Camp next year

Friday Dean and I drove to the Wisconsin Dells area to pick up Angela from camp. This is her second year there, and she LOVES this camp!

The first thing she told us was, "This was the THE BEST CAMP EVER!"

The second thing she told us was, "Next year, I'm bringing my new sister Ianna to this camp. I'm helping her get her food, and her clothes. I'm her big sister, and I'm helping her. That my job. I'm the big sister!"

She spent the next four hours talking about her new sister, and bringing her new sister to camp.

We debated about talking to Angela about getting a new sister. You know, things happen with adoption, and kids get disappointed. But part of the homestudy process involves the social worker talking to the kids about how they feel about the adoption, so we really weren't sure at what point we should bring it up to her. When I was still in "that country on the other side of the world" we showed Angela a picture of Ianna. At that time we didn't know we were going to pursue the adoption, we were just showing her a picture of the the girl who was the reason Dean was sitting next to her crying, and why I was on skype crying. Angela looked at Ianna's picture, at her misshaped face, and in a very concerned and compassionate tone of voiced asked, "Oh, what happened?" I explained that just like she (Angela) had needed surgery to fix some things, God had made Ianna a little different too, and needed surgery to help her eyes." That was acceptable to Angela, and all she needed at the moment.

So fast forward to Friday, and camp pick up. For the next several hours, as we drove home from camp, Angela told us of her camp experience, then was quick to add how she would help Ianna swim next year, or help Ianna in the canoe next year, etc. At the end of the day, when it was finally time for bed, Angela suddenly dropped to her knees at the side of her bed, elbows on her bed, and folded her hands in prayer. I had to chuckle, since we usually say our prayers with her tucked in bed and me sitting along side her. She must have seen someone at camp saying their bedtime prayers this way. Anyway, there she knelt by the side of the bed,

"Yord, I yuv you. Fank you for giffing me camp. Fank you for giffing me Dean and mom to bring me home from camp. Yord, pweas bwing Ianna home so she can go to camp wiff me necks year. Fank you yord. Amen."

I said Amen as I wiped away my tears.

Baby steps

Thursday and Friday last week was a flurry of emails and phone calls which caused my head to spin. Many of them happened while driving the 8 hours round trip to pick up Angela from camp, and I was trapped in the car and couldn't do much of anything to feel useful!

Thursday we were told by our contact in Ianna's country that we could submit our family profile for pre-approval to adopt. This does NOT mean that Ianna has been made legally available.

We've been stressing out a little bit about this. For reasons I won't go into here, (believe it or not, there are *some* things I do keep private! LOL) our family is a complicated one. We are a blended family, and hard to explain to another country, and another culture. But I got it all down in writing, complete with the required pictures to tell the story, and it was sent off to Ianna's country this morning.

Friday we decided on a homestudy agency. One who was quick to respond to our inquiry. This homestudy agency is by far the best that we have talked to, and their concern is for the child, and making sure they are not only getting things done correctly, but in a timely manner so that when the time comes her legal status changes, we are are ready to roll! By Friday evening I had email copies of forms downloaded (and completed!), and Saturday's snail mail brought fingerprint cards and a couple more forms to be filled out, including one that Angela has to sign. I think I'll make a video of that. LOL

This morning Dean and I sent Angela off to summer school, then we hopped our little selves in the car and headed to Bloomington and where we had our fingerprints done. Those, along with a check will be dropped off at the homestudy agency office tomorrow morning. (because I'm afraid to put the fingerprint cards in the mail! LOL)

So, that's the flurry of activity we had this weekend. Now we wait a couple of weeks until we hear back from the other side of the world.

Can you help a family

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My friend Julia and her husband Rob left for a country in Eastern Europe a couple weeks ago, to bring their new son Aaron home. Aaron is 6 years old and has arthorgriposis, (he has little to no use of of his arms, and uses his feet for everything) and had already spent a year in an institution in a tiny village in the rural country side. He had never had a visitor. Had never been loved on or hugged.

