up, they prayed, and a
little 8 year old boy named Vova was placed in our home. We fell in love. We had intentions of adoption even prior to
knowing who the child might be. Vova was
a great fit. We started learning
Russian. We started to research adoption
of older children. We were hooked. Vova came and last summer was a blast. You can go back to the posts from last summer
and read the blogs. We had wanted to
blog a bunch during that timeframe, but we were so exhausted after each day,
that it just didn’t happen. Vova
demystified adoption for us. He opened
our eyes to his world and how we can help.
The value of hosting Vova was he showed me that I can love these
children even though they are not my own.
By loving them. By praying for
them. By telling their story when they
can’t. I ask you to please share my blog
with anyone interested in learning more about these children. Share your blog or email the stories of your
host child to your friends and family and congregations. They can’t.
You can. Even though we will not
be adopting Vova, without him, we would not be here with Sophia. Thank you Vova. I will continue to pray for you.
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| Sweet Dima! |
Today it was a quiet visit and Lisa really wanted to show
Sophia her clothes that we bought for court.
We bought her a couple of dresses and a pair of leggings, some sweaters
and shirts. She liked the outfits. Then politely, she said she does not wear
dresses. I think Lisa convinced her to
wear one for court, at least this one time, and then she doesn’t have to ever
again. She might get married in pants…that
would be fine by me. We sat on the steps
at the park and had idle chit chat about the boys, chernish (the black dog that
hangs out at the orphanage), where her friends were. A couple of boys came over, Kolya and little
Vova (this is not the Vova we hosted, he’s in a different orphanage) and I
wanted to know how some of the park contraptions were played with. So I left Lisa and Sophia and Luda, who had
showed up, to talk and work crafts. They
made another potholder today. I went to
play. We did various climbing
activities, there is one that looks like it is for doing dips. Yay! Let’s
go play in the park and do dips! If I
were a gymnast, then I’m sure the parallel bars might have more for me than two
pipes that I can swing my legs back and forth from. Kolya showed me various handstands and
walking on his hands. Off a platform he
went into a handstand to flip backwards onto the ground. Then he asked me to do it. Yeah right.
I’d rather cliff dive than try that.
We did a couple of round offs.
Walked on the balance beams and swung from the monkey bars.
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| I see acting in her future, she had a good time with doing the various voices |
From what I could tell Lisa and the girls were chatting
about something. Towards the end, I took
out the camera to snap some shots of the park and the group from a distance. I went and sat down and Dima walked over to
join me. I asked him if he was excited
about his new family and he said yes. I
told him that the family in NC loved him and was very happy for him to have
found a family. He smiled. We also shared our home address with him in
case he wants to write. We have also
bought a book filled with Russian fairy tales and brought that with us today. Luda went to town on reading the stories,
with Sophia looking over her shoulder, and Lisa had Luda at one point changing
her voice to match the characters. It
was a good easy time and it was great to see smiles again. They really will melt your heart when you get
one.
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