Moving forward!!!!

Well we finally can say we can move forward with our adoption! Praise the Lord!!! We have had so many setbacks, speedbumps, road blocks, etc. we are ready to move forward and get all the bad behind us. We won't be traveling until the New Year but we need to do another fundraiser to help us with the additional cost we are enduring. We are bringing V here for hosting for Christmas because of delays. We want to spend Christmas together as a family and would hate for him to sit in Ukraine alone. We are hosting through Project 143 again..  So thankful for them and the sheer fact he has the option to come to America for 4 weeks. He will have to return to Ukraine on January16. Hopefully this time, not for a entire year like last time. Please come out to our pancake breakfast with Santa Claus December 14th from 9-3 at the American Legion Post in Fayetteville, GA. The cost is any donation to our adoption!!! Would love to see everyone!

Your Love Is Like A River

Love this song!! I have found so much peace this week. I think I'm finally excited about our whole adoption process now and not stuck in depressed mode about all the "whys". I've learned and grown some much. I finally realize God's love is the rock i'm standing on. No matter what the day brings how the adoption story twists and turns God is our rock. He will get us through. He's got this. I can't wait to see how our story turns out. It might not be like everyone else's story but it's OUR story. Makes it worth it in the end. Nothing good comes easy and it's worth fighting for. Excited to share the story of Jesus with V and tell how awesome his love is for us!!

Still no news. E-mailed our facalitator yesterday and he said... no news is good news at this point. He assured me not to worry and he would let me know when they get any kind of news. I also sent V the e-mail so he can read it. I think he likes when I keep him in the "loop." He is waiting more anxiously than we are. :))

I can't wait until Orphan Sunday November 3rd. P143 will be displaying information about hosting for Christmas! Will update details soon. If you are interested in hosting an orphan for Christmas.  Please let me know or visit www.p143.org for more details and a complete photo listing.

Picture this morning:
This boy, this smile, his big heart, our son- is what drives us forward.

-Kendall

Clinging to the Word

For those of you that are following our story know that this hasn't been a easy one for us. Adoption is grueling, hard, bittersweet, depressing at times, joyful, redeeming, and so many more words that I can't even think of right now. No one prepares you for the fight to the finish that you will have to endure. The ugly moments when all you want to do is cry or the happy moments when you see your child smile on FaceTime and it reminds you why we are here in the first place. We do know this: we were called to do this by our almighty God. The way everything in our life was lined up for us to do this, shows us that we were called. For this child we prayed. We know without a shadow of a doubt, that we were called. Called to save an orphans life. So while we are waiting with utter most faith, all we have is the word. His word. His word is truth. I've been digging into scripture for guidance and peace. Verses like

Romans 8:28 " And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who^[a] have been called according to his purpose."

Isaiah 41:10 "So do not fear, for I am with you; do not be dismayed, for I am your God. I will strengthen you and help you; I will uphold you with my righteous right hand"

Matthew 6:34 " Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough troubles of it's own."

James 4:13-15 "Now listen, you who say, “Today or tomorrow we will go to this or that city, spend a year there, carry on business and make money.” ¹⁴ Why, you do not even know what will happen tomorrow. What is your life? You are a mist that appears for a little while and then vanishes. ¹⁵ Instead, you ought to say, “If it is the Lord’s will, we will live and do this or that.”

Deut. 31:6 "Be strong and courageous. Do not fear or be in dread of them, for it is the LORD your God who goes with you. He will not leave you or forsake you."

Proverbs 16:3 "Commit to the Lord whatever you do, and your plans will succeed."

John 14:18 " I will not leave you as orphans; I will come to you."

I do know that when God opens doors, no man can shut them. We are asking friends and family to join together with us in prayer. Pray that SDA shows mercy on our dossier, it is in their hands as I type this. Pray that Vitalik will hold on for his family and he knows we are coming. Pray that we have peace during this hard time, because it's REALLY hard to see your child suffer. Pray that we hear good news soon. Pray that we can rise from ashes to beauty and we will be standing at the finish line with victory. God has all the glory! We know God's timing is perfect and he has this all planned out. We are just waiting to hear our next step.

The devil often gets a hold of us and has us convinced that this is over. Of course he does! Why? We are doing good works for God's glory he doesn't like it! Satan has no authority. Our God reigns here. This CAN'T be over.

We welcomed home our dear friends last night from Ukraine. They brought home their 15 year old daughter and 16 year old son. Pasha, the 16 year old boy is Vitalik's best friend. He is so excited he is home with his forever family and can't wait to start his new life here. Yulia, who is the 15 year old girl is also friends with Vitalik. They both came from his orphanage. We are ecstatic for them! Hooray! They are finished!! But....... that was also very hard for us. The humanly, selfish ways wanted to say "why not us?" "Why is V still stuck over there?" All those horrible questions ran through my head as I was trying to put the biggest smile on my face. I'm just being real and I'm sure every adoptive family has had thoughts of jealousy during someone else's happy time. I always wonder why adoption is so hard anyways?!?!? Why there are ALWAYS bumps in the road with EVERY adoption that happens. Maybe it's a wakeup call. A wake up call to understand that God is in control and not us. A reminder that no matter how dark and deep we are we still give him praise. Praise in the good and the bad. To let go of all that we have, and to let God have our heart in full. He's got this. Nothing else I can physically do. It's going to take a miracle for our approval, but I'm trusting it's going to happen.

So we will press on and fight to the finish. Just keep our family in your prayers as we wait these next 4 weeks for our news of the destiny of our adoption. We are leaning on God's redeeming love and know that he will carry us through. V tells me he prays every night. He told me he prays our "documents will be good" and " Jerry and I can come get him soon." Jesus hears the orphans right?

Ukraine or bust!!!!

