Court appointment tomorrow

Just wanted to post a quick update that we are finally heading to court tomorrow, May 19th at 10:30am.  We arrived in Odessa this afternoon around 1:30pm after 24 hours of travel.  We survived our 9 hour layover in Newark and the long plane journey and were very happy to get off the plane.  We are blessed to be staying with our friend, Laura, in Odessa.  Tomorrow morning we will get up early to meet our facilitator and drive 3 hours to Balta for court.  Many of you were praying with us a few weeks ago regarding a judge.  In Balta, there are 4 judges who do the adoption courts.  The judge you are assigned is chosen by lottery.  Unfortunately, we matched with a judge who was busy the week of May 3rd and leaving town on May 9th for 2-3 weeks.  He wasn't willing to work us in before he left town.  So our facilitator chose to reapply for a different judge.  This was a risky decision. When we reapply we go back into the lottery system and could be reassigned to the same judge who might be angry with us and give us a hard time at court.  On Thursday, May 7th we found out we were reassigned a new judge who gave us May 19th as an appointment.  So tomorrow is the big day!
We covet your prayers as we go to court.  Hopefully, tomorrow when we post we will be able to announce our new son!  Because I keep dozing off at the computer as I'm typing...I'll sign off for now.  Thank you for praying with us!

Gifts

"Every good thing given and every perfect gift is from above

coming down from the Father of lights, with whom there is no variation

or shifting shadow." - James 1:17

Each and every day our Father is showering gifts on us.  Sometimes they are easy to recognize and we embrace them willingly and with joy.  Other times they might be needed, but they aren't that exciting (like underwear at Christmas).  Sometimes we are too busy to even notice them.  And many times we wish God had saved the receipt so we could return them.  Yet our Father, our Papa, delights and sings over us and loves to give us gifts.  He knows us better than we know ourselves and has a perfect understanding of exactly what gift would be best for us.  And when we purpose to thank Him for everything He gifts us with, our eyes are opened to see the beauty of the gift.  

This week, it is easy for us to recognize some of our Father's gifts.  But what about the past year of agonizing delays in this adoption.  Was that a gift?  What about losing a loved one to a terminal illness?  Or a miscarriage?  Or watching a son suffer a debilitating stroke?  Financial ruin?  Are these also gifts from the Father?  Why would a loving Father allow such pain in the lives of His children?  Why would he withhold good when He has the power to rescue, heal, and restore in just a word?  Because God's ultimate purpose in giving these gifts is to give us more of Himself.  He wants to give us the ultimate gift, which is His glory, and He knows that the vessels that reflect His glory the best have been refined in the fire.  He knows that it's only through tribulation that we develop perseverance, which leads to proven character, which leads to HOPE.  Hope recognizes that the love of God has been showered upon us.  Hope sees God's goodness in the pain.  Hope looks beyond the moment to the eternal.

"And when we find ourselves most hopeless, the road most taxing, we may also find that it is then that The Risen Christ catches up to us on the way, better than our dreams, beyond all our hopes.  For it is He---not His gifts, nor His power, not what He can do for us, But He HIMSELF---who comes and makes Himself known to us.  And this is the one PURE JOY for those who sorrow." Elisabeth Elliot

And so as we reflect on all we are thankful for this week, we also thank God for the pain of the last year.  For without the pain we wouldn't have come to know God as intimately, or to love Him as deeply, or to trust Him as completely.

And what are the gifts of this week?
Well of course, this boy...

Lots of kisses...

Playing with and hugging and loving on these children...

Friends who have prayed, and sent notes, and words of encouragement, and crafts, and gifts...

Teachers who have loved, cared for, and even cried with our boy in our absence...

Watching Igor interact with his friends....

Conversations in Russian/English....realizing that we all understand the language of love....

Being a "parent" for a couple days for orphaned children to show off to...

Our facilitators Alex, Nastya, Svetlana, and Alyona who work endless hours to see orphans placed in families (and even let us facetime them so they can translate the Ukrainian menu for us) ...

Staying with Karen Springs at Hospitality House...

No bus tickets to Kiev left for Friday so we had an extra day at Pishana...