And along came this man, woman and boy who called themselves mamma, papa, and brother. (his other brother was coming a few days behind them, but Aaron hadn't had a chance to meet him yet.)

Aaron was just starting to warm up to this idea of someone CARING for him, and it was almost time for him to leave this place called an institution and go home to another country to his "family". But there was a glitch, something that couldn't be planned for, that has to be fixed. Now his mama, papa and brother had to leave him.

Julia and her husband Rob had to return home. This was an unexpected turn of events. You can read about it on their blog, but the reality is they now have to make an extra trip, which is going to cost $3,000. Most adoptive families don't have an extra $3,000 laying around when the adoption already cost several thousand dollars in the first place. They are going to need help going back to get him. If you go to their blog, on the right there is a "chip in" button. Every penny helps! Prayers help too.

Clarification

Clarification: No, Ianna's legal status has not changed YET. When it does, you will see me hoot'in and holler'in it all over the darned internet people! Bet we're getting going on the homestudy and other steps so when she IS ready, so are WE!

Family Profile

Writing a family profile. Hmmm...somehow this didn't seem like such a difficult task until I tried to do it.

I'm at a loss for words!

In the Palm of His Hand

Tuesday was a day of stress around here. By the time I went to bed Tuesday night, my stomach was nothing but a solid knot of anxiety, and there wasn't much sleeping going on. I think I finally dozed off around 1:00 a.m.

At 2:00 a.m. I woke with a start.

I immediately saw Ianna sitting in the palm of a man's hand. I'm pretty sure I've seen this before, but never quite so clear. As soon as I saw her God said to me, "I have her HERE. It doesn't matter what anyone has said to you along the way. It doesn't matter who has threatened you with anger or fear. **I** already know where she is going. It may not BE with you, but I already know. It is decided. Rest easy. She will go to the place I have prepared for her."

I have tried, every day for the rest of the week I have tried forcing myself to say those words out loud to remind myself to stop worrying. To move forward with what *I* need to do HERE. That is all I can do.

I think tomorrow I will put post-it notes all over the house.

What's in a name?

My mother will not be happy I'm sharing this story, but I don't think she's reading here, so maybe I can get away with it. LOL

When I was 17, I decided, in and of my own free will, to join the U.S. Army. Have I mentioned that I'm a slightly independent thinker, and don't often do what everyone else is doing just to be like them? Just to make sure, when my parents found out I was doing this, my mom checked around and not one single friend of mine was enlisting. Just me. All by myself. All 80 lbs soaking wet of me.

Anyway, my parents didn't know I had gone through all the testing, etc. until it was actually time to sign on the dotted line. I was only 17 after all, so I needed my parents' consent.

I also needed a copy of my birth certificate.

It is never good to keep secrets from your children. Even secrets you think are harmless. Seventeen year old girls have a way of making everything into big drama, and although most people thought I was pretty reserved, I just hid my dramatic qualities better.

Oh, the secret? Well, when I was born, my parents did not name me "Leah". In fact, they named me "Kimberlee", but when I was three weeks old they decided they liked "Leah" better so they just started calling me that. By the time 1971 and Kindergarten registration rolled around, well you could just go pick up any kid off the street and enroll them under whatever name you wanted and say they were yours and nobody asked any questions, so I was enrolled as "Leah".

Jump ahead a few more years to my need for my birth certificate and mom's need to explain the fact there is a different name on it. This caused the 17 year old me to think back to the times my blonde haired, blued eyed siblings teased the dark haired, dark eyed me about who my "real father" was. And now I believed them. When I ordered my leather bound senior year book, I chose to have "Kimberlee Leah" put on for my name instead of Leah. Seriously, this moved me to my core.

And then within a couple of years I'd forgotten about it.

Then in 2003 I needed a passport, which required my birth certificate again. DOGGONE IT! There was that name issue again. You can't get a passport when your drivers license and social security card have one name, but your birth certificate has another! UGH! I was required to order a copy of my military discharge papers and my high school diploma showing that I've gone by "Leah" my entire life. My passport was issued, and I was allowed to forget about it again.

