The Matthew Project

Jordan manning the stock room.

Andrii organizing the fridge.

Sierra: Did you say 40 bologna sandwiches???

Anna: Yes, I said 40 bologna sandwiches!

A couple months ago the Lord impressed it upon my heart to serve Him in my community. Our church is in the next village over from where we live, about 15 minutes away. But I sensed His leading me to do something in my own community, right where I live. Then our local paper ran a story on the Matthew Project, a church-based program providing lunches to kids in our town over the summer who would normally receive free or reduced lunch in school. The center of operations is Grace Covenant Church, but the volunteers come from many of the community's churches. We all come together as the body of Christ feeding the hungry in our small town. The name of the program "The Matthew Project" comes from one of my favorite portions of Scripture, Matthew 25:35-40. We are each called to feed the hungry, clothe the naked, take in the poor. When we do it for the least of these, we are doing it for Jesus. These were the verses God used to direct us to International Adoption 5 years ago. So now one morning each week the 4 kids and I head down to the Matthew Project and help make & deliver lunches to kids. We are having a blast, and we are getting to be Jesus' hands and feet expressing God's love to the kids in our community. What a privilege!

Jordy

Today when Jordan sat on my lap I sniffed his hair and told him he smelled like the swimming pool (after all he had been swimming). He in turn sniffed my arm and said,"You smell like family." Awwwww. This little guy brings so much joy to our lives. He was 3 when we adopted him. At the orphanage he was a little stand-off-ish at first. The mama in me just wanted to pick him up and cuddle him, but he wasn't too interested in that at first. I remember praying and asking the Lord for Jordan to grow to let me cuddle and love on him. That prayer has been answered! He even wants to marry me one day! Jordan is an inspiration to all of us. We adopted him knowing he had severe scoliosis which would require long term treatment. His spine was cork screw shaped and would only continue to twist if something wasn't done. We tried casting, the Lakeland Revival, and a chiropractor in Pennsylvania, but finally realized that surgery was the only option. We have an excellent spinal surgeon who specializes in scoliosis right in our backyard. So, trusting God and Dr. Carl, we took a step of faith and in April 2009 Jordan had titanium growing rods placed in his back. The surgery was a success and now every 4-6 months we return to the hospital to have his rods extended. So far so good. He is growing tall and straight. This is a long term project, but Jordan is a trooper. He is so brave. And he's such a people person, during each hospital stay he likes to spend his time at the nurse's station! I can't believe he'll be 7 in August. He's just a little peanut still. Jordan can't wait to bring Slava home, and when we travel to Ukraine this fall we will bring Jordan with us. He would not do well away from Mommy & Daddy for that long and we feel it would be good for Slava to have a buddy right from the start. Oh my, time to get the kids in bed! Bye for now and thanks for taking the time to read this. And by the way, I love to read comments, so make sure you leave one now and then.

Our Weekend at Camp

Wayne, Missy, Jonathan, Anna, Sierra, and Jordan & Kashi in the front. Um, who's spotting for Andrii???
Andrii is a natural athlete.
Anna, Sierra & Jordan in the lake.
Sierra jumping in off the boat.
Anna jumping in off the boat.
Sierra gets to drive!
Wayne & Sierra on the jet ski.
This is the view of our camp from the lake.
Anna, Jordan & Kashi splashing around the island.
Anna posing, she takes a great picture.
Jordan on the island.

We're home from camp. We had a great time and even managed to get in some water sports around the rain drops. This trip included Wayne & I, Missy, Jonathan (Missy's guy), Sierra, Andrii, Anna, Jordan, and Kashi our Border Collie. Our camp is on Otter Lake, a little lake about 10 miles below Old Forge, NY. It's a 2 1/2 hour trip from our home and perfect for weekend family fun!

More of Slava

We are headed off to our camp in the Adirondacks for the weekend. I say "we" but nowadays "we" changes daily. We is not always all 9 of us. With Wayne Jr. married, Missy and Curtis working full time I never know for sure who's gonna be home for dinner let alone coming to camp.

So some of us will be there and some will be here.

I won't be posting again until Monday, but I promise to take pictures to post for then. For now, I'll leave you with some pics of Slava. The bottom one is of Missy and him. She was on a 2 week missions trip to Ukraine 3 years ago and our facilitator took her to the orphanage to play with him for a couple of hours. Missy sent us the first pics of Slava that we ever had. Since then we've been sending gifts over and our facilitator brings them to the orphanage and takes pics. So here they are. He is pictured with Luda one of our team. We usually send toys & clothes for all the children. We did not send that big stuffed dog, he must be an orphan too.

"Facilitator" is the person/persons who translate and assist in all aspects of the adoption in Ukraine. Our team consists of Gregory (American) and his wife Oksana (Ukrainian) and their team of Ukrainians. An excellent team in our opinion.

So enjoy Slava and I'll post again on Monday!