The ease at which all has been accomplished this week...Jim and I have commented several times, that we didn't feel our presence was even necessary for all the documents to be approved, signed, delivered...

A whole week with my sweetheart!

Tomorrow we will get up early to make the long drive back to the highway and catch a bus to Kiev.  We will arrive in the afternoon sometime.  We are getting picked up at 3am on Sunday to get to the airport by 3:30 for our 5:30am flight.  Svetlana and Alyona are hopeful that we can return in 3 weeks for court.  May it be true!  And then our boy will be given a new name!

And you will just have to wait until then to know it...

Balta

On Wednesday morning we got up early to catch a 7:30 bus to Balta.  Around noon the bus dropped us off along the hightway and we met up with Svetlana and Alyona and began the long and torturous drive across the country's worst roads.  Sometime around 1:30 we arrived in town.  We needed to drop our dossier and referral off with the social worker and get some documents notarized.  We also checked into our hotel.  When we stopped at the first notary office we found it locked up and closed, although they were supposed to be open until 4pm.  There are two notaries in Balta, so we went to the 2nd office.  The notary was there, however she told us they closed at noon and she couldn't help us.  Even when we offered to pay double, she refused to notarize our documents.  Svetlana and Alyona both got on their phones to come up with plan B and we began praying.  As they talked to different people to figure out what could be done, we learned some information that once again reminded us that God was in the details and He fights for us.  Apparently there is a big notary conference today (Thursday).  All the notary offices in this region will be closed as the employees attend this conference.  If we had gotten our referral on Wednesday as planned (instead of Tuesday) we would have been arriving in Balta today with no options at all for getting our documents notarized.  We could see God's provision for us even in allowing us to pick up the referral on Tuesday!  After several phone calls, the ladies figured out what could be done, and by 3:00 we were on our way to Pishana.  Another 45 minute, jostling ride had to be endured before we finally arrived at the orphanage.

Igor had been watching for us.  He was giddy with excitement!  After greeting us, he immediately ran over to Svetlana and Alyona and began firing away questions.  How long would we be there?  When would court be?  How long until court?  When would we take him with us?

The director and teachers at his orphanage had prepared him before our arrival.  He understood that we were redoing everything and he couldn't come with us this time.  He asked us if we had finished all our paperwork.

We learned from the social worker and teachers from his school that last February, when he was told about our dossier being thrown out, he cried for a long time and was inconsolable.  They told us he had all the teachers crying along with him.  

While this long delay has been hard on us, it has been most excruciating for Igor.  We pray that God will quickly finish this for Igor's sake.

We only had 45minutes to spend with Igor before we had to head back to Balta to pick up paperwork by 5pm.  But now we are headed out to spend the whole afternoon with this sweet boy!

We got it!

We arrived in Kiev at 1pm on Monday afternoon after 18 hours of travel.  Praise God our trip was uneventful and without delays!  We are blessed this week to be staying with Karen Springs in her beautiful apartment.  Karen is a missionary in Kiev who graciously opens her home to families who are here for adoptions.  Hospitality House is a perfect name for the oasis of refreshment Karen shares with adoptive families.
This morning at 10am we arrived at the SDA for our "redo" referral appointment.  We weren't sure what to expect as our appointment process in November took 3 long days.  We were pleasantly surprised this morning!  We were there for a total of 10 minutes.  No arguing or pleading necessary.  The SDA officer showed us Igor's file (again), we signed off on it, and she told us she could probably have it ready for pick up this afternoon.  Usually you pick up your referral the next afternoon.  At 4pm we arrived back at the SDA, signed our names again, and 5 minutes later walked out with the referral!

In between our appointments today we had time to do some sightseeing in the beautiful city of Kiev.  We spent a couple hours touring St. Sophia Cathedral.

Part of the Easter celebration (which was April 12th for Ukraine), is decorating with the Psyanky eggs.  St. Sophia had a beautiful display of them throughout the grounds.

View of the city of Kiev from the Bell Tower of St. Sophia

St. Sophia Cathedral

As we walked back to the apartment we stopped at a little kiosk and 

had "The World's Best Hot Chocolate"

And it truly was!!