UNTIL NOW!!!!

With an international adoption there is no such thing as "forgetting about it". So this week, amidst studying for and taking my midterms, I've been gathering documents: Certified marriage certificates (x2!) Military Discharge Papers, Passport, High school and college transcripts, and a notarized copy of request to amend my birth certificate ONCE AND FOR ALL!

In about three weeks, my name will forever be "changed" to Leah. That still doesn't really answer the question of the dark hair and eyes though, does it? LOL JUST TEASING MOM!!!!

WOOT!

That is only ONE "woot", so don't get too worked up yet, ok? This "woot" is for another piece we've been waiting for, that finally came today. As always, I can't go into details about it, but I can say THIS...we can now start our homestudy and we have all the funds to do so!

Done

Phone call is made. Didn't learn a thing, but didn't really expect to either. We just keep praying, that's all. We'll start our home study process in a couple of weeks. (We've had to wait for a couple of loose ends here to get tied up before we could start that process.) Tomorrow I'm headed to get certified birth certificates and a couple other certified things.

I'm taking Algebra midterms right now, then 4 more weeks of class and I'm out of school until January. No fall semester for me, which leaves plenty of time for galavanting around the world if should the need arise!

Sitting on pins and needles?

Yeah, so am I! LOL

The phone call has been postponed until Monday when (hopefully) my "translator" and I can get our schedules together! LOL

A loss for words

Today there has been a flurry of emails going around the world about a certain little girl. The most recent email we received a few minutes ago has both Dean and I sitting here in tears. Tears for a little girl who will very likely be staying where she is. We will know for sure within the next week or so, but unless there is a miracle performed in the hearts of TWO KEY PEOPLE, the journey to bring her into our family is over.

Lord, only you know the hearts of these two people. You know what prompted their initial decision, and you know what motivates them now. Please Lord, let them see the possibilities for this child. Let them see there is hope for her here!

***** I just received one more email (1:00 a.m. there!) which contains a phone number of the person to call tomorrow morning. I think this is the last person who can help. I have no idea if this person speaks English or not. Please Lord, let me not have language barriers tomorrow!

There are rumblings!

Keep praying! Three months to the day since I met Ianna, and there are rumbings!

This morning I received two encouraging emails. I cannot wait until the day rolls around when I can fill in the blanks for you, and stop posting cryptic messages! I bet you can't wait either.

I'm sure you've seen this post of mine from my other blog a time or two. The pictures were taken from an investigation done by Mental Disability Rights International, and the video, the one you've all seen so often that I have posted here,(along pictures of a certain little girl! HINT HINT) which shows footage from that investigation. (by the way, conditions in that institution have not changed all that much since the investigation) If you can stomach it, you can also find the full written report of the investigation here. but I'll give you fair warning, it is not reading for the faint of heart. When you see the name "Kulina", know that it has significant meaning to our household. Thankfully Ianna is in a good place NOW!

Word has gotten where it needs to, and the powers that be are not happy that Ianna has been put at such risk...again.

Keep praying. Your prayers are being heard!

July 5th

There are only 26 days left in July.

Really, I'm not trying to rush July along. I want summer to stick around as much as anyone else. But the number of days is significant, because "sometime in July" a decision will be made which will permanently decide Ianna's fate.

I have one foot that feels as if it has secure footing in faith. It's not slippery. There is no gravel or anything else to jeopardize my footing.  I even have something for my hand to hold onto...the hand of Christ. That side of my body, and my brain, knows that Ianna will be fine and will eventually make her way home to us.

The other side of me is flailing all over the place! There is NOTHING to put my foot on, it's just out there in the air, trying to get where my other foot is. My arm is doing that whole windmill thing, trying to keep me balanced, but not really doing a very good job of it. There are handholds that I can't seem to get hold of over there.

And all the while, my stomach churns. I know that God did not bring me to the other side of the world to meet this child just to raise our awareness of her cause and others like her. That would seem like a cruel joke, and yet, I know other adoptive parents who've had just that happen to them. Will that be us?

