Birthday Parties and Christmas

This week we Western Union(ed) some money to Ukraine to make sure that Vitaliy would have a birthday party this year.  This was his VERY first birthday party! As a matter of fact until recently he didn’t even know when his actual birthday was and how old he was.  He thought he was already 10 years old but I found out and told him that he was actually going to be turning 10 on the 15^th of December.  With the money we sent our missionary friend she was able to buy not only cake and juice but also fruits and chocolate candies for his entire class!  The missionary reported that he was very excited and that his class was shocked.  She gave him a huge piece of cake with 3 candles.  She asked him about his biggest dream and he replied "I want to be adopted by American family!”  We pray that we can make this happen.  We are thrilled that we were able to do something special for Vitaliy and share that fun with the other orphans waiting for their forever families.

Our home study (to my knowledge) finally went off to Florida after a few snags.  As long as everything goes as planned it should just be a few weeks before it is approved. We were hoping to be able to tell him that we were adopting him by Christmas but now we are just looking forward to when we will be able to let him know, whenever that is.  We know that it will be a wonderful announcement for him no matter the date. 

We just sent off two very large boxes to the orphanage for Christmas.  Several people donated toys and gifts to send along.  I know that the kids will be thrilled to have new things to play with.  Thank you to everyone who participated in this.  I imagine that we will get some pictures of the kids with their new things soon. 

We haven’t received any new donations to our fund recently and we know that the Christmas season is difficult.  Please remember to pray for us through this.  We are praying that we will have half of the entire cost to adopt by the new year.  That total is about $8,000 more.  We are thrilled to have raised 30% already.  Thank you Lord for your many blessings. 

December is moving on

Finally heard from Ukraine this week, our missionary friend sent us some pictures of Vitaliy and his friend Vova.  She had been very busy teaching a girl’s bible study and hadn’t seen him but she dropped off our weekly letters to a social worker for Vitaliy.  Unfortunately, Vitaliy hadn’t received our letters so when she came to visit him she told him who he needed to see to pick up the letters.  We were sad to hear that he missed getting the letters from us for 3 weeks and we are praying that he didn’t feel abandoned by us during that time.  One of the reasons we write to him each week is so that we develop a trust relationship with him.  I try to include a picture with each letter and a bit of a story that continues in the following letter.  Now that he has 4 letters to read at the same time he’ll have lots of reading to do. 

We had our computer crash on us on Thanksgiving Day.  All of our adoption papers and letters to and from Vitaliy were saved on that computer.  Fortunately, Brandon was able to recover all the information and has it stored on an external hard-drive.  We are in process of shopping for a new computer but in the mean time some friends of ours have let us borrow their computer so that we are still connected with the outside world. 

On Thursday December 15^th Vitaliy will turn 10 years old.  We are getting together a box to send to him and the other kids at the orphanage for his birthday and for Christmas.  They celebrate their Christmas on January 6^th which is very similar to Italy where they celebrate Epiphany here.  I ask some friends if they had some lightly used toys that they would like to send along and the response was awesome.  Several people wanted to help send along what they had to the kids at the orphanage in Ukraine.     

Today is the last day that Heather Pelzcar is so kindly coming over to cut hair to raise money for our adoption.  She has really been a blessing to us over these four weekends and was a picture of service and grace.  We appreciate her so very much.

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We are Back on Track

This week we got our labs back from Ohio, Hooray!!!  Now we are back on the journey.  We have everything signed and ready to send off to our social worker and she will do a final review and then send it off to Florida for the offical review and then we are then offically prospective adoptive parents.  This process will probably be a few weeks and the holidays will most likely slow it down but God's timing is perfect. 
As I write this, our friend Heather is once again pouring out her heart and her labor to cut and style hair for our adoption.  One of the best parts about these days is the conversation about life, adoption, and love.  I have met people through these efforts that I would have not had the opportunity to meet otherwise.  Everyone who comes shares with us the vision to bring an orphan to home to a forever family.  What a blessing that is!
We put up our tree this week and I kept thinking about how next Christmas we will be a family of five.  My heart aches though to know that our soon to be son will spend another Christmas alone in an orphanage along with so many other orphans waiting, hoping, and praying for a family to love them.  Please pray with us that Vitaliy will be encouraged by the letters that we send and the gifts that we are collecting to send to the orphanage for the kids.  We were praying that we could tell him that we were planning on adopting him by his birthday which is December 15th but now we are hoping that we can tell him by the Ukraine Christmas time which is the first week of January. 
To our blog readers, we appreciate your prayers and support.