Tomorrow we get up early to take a 4 hour bus ride to Balta.  There we will meet up with Svetlana, our facilitator for that region, and Alyona, our translator, and head to a meeting with the orphanage director and Igor.  If Igor says yes to adoption (we're not too worried) then our paperwork will be filed again and head back to the SDA for approval and court assignment.  We are told this process will take at least 3 weeks.  We're hopeful that we will be heading back to Ukraine in early to mid-May.  Because we will have limited internet in Balta we probably won't be able to update our blog until we return to Kiev on Friday.  

I have been praying that my eyes would be open to God's gifts on this trip, whatever they might be, and I want to share one from today.  The sunflower has always been my favorite flower.  I don't know if it's the tall, strong stature, the bold yellow color, or the fact that it just reminds me of happiness, but I've always been drawn to this flower.  Today as we were passing a vendor selling handpainted plates, we stopped to admire some of her wares.  She pointed out this one, and told us that the sunflower and these berries (Sorry, I forgot the name) were symbols of Ukraine.

"How fitting!" I told Jim, "that my favorite flower would be a symbol of the country we adopt from."  Jim reminded me that recently someone was asking us why we picked Ukraine to adopt from, and I told them that I didn't choose it, Jim did.  Jim pointed out to me today that God chose Ukraine for us and before I even had an inkling that adoption was in our future, God placed in me a love for sunflowers.  A link to the country where He would gift us with a boy.

Hope?

"Hope deferred makes the heart sick,

but desire fulfilled is a tree of life." 

Proverbs 13:12

On Wednesday, March 25th, I got a call from our adoption coordinator.  Our dossier made it through the various offices in Kiev and we have been assigned an SDA appointment for April 14th at 10am.  You would think this news would bring joy and jubilation.  However, that was far from what I felt that morning.  After hanging up with Tonya, I headed out for a run.  Instead of tears of joy, there were tears of anger and frustration.  As I sifted through my thoughts and emotions, one overwhelming thought prevailed.  A whole year!  A whole year of waiting.  A whole year of discouragement.  An additional year that Igor has had to wait in that orphanage.  We should have been traveling in the spring of 2014 to get our boy.  And here it is spring of 2015 and this adoption is still not completed.  And now we must redo everything we did last November.  The SDA appointment, the visit to the orphanage, the meeting with the orphanage director.  Such a waste of everyone's time and money.  For what purpose?  Why God, must we keep waiting?  Why must we redo everything?  My heart was so burdened and heavy as I struggled to submit to God's perfect plan.  I didn't realize until this week, how much of a toll this adoption journey has taken on me.  A friend asked me at church last Sunday if I was doing ok.  He said I'd lost my joy and hadn't looked happy in a long time.  I was saddened to think this ache in my heart was obvious.  And so, this blog post is really more for my sake than for anyone else's.  As I try to journal this adoption journey to share someday with Igor, I need to remind myself of some important truths and refocus my gaze.  When we started this adoption journey in November of 2013 I thought for sure God would bring Igor home in 2014.  But as we've now finished the first 3 months of 2015 I have found myself losing hope.  I have believed the lie that God is good, but He's not good to me.  He accomplishes great things for others but not for me.  My thinking needs a transformation (Rom. 12:2)

As Satan bombards my mind with these lies, I need to battle them with the truth.

1.  God is good to me.  Ps. 34:8

2.  God delights in me.  Zeph. 3:17

3.  God has a good plan.  Jer. 29:11

4.  God is in control of this. Prov. 19:21

5.  God has not forgotten or forsaken us.  Deut. 31:6

6.  His ways are not our ways.  Isaiah 55:8

7.  God heals the broken.  Isaiah 61:1-4

8.  He loves the orphan and is a Father to the fatherless.  Psalm 68:5

God has encouraged me through the devotionals of Elisabeth Elliot so often lately.  I love her devotionals because they are so full of God's truth and she has a way of addressing exactly what I've been struggling with.  I'm going to quote one of her devotionals in Keep a Quiet Heart called "Maybe this year…?"