Why is it that side of my body can't grasp faith like the other side of me? Is it just the human side of me that will forever have doubt, knowing that sometimes "things happen"?

26 days of waiting, which could really be 5...or 2...or 18...but will ultimately decide the fate of one little girl on the other side of the world.

Discouragement

Today we received an email from the other side of the world. It wasn't really what we wanted to hear. There is a potential decision that I thought was a good thing. That it meant Ianna's file was at least on someone's desk, and her case was being worked on.

Instead I was told no, that is not how it will work. If this decision is made, it would make it possible for those in charge of her case to basically forget that she exists. She'll be taken care of, yet off their hands, so they can get on with doing work for other children more worthy of their time.

This decision will be made sometime in July (we're told close to the middle of July) My stomach is in knots thinking about it.  If this decision is made, it is highly unlikely we or anyone else will ever be able to adopt her. It's not supposed to be that way, but I'm told realistically that's what to expect.

After the death of Moses, in Joshua 1:9 God said to Joshua "Have I not commanded you? Be strong and courageous. Do not be terrified; do not be discouraged, for the LORD your God will be with you wherever you go."


The only one I can appeal to is God himself. I have to keep reminding myself that just because something has always been done a certain way, doesn't mean it will be *this time*. That when I want to look around at all the things that could get in our way, I need to LOOK UP to GOD, because through Him all things are possible, even when some person here on earth says it is nearly impossible. Because for this one little girl, until someone closes the door, locks it, and throws away the key...until such a time...anything can happen.

That "anything" could be that one thousand people can pray a fire-storm of compassion to burn in the heart of the person or people involved in signing those forms.

Tonight I sent an email to the other side of the world, letting them know we are waiting....

A bed to call her own

While this pictures is not the best quality, I want you to look at the background. Do you see the beds all pushed together? Then behind the beds is a wall. If memory serves me right, a girl we call Ianna sleeps on the other side of that wall, on an identical bed. I can almost touch her from here. 

Now, look at the beds again. Do you see how they are all pushed together? 10 beds...all pushed together TIGHT! The orphanage is filled with room after room after room of beds pushed together tight, every one of them containing a sleeping child at night. That is a lot of children who don't have mommas or pappas!  

I don't know if the caregivers pull the beds apart at night so the kids are separated for sleeping, or if they stay pushed up against one another. One on hand, I hope that they are separated, so that they have the tiniest bit of privacy. On the other hand, I hope that they're next to each other, so they're not completely alone. But if she is used to someone sleeping r.i.g.h.t. next to her every night, can you imagine how different it will be to come home to her very own bedroom?

To her very. Own. BED?

My girl spent her first 8 years in the most horrendous conditions you can imagine. She has never had a single item to call her own. Not.one.single.thing. In pictures and videos I get of her, she is often seen carrying a naked baby doll (apparently naked baby dolls are universal! LOL) but it's never the same baby doll. In videos she is very gentle with her babies. I have my eye on a couple simple baby dolls who's clothes don't have to come off (something that is difficult for her, since she has minimal use of her fingers, and thumbs) and I can't wait to buy a cradle for her baby dolls, which I will put in her room. I will teach her lullabies to sing, and together we will love on those babies.  Ok, sorry, I was having a moment there....Have I mentioned I'm just a *tiny* bit excited about having a girl who likes to play with dolls? It's not that I don't love playing "Dog the Bounty Hunter", its just that there is something about a tea party that I'm sure I'm missing out on. (and don't tell Angela, but when Ianna turns 11, Angela might just have to suffer through a princess party!) 

Anyway, we are s.l.o.w.l.y. getting things ready around here. No, I don't have the office cleaned out yet, but still I've been watching Craigslist for bedroom sets, and have had a vision in my head of what I can see for Ianna's room. Like the $300 French provincial set that Dean said was out of my price range....sigh...why does he always have to be the voice of reason?

Then a couple weeks ago I saw and add with a picture that said "I've had this set since I was 10 years old!" along with a picture.

Let me take you back in time to...oh...about 1972...