Our First Ukrainian Adoption

I can't believe it's been 3 1/2 years since we brought our 3 Ukrainians home. Of course it began long before that. Once the Lord placed adoption on our hearts it took us almost 2 years to get to Ukraine. Months of paperwork, finally getting accepted in Sept 2005, then being told there were no more appointments with the Ukrainian government until early 2006, then Ukraine shut down the adoption program to reorganize it! This took months and by spring our dossier had to be entirely redone because it all had expired. Then, finally in late summer, the program reopened. We were informed on Oct 31st that we had our long awaited appointment in Ukraine on Nov. 29, 2006! We traveled over as a family with our kids: Wayne Jr. 17, Melissa, 16, Curtis 14, and Sierra 10. It was a lot of planning, but well worth it, especially since the trip was very long. We were approved to adopt up to 3 kids and we really wanted siblings. Picking kids from pictures, or more like mug shots, and short biographies is a bit overwhelming. But we knew God already had picked them out, and we just wanted to KNOW in our hearts when we saw them. And we did! They were the very first pictures that we were shown. Andrii-9 year old boy, Anna-7 year old girl, and Sergiy-3 year old boy (we changed his name to Jordan at our kids' request). We fell in love with them right away at our first visit. Andrii & Anna were in an orphanage in Vasilkyv (an hour our so out of Kiev) and Jordan was in Boyorpka just outside the city. That's when the battle began. Our facilitator was a little concerned about Vasilkyv, no one likes to adopt from that area. We found out why. Apparently, the local government officials do not like foreigners adopting. We ended up playing a 2 week game of cat & mouse with this government official whose signature we needed. He didn't plan on giving it to us. The closer we got to Christmas, the more our bio kids wanted to go home. So we put 3 of them on a plane alone, that was one of the hardest days of my life. Our daughter, Melissa, who has a heart for Ukraine opted to stay with us; she was such a big help. We finally got the signature thanks to our spunky facilitator, Irina, and had court on December 20th. Wayne stayed with me for Christmas and then flew home to the kids, work, and the new addition going up on our house! I waited out the 10 days. God was faithful and poured out much grace on me. I would never have survived through the holidays without all my kids if it weren't for our dear missionary friends, Joey & Laura who are missionaries with YWAM right in Kiev. Laura is our pastor's daughter. And my dear friend, Jocelyn, who flew over to help Missy and I with the 3 new kids and the trip home. So, on the day I finally picked up little Jordan from his orphanage, I asked our facilitators the fateful question, "How would we know if there are ever anymore siblings?" The look on their faces said it all: there IS another sibling! And he is at the same orphanage as Jordan! A baby boy named Slava. I asked to see him. As I was leaving the building we were brought by a doorway and a woman came out holding him. He was maybe a year old, with big brown crossed eyes just like Jordan's. All I could do was shake his hand and say "Paka" (bye bye). Jordan & I waved goodbye and we left. It was very surreal. I called Wayne when I got back to our apartment and informed him that we didn't get the complete set! We agreed to keep it to ourselves for the time being since we didn't want to overwhelm our other kids and family back home, after all we were bringing home 3 kids already. Andrii Abraham, Anna Esther, and Jordan Charles bonded miraculously well with our whole family. In less than a year we were discussing bringing Slava home. Of course with any Ukrainian adoption it is easier said than done. Our facilitator did a lot of inquiring and encouraging to get the government to legally classify Slava an orphan (not every kid in an orphanage is legally an orphan and adoptable). This was finally accomplished last September and then we were informed that for the first year of orphanhood only Ukrainians can adopt. We would not be permitted to adopt Slava until then, which is this September. Grrrrr. We sent letters, Andrii & Anna sent letters, we sent pictures, but to no avail. In April we could finally begin our paperwork. I just completed everything for our dossier and on Friday 7/16 FedEx'd off 40 notarized, certified, and apostilled documents for our facilitators to translate. Already they've contacted me that I've got to re-do at least one document. I guess I'll be climbing the paperwork mountain again. Once everything is in order and translated, they will submit it to the SDA (State Dept for Adoption) for approval. Once approved we will get our appointment date. However, our dossier cannot be submitted until Slava is officially available to us which is mid-September. I'm starting to sweat with the thought that the longer it takes, the chance increases that we'll be in Ukraine for the holidays again. I was there 6 weeks total the first time - right through Christmas and New Years! I really don't want to put our family through that again. Of course, we will do whatever is required in order do bring our baby boy home, but I'm praying for mercy anyway.

So, I told you the previous post was the short version!

Please keep Slava and our family and this whole process in your prayers. I promise to keep you updated as we go.

HERE WE GO AGAIN!

Yes, "Here we go again!" In more ways than one. I've attempted this blog thing before but had a hard time keeping up. I'll try to improve on that this time around. Our first blog was to keep family & friends updated on our Ukrainian adoption. Once we were home though, I didn't keep it up. I promise to do better this time.

And yes, we are adopting again! I'll tell our adoption story in another post for anyone who wasn't on that journey with us. The short version (which is hard for me to do) is that in January 2007 we arrived home from Ukraine with 3 siblings: Andrii, Anna, and Jordan (ages then 9, 7, & 3). Just before I flew home with the kids we learned that there is a 4th sibling, a baby boy, who was not available for adoption at that time. We kept this under our hats (and in our hearts) so as not to freak anyone out. We had 4 kids at home already! Within a year though the cat was out of the bag and this little guy's name became a household word: Slava (which means "praise" in Ukrainian). He is now an official orphan (and almost 5 years old now) and we will be traveling to Ukraine to bring him home in Sept/Oct of this year, finally! This really is the short version, when I post the extended version you'll see.

So for now, please keep us in your prayers and I'll keep you updated on the adoption and our life in general with 7 kids, 1 daughter-in-law, and a son on the way!