Will 2015 be the year of my desire fulfilled? "…or perhaps on the other hand, it will be the year of desire radically transformed, the year of finding, as we have perhaps not yet truly found, Christ to be the All-Sufficient One, Christ the deep sweet well of Love…Life is likely to continue to hold many forms of torture and dismay... for all who refuse to receive with thanksgiving instead of complaint the place in life God has chosen for them.  The torture is self-inflicted, for God has not rejected their prayers.  He knows better than any of us what furthers our salvation.  Our true happiness is to be realized precisely through his refusals, which are always mercies.  His choice is flawlessly contrived to give the deepest kind of joy as soon as it is embraced. "

Deuteronomy 8:2-3,5, 7-9

"Remember how the Lord your God led you all the way in the desert these forty years, to humble you and to test you in order to know what was in your heart…He humbled you, causing you to hunger and then fed you with manna which neither you nor your fathers had known, to teach you that man does not live on bread alone but on every word that comes from the mouth of the Lord…Know then in your heart that as a man disciplines his son, so the Lord is disciplining you…For the Lord your God is bringing you into a good land - a land with streams and pools of water, with springs flowing in the valleys and hills; a land with wheat and barley, vines and fig trees, pomegranates, olive oil and honey, a land where bread will not be scarce and you will lack nothing."

God has been using this time to teach me to hunger only for Him.  And perhaps He is using this wilderness time in Igor's life to teach him to long for God alone and to find Him to be the All-Sufficient One.  

Elisabeth Elliot goes on to say, "The cause of our discontent?  We simply do not believe God.  The wilderness experience always leads to the promised land….Be patient.  Wait on the Lord for whatever He appoints.  Wait quietly.  Wait trustingly.  He holds every minute of every hour of every day of every week of every month of every year in His hands.  Thank Him in advance for what the future holds, for he is already there."    

This week as we are in the middle of Easter week and celebrating all that Christ accomplished at His resurrection, my friend, Glen, made a wonderful statement about hope, which parallels well the hopelessness I have felt over the last few weeks.  My sweet husband shared this with me yesterday with these words…"God will not leave you in the darkness.  Hope lives."

"There was a parenthesis of three days following Christ’s death on the cross and His resurrection from the grave. It was hard to be hopeful when it seemed so dark. Had the Romans won? Were the religious accusers right? For many disciples of Jesus their hope died when He died. They forgot or failed to believe His promise to bring Himself back to life after a short delay- maybe that was God testing them? Hope was threatened."

What were the disciples feeling after Christ's death?  Fear?  Abandonment?  Confusion?  Wasn't Christ supposed to be their Messiah?  Their rescuer?  And now he was dead?  Did they remember His promises to them?  Scripture tells us they were hiding, afraid, deeply grieved.  They had lost their hope.  But God was not defeated!  God was about to do above and beyond their wildest expectation!  Hope was dawning!  A Glorious Unfolding was coming!  Jesus was alive!  He conquered sin and held the keys of death in His hand!  He was victorious!  The grave could not hold Him!  

The sky is always darkest just before the dawn.  And if I squint….

I can just begin to make out signs of pink on the horizon….

Psalm 62:5

"My soul wait in silence for God only, For my HOPE is from Him."

Dossier Take Two

On January 16th we received news that rocked our world.  After 14 months into this adoption, just when we thought we were days from hearing of our scheduled court date, the SDA office in Ukraine very unexpectedly threw out our dossier.  What does that mean?  That means we get to do everything, all the paperwork, the home study, the background checks all over again and resubmit a new dossier.  Hours and hours of work, months of delay, and thousands more dollars.  Even our SDA appointment will have to be redone.  We are starting back at square one.  It would be impossible to describe our range of emotions over the last week and a half as we have processed this news.  Shock, grief, complete and overwhelming stress, anger.  I read a devotional in "Keep a Quiet Heart" by Elisabeth Elliot recently that echoed my sentiments, "Oh Lord, you wouldn't do this to me, would you??  How could You??"  Really, God, have we not endured enough obstacles and delays in this long adoption process?  It felt like we had just climbed Mt. Everest, the summit was in sight, and we got knocked all the way to the bottom.  I had neither the strength, ability nor motivation to attempt to climb this seemingly insurmountable mountain again.  But even in our grief and frustration God sent whispers of Himself into our lives.  On a Friday morning around 10am I received this discouraging news from our adoption coordinator, and two hours later our living room was filled with friends and family who spent an hour of their day praying with us and over us.