In 1972, I was 5 years old and my parents had built a brand new house in the middle of a corn field in prime horse country in Minnesota.  I know when we first moved in I had my brother and sister's old bunk beds, but around the time when I turned 7 my room was completed. That room came straight out of a Dayton's catalog, I'm pretty sure! The bedding, wallpaper, and curtains were all the exact same pattern (small pink and yellow stripes with tiny little flowers with green stems in there too) Oh, and yellow and white shag carpeting. A few years later, hidden in the corner, under my bed, was about a 3ft square patch of ROCK HARD carpet where I'd spilled a bottle of wood glue and tried to clean it up with water. Oops! 

My actual bedroom furniture was a set that was very popular at the time. In fact, it was so popular that BARBIE had to have it! Here it is, scaled down for the Dreamhouse itself! 

 

There were lots of pieces available to this set, but only two pieces that I didn't have. One was the wardrobe. I had a big closet in my room, so a wardrobe would have been silly. The other was the canopy bed.  I had always WANTED the canopy bed, only my mom had gotten me the wrought iron headboard/footboard instead. But my best friend? Yeah, SHE had a canopy bed, with a really pretty blue ruffly canopy on it! And her curtains were perfectly matched to the canopy. I loved it. With her blue shag carpeting, and she had these little toy horses lined up in their little barn in the corner of her room. We pretended the blue shag carpeting was their hay, and (don't tell her mom) pulled up the carpet fibers and made little blue bales of hay with it. Cuz, you know, walking outside and using the GRASS would have been messy! 

My friend's room looked like it belonged in a magazine. My room did too, only I wanted to be in her magazine, and I'm pretty sure she wanted to be in mine. I spent the night over there a.l.o.t. Probably way more than her parents cared for, and far more than I reciprocated. 

So yeah, anyway...back to June 2010, and the Craislist ad. So this set had several pieces, and also included the canopy bed.  Even though it wasn't very expensive, it was money we don't we have right now, with money tied up in the adoption process. Dean told me to offer her less, which I felt silly doing, since I know the memories attached to such a set, and she really wasn't asking very much. But Dean is the smart one in this relationship, so I followed his suggestion. I sent an email, explaining that we were adopting, and that it was more than we could spend. I made my offer.

She answered back a few minutes later saying the set was still available, and that adoption is close to her heart, since she has several friends adopting. My offer would be fine.

We exchanged a few more emails, and somewhere along the way I sent her a link to this blog, along with some other details from our story. It wasn't long before one of her emails said, "By the way, now that I'm 1/2 way through reading your blog, no charge on the bedroom set!" 

We picked up the bedroom set this week, and it's given me a new motivation to get the bedroom done. (ahem, the bed has to stay in my car until I have an empty bedroom to put it in!)  I can't thank Jen enough for this amazing gift she's given to Ianna, who has no idea what is waiting for her a few months down the road. A bed to call her own, and also something I can share with her from my own childhood thanks to my new friend Jen. And I'm pretty sure that Jen and I have just formed a friendship that will last a very long time. And who knows? Maybe someday a face like this will find his way into her household?

222

2 months, 2 weeks 2 days, that's what the counter at the top of the page says today. That's how long it's been since I held her. Only at the time, I didn't know why I was holding her, so I wasn't paying attention to the details, and now every day I have different questions! 

Some days I'm able to have some questions answered, like what size clothes she wears. (thanks to another adoptive family who just returned home with their newest family member!) or a new favorite toy, and I get other details in bits and pieces. 

If only I could have a do-over of those 15 minutes so I could soak up the information I didn't know I was going to want and need two months later! LOL But God  had a reason for that, I know! If my minutes had been spent looking at other details, I would have missed the most important ones! 

You see, in those minutes I got to spend with her, I was seeing HER, and the beauty of her spirit. I was able to see the glory that is her life, and wonder how anyone of us could walk away from her, knowing the future she faced, without doing whatever we could to find her a family. In those minutes, I vowed to get her out of there, to find her a family NO MATTER WHAT! God heard that promise, and he in turn kept his, and performed miracles here at home in Dean's heart. 