Some recent FaceTime and Skype pictures. As you can see some Skype moments are happier than some... :)

Love this song btw-
Jeremy Camp- Reign in Me

To God be the Glory!!

Kendall and Jerry

Our adoption video

Sometimes you just gotta watch it again and again and again. To let it take you back... back to where you started. To see the reason why we are doing this and where we are today. We serve a mighty God. Adoption Vido on YouTube

Fundraiser!

We will be doing another fundraiser guys!!! Yes... another. After re-doing our paperwork it cost us a LOT of money. We are still in need of raising funds for this. We will press on. :) Ukraine or Bust. Please contact me at kendallhudgins@yahoo.com if you are intersted and live in the Atlanta area. Thanks!!!

Bad news but hopeful news.

A lot has gone on since July and my last blog post. I thought about updating a 100 times but I didn't know so many people were reading this blog and following our adoption story :) Well... I guess I should say the bad news first. The first of August we received an e-mail at 5:30 in the morning from our facilitator in Ukraine telling us that the SDA people rejected our dossier to adopt due to a misdemeanor on Jerry's criminal record from more than a decade ago. :( WHAT?!?!?!?! The USA had no problem clearing us to adopt internationally!!!!!!! Ok. I can't explain to you how I felt as I read that e-mail. First of all... an e-mail?!?! Well.. Whatever.. I think that deserved a phone call from Ukraine no matter the time of day! Anyways! I felt like I could scream, cry, throw up and pass out all at the same exact moment. I immediately called our facilitator and we talked on the phone. We were already thinking of ideas of what to do now? For those of you reading this know that I (Kendall) don't give up. Within two days of thinking, praying and talking to friends/family we decided that I should go to Ukraine to see V. He had been waiting for soooo long to see us and us to see him. He had some up and downs at camp and for me to tell him that it was going to take longer to figure this out... would devastate him. How can I tell him??! This CAN'T be over!!! No way. A lot of people have their opinions about telling kids that you want to adopt from hosting, about adoption. So many things that you can't foresee can happen during an international adoption but... we felt in our hearts from the beginning that if this was God's will for us then he would make a way. He has been so faithful this whole process and we are keeping our attitude the same way now. Doors have opened at every turn for us financially, spiritually, emotionally since V left us from hosting this past January to return to Ukraine. Jerry and I prayed that if this child was supposed to be with our family then things would fall into place. His will for us. Everything has been.. until now. We are trying to view this as a "speed bump" more than a door that has shut. We have such a strong relationship with V. We speak 1-4 or 5 times daily and he already calls me Mama! I thought about making the trip to Ukraine a surprise. Our friends that were at their SDA appointment had been staying at the camp with the kids for a couple of weeks, so I thought... what better time would it be to go and see V? At these camps during the summer the kids have ZERO supervision and they were in a town that was very tourist-y. So no questions would have been asked about whom am I? We decided that my sister should go with me on this trip. Jerry has to save his travel time for work for when we actually go back for the adoption (we hope) and I wasn't going to go by myself for the first time. We got last minute tickets and off we went! I will post the video of the surprise visit and pictures below. After the 8 hour flight to Amsterdam, 3 hour flight to Kiev, 1 hour flight to Lviv, and a 5 1/2 hour car ride we were finally in Rahkiv, Ukraine where V was at camp. When they say Ukraine is half way around the world. It REALLY is half way around the world! Whew. Nothing was more precious than the look on V's face when he walked out of the hotel and saw me standing there!. In the video the first thing he asked me when I was hugging him is "You no telephone me you say you go Ukraine!!" (In his Ukraine-English accent) He knows that we have been waiting so long to hear the information about our SDA appt and I promised him the minute I knew I would tell him. Well.. since this wasn't the official SDA appt... I figured I could get away with a surprise visit! :) Well worth it. We spent 6 days there. It was awesome. I got to spend every day, all day with him. I learned a lot and I saw a lot. I sometimes think this happened so I would go to Ukraine and learn more about V. To spend that precious time with him in his environment that I wouldn't get to do in America. I also wouldn't have got to spend that much time with him and his friends if they were in school, in the orphanage. They have different rules there. I think V finally let down the trust doors with me and opened up more. He shared a lot more of his past with me and I'm glad. I told him that I was there to see him because there was a hold up with our paperwork. It was going to take more time to re-do and process but I wanted to come spend time with him because I knew he was being patient. I told him Ukraine didn't like one of our papers and we were working hard to figure out a solution. Well here is the next slightly hopeful news!!! When I got to Amsterdam, I turned on my phone, and I received an e-mail from our facilitator saying he just got out of a meeting with the senior official of SDA about our case. They said they would be able to re-submit our dossier for us if we could make some changes in our paperwork. Basically proving that Jerry is far from criminal and what he did was so long ago it doesn't even matter anymore! If we make those changes they would be able to re-submit and take a second look. This is so hopeful! It's not a guarantee of acceptance but it’s worth a shot! I've talked to several people and some of them have told me that this happens frequently. Families are rejected and re-submit to get approval. We SOOOOOOO hope that we are in the same boat! V got to leave camp with my sister and me and travel back to the main city of Lviv. There he got to stay with us in the hotel and take us to the airport the next morning. The taxi driver took him back to the train station after that and he rode the train back to camp. That is how much they are NOT supervised! They didn't even realize V was gone!!! There was no one in charge at the camp that he even had to ask. He enjoyed getting away with us and showing us around Lviv. He grew up there and knew that town like the back of his hand pretty much. Yes, at 14!! He was sent out wandering the streets at a young age so he knew where everything was. I held it together when I was saying goodbye to him at the airport. I gave him about a 5 min hug, a kiss on the cheek; I smiled and looked at him saying I will see him soon :) It