I was overwhelmed again (this time in grateful awe) as friends loved on us and our children, bringing dinner, buying us chocolate, giving my children Starbucks and cookies, sending notes of encouragement, calling to check on us.  The body of Christ is such a beautiful thing to behold! 

The Word of God reminded me that He is the potter and I am merely the clay.  I don't get to advise the potter.  

"Will the pot contend with the potter, or the earthenware with the hand that shapes it?  Will the clay ask the potter what he is making?…Thus says the Lord, would you dare question me concerning my children or instruct me in my handiwork?  I alone, I made the earth and created man upon it." 

Isaiah 45-9-11 (NEB)

God's ways are not our ways.  They are so far above our ways that we can't begin to understand them.  In fact, we aren't asked to understand Him, but simply to trust Him.  

Trust Me

Wait on Me

Hope in Me

Truly, God.  Have you not already spent enough time over the last 3 years teaching me that lesson?  Have I not learned this yet?

"Obviously, not."

In the days that followed, Jim and I had a lot to process.  Where do we go from here?  Of course, giving up was not an option.  But how do we move forward?  Do we stay with our adoption coordinator or look for a new agency?  Can anything be salvaged from our dossier?  How much time and money is this going to take?  Who can give us some answers?

We still don't have all the details as to why our dossier was thrown out.  In speaking to another adoption group, it really makes no sense that the SDA would do that.  But here's what we have pieced together.  Our facilitators in Ukraine were working to get the missing relinquishment document.  They had not been able to obtain it or a certified copy of it because it was too dangerous to travel to Igor's region.  Some of the documents in our dossier were beginning to expire.  The SDA was not confident that our facilitators would obtain this document in a timely manner and decided too many documents were beginning to expire so we would need to resubmit.  

As we weighed our options and prayed for wisdom on how to move forward we decided that staying with our facilitator team would be the most economical and hopefully quickest way to accomplish this enormous task.  

However, some things have changed in the last year.  Because Ukraine is adopting the Hague agreement we are now required to use an adoption agency, not a private consultant.  Our independent consultant now works under the umbrella of Hopscotch Adoptions so we hired them.

Unfortunately, the woman who ran the home study group we used last time was arrested for child trafficking recently so that group is now defunct.  Hopscotch also does home studies and we found out they would be willing to use our previous home study and update it.  Last night we had a visit from the social worker assigned to our case and within a few days we should have our updated home study.  

This year we are required to also get background checks and fingerprints on Ashley since she

will turn 18 in a few weeks.  

Updated USCIS approval to add Ashley

Updated medicals 

Updated employment letters 

Updated home ownership letter

New notary as our notary from last year is not renewing her commission

updated background checks on Jim, Ellie, and I

updated home study…...

We are in a time crunch to finish all the updates to our dossier by February 7th so we can FedEx it to Ukraine for translation.  Our USCIS approval will expire on 8/28/15.  If our dossier is not translated and resubmitted to the SDA with at least 6 months left until it expires, the SDA will not accept it.

We can file for an extension of our USCIS approval; however, you can't file for extension until you are within 90 days of expiration.  So either we get this submitted before 2/28 or we can't submit it until June.

Just when we thought we were getting close to hurdling all these obstacles a new one was thrown across our path today.  Ukraine will no longer accept letters from the SBI (state bureau of investigation) on background checks.  We must now obtain an FBI background check.  Unfortunately, the only offices that do these are in Ohio, Florida and Arizona.  After we receive a certified letter from this office, it must be mailed to Washington DC to be apostilled before it can be sent to Ukraine.  To mail our fingerprints to one of these offices, wait for a letter to return saying we have no criminal background, and then mail to it to DC and back would take several weeks.  Because we don't have time to wait, Jim and I are driving to Columbus, OH on Friday afternoon.  We will have our fingerprints done on Saturday morning and pay extra for them to process our letter that day.  Then we will overnight our letters to DC and hope for a quick return.