So, no more wishing for a "do over"! Instead I want another trip! LOL Wouldn't that be fun? To go spend time at the orphanage, just loving on the kids like I did last spring? Surely some money could fall out of the sky for that! LOL

PLEASE PRAY!!!

PLEASE PRAY!!!!!

Our girl needs prayer RIGHT NOW and for the next couple of weeks. There are several decisions being made for her over the course of the next couple of weeks, and I cannot give details about any of them. Oh, how I hate writing in code, but because we are not legally committed to her, (and cannot be until the the small legal hurdle is fixed in her country) it is the only way I know how to beg for your prayers.

Will you be a prayer warrior for us this week?

Meet Srecko

******Disclaimer******* 

Because we are not formally committed to adopting Ianna, we are not allowed to talk about what country she is in, nor where I met her. That said, after reading the following post and clicking around a bit, please DO NOT feel compelled to point out the obvious in your comments, ok?

**********************

Check out this little guy! This is Srecko, and I met him when I was traveling in April. He's the second favorite child I met while I was there. >wink< 

Srecko is in the same group as the little girl we're adopting, and they've been raised as brother and sister for the nearly 3 years. They're almost always together. When I was taking this picture, I learned that he was going to a family here in Minnesota, and I was so excited to be able to send his new mom SEVERAL neat pictures of him! When you're adopting, getting these pictures is a lot like getting an email filled with gold. This one was especially fun because Srecko has got to be one of the neatest kids in the orphanage, next to my girl, of course! 

In the last several weeks, his new mom Tammy and I have gotten to be great phone friends. They live not too far away, and this will be their third adoption from this country. Their first child, Christina, was adopted in 2007, and Jovan just came home in October 2009. In December they committed to adopting Srecko and are really trying hard to come up with the funds to do just that. I'm so excited that they are, not only for them, and for Srecko, but because it means my girl won't loose everyone who is important to her because her best friend will be living right here in the Twin City area. Tammy has taken me under her adoptive mother wing, and has been helping me understand particulars of adopting from this country. 

Maybe you're not adopt a child into your own family, but could spare a few dollars for a family who is. If you're feeling led to sponsor the Severson family, you can click on his button below to do so, and you can also add his button to your blog! (I can't wait until we have a button for Ianna. Soon...very very soon.)

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Happy Heart

Last night we received new pictures of a certain little girl in a certain country far away! Oh man, it's like Christmas in June! The best part was to see her OUTSIDE, with her hair in ponies, in the sunshine, playing with the other kids. Oh, and last week we got a short video clip, which Dean and I have each watched about 100 times, and there is another video clip coming soon.

I cannot wait for the day I can share pictures of her here on the blog. We actually have quite a few since I had a *slight* advantage over some of the other adoptive parents. And, there is another family who will be traveling to that country before too long (maybe even around the same time as us, if we're lucky!) so I will probably get more.

As another mom has said, these pictures are like little doses of vitamins to help us stay strong to get to our goal!

Months

Do you see that ticker at the top of the page? Today it says "1 month, 3 weeks and 4 days since I met Ianna".

That ticker is going to be there awhile. Ianna's country is entering their summer break, where NOTHING gets done for the entire summer. Today I received an email that it is going to be "months" before Ianna will be available for adoption.

That said, it is also a country that has a relatively quick process for a child who is legally available, so once her legal status changes, things can move pretty quickly. In the mean time we'll continue to get all of our ducks in a row and the US side of an international adoption completed, and when the day comes we're notified that she's ready, we'll be ready for her.

Adoptions take months, and we're prepared to wait out those months. Things will probably be pretty quiet on this blog until we know more. I'm still praying for a miracle, and I'm holding on to the vision I saw last night. God didn't have me travel all the way around the world for grins and giggles! God is bigger than all of this. He is also methodical, with each step placed at just the right distance from the one before. Skipping steps means not following His direction, and often results in nasty falls, so we'll be treading carefully!