So here are some ways you can be praying for us:

1.  Pray for our employment letters to arrive from Florida (that's where our payroll company is).  Once we get them we must mail them back to FL to the Secretary of State to be apostilled.

2.  Pray for our marriage license to return from the Ohio SOS this week.

3.  Pray that we will be able to add Ashley to our USCIS approval by next Wed.  This is almost impossible to do quickly as there are so many steps to this.

4.  Pray for safety, good traffic, and success as we head to Columbus Friday for FBI checks.

5.  Pray that our FBI checks will come back from DC quickly.  

6.  Pray that we would be able to submit our dossier to Ukraine in time for it to be translated and submitted before 2/28.

7.  Pray for Igor's protection.  We have not been able to get word to him of these delays and we aren't sure how to do this.

8.  Pray that we don't get an ulcer from the stress of all this!

After our dossier is resubmitted we will be waiting 8-12 weeks for the SDA to process it and give us a court date.  Please pray this will go as quickly as possible.  

I want to close with a story of God's provision.

Last spring I was doing some major nesting in preparation for Igor's arrival.  In our Bonus room we have four 8x10 frames hanging in a row of our 4 children.  I realized I would need a 5th one for that wall.  I really love those frames and I didn't want to have to purchase 5 new ones.  I went to Target looking for another one, but was skeptical that I'd find it as it had been over 10 years since I purchased the others.  

No frame.

So I began looking at Goodwill Stores, but no luck.

I decided to ask God for this frame.  I knew it was a little thing for Him to accomplish.  Surely someone out there had also purchased one of these frames 10 years ago and would do some purging and drop a frame off at Goodwill.  I asked God to provide this frame.  My friend, Jennifer, found out about it and also began praying and looking for one.

Well, as the months dragged on and our adoption kept being delayed and still no frame, I began to get discouraged.  I began to link the finding of this frame with the assurance that God would give us Igor.  As time went by and God didn't give me the frame I began to doubt that he was going to give me the child.  

In my lucid moments I told myself, "That's ridiculous!  Just because God isn't giving you this frame doesn't mean He isn't going to bring Igor into your family.  He might just want you to buy 5 new frames."

I stopped asking for the frame and stopped looking.

Then one day I got a text from Jennifer…She found the frame!!!

She was visiting some friends and told them about the frame.  She had a picture of it on her phone and when she showed it to them one friend said, "I have that frame hanging up at home.  I'll be happy to give it to her."

When she told me about it, I was completely in awe of God's love for me!

He didn't have to do this. 

But He did, to remind me that He does love me.  He loves Igor.  And He hasn't forgotten us.

I asked Jennifer's friend to text me a picture of the frame, just to be sure it was the one I was looking for.  

It was.

And here's what it was framing on her wall…

`

So we will continue to battle in prayer for this child.

And we will continue to beseech the Father to Move this Mountain!

Be Still and Know that I am God

We have been back from Ukraine for a little over a month now, anxiously awaiting news of a court date.  When we left on November 13th, our facilitator, Alex, was working on getting another copy of Igor's birth certificate and some other official documents.  Those all needed to be turned in to the SDA to request a court date.  About 2 weeks ago we heard that the birth certificate and documents had been sent and should arrive at the SDA within days.  It had been our prayer that we might get a court date in early December so that Igor could be home by Christmas.  However, on Monday this week, we learned of yet another roadblock which will potentially cause several weeks delay.  One of the documents is missing from Igor's packet, and without that document, the SDA cannot give approval for a court date.  The paper that's missing is a form that Igor's biological mother signed in the hospital at his birth, relinquishing her parenting rights.  On Monday, Alex relayed to us what the options were in obtaining this document.

1.  Send someone back to his birth town to find it.  This is nearly impossible as this town is in one of the most volatile war zone areas.  You can't even pay people to go into this area.
2.  Forge it.  Not really an option because the SDA has the right to throw out our entire dossier and close this adoption if he does this.
3.  Talk to someone in parliament and try to recreate the document.  This seems like the best option, however this will take several weeks.  When the SDA receives this document and finally does give approval for a court date, the court date will be at least two weeks out.

When I heard this news on Monday, and realized we were now looking at maybe the end of January for a court date my heart sunk.  More WAITING!  Ugh!  I'm - so - tired - of - waiting!  I was a grump for the rest of the day.  Frustrated that Igor would not be home by Christmas, frustrated at all the bureaucracy delays, frustrated that a war had to happen right in the middle of our adoption.  I was not in the mood to hear all the reasons why I should trust and obey.  I just wanted to be mad for awhile.  Thankfully, God didn't let me stay there very long.  The very next morning in my bible reading time, God didn't waste any time at dealing with my bad attitude.  In Elisabeth Elliot's devotional, "Keep a Quiet Heart", this quote jumped off the page at me:

       "Be Quiet!  Why this anxious heed about thy tangled ways?  God knows them all, He
        giveth speed, and He allows delays."  EW
                   
                                            and this from the Psalms…

Psalm 40:1-3  "I waited patiently (NOT!) and He inclined to me and heard my cry.  He brought me up out of a pit of destruction, out of miry clay, and He set my feet upon a rock making my footsteps firm.  He put a new song in my mouth, a song of praise to our God.  Many will see and fear and will trust in the Lord….How blessed is the man who has made the Lord his trust!
Since I am afflicted and needy let the Lord be mindful of me.  You are my help and my deliverer;  Do not delay O my God!"

But, Lord?  Igor!  He's still stuck in that orphanage!  Is it not far better for him to be home with a family who loves him?

Be still and know that I am God.

Yes, but this is taking SO LONG!  And Igor is not getting any younger, and neither am I for that matter!

Be still and know that I am God.

Lord, you gave the Moore's a court date.  You gave the Pettus' a court date.  What about us???

Be still and know that I am God.

Ugh!  It hurts!  I'm tired of waiting!  I want my child!  How can this be good?

"Be still and know that I am God.  I will be exalted among the nations, I will be exalted in the earth.  I am your Hope, your Stronghold, your salvation, your Refuge.  Wait in silence for me.  Trust me at all times."  (Ps. 46, 62)

And so we continue to watch and wait for God to move mountains - to rescue this child and bring him home to us.  When God had realigned my wayward thoughts He brought me to the place where I could once again offer up a "sacrifice of praise."  What could I be thankful for in all of this?

- traveling in December would have been super difficult for Jim as December is one of the busiest months for his practice

- plane ticket prices are exorbitant this month

- we can now enjoy all the holiday celebrations with family and friends

- God is only good.  His ways are higher than mine and He is working in ways I can't begin to understand.

One year ago today we were at the RDU airport, waiting anxiously to meet a sweet Ukrainian boy whom we would host for 4 weeks.  Who knew that a year later we would still be waiting for that sweet Ukrainian boy?

Igor will now be spending Christmas at the orphanage and for those who are willing, there is a way to bring some Christmas joy to the children of Pishana.  Ukraine celebrates Christmas on January 7th.  Most of the orphanage staff will be on vacation over the holidays.  Many of the children have some family nearby that they spend the holidays with and others will be hosted by Americans.  But there are some, like Igor, who will have to spend Christmas at the orphanage.  Nasledie Heritage Foundation is sending 18-20 volunteers to put on a 3 day camp for these children and hopefully bring them some Christmas cheer.  They need about $800 to cover the costs of lodging and other expenses for this camp.  If you would like to donate you can click on Nasledie and follow the prompts for "Just Give" to donate online.  In the program section you should click "other" and write "Slavik and Alyona Puzanov - Pishana Camp".  If you mail a check it actually gets to them faster.  Checks can be mailed to:

                                             International Messengers

                                             P.O Box 618

                                             Clear Lake, IA 50428

Again, include with the check the information that the donation is for "Slavik and Alyona Puzanov - Pishana Camp."

"Through Him then, let us continually offer up a 

sacrifice of praise to God, 

that is, the fruit of lips that give thanks to His name."

Hebrews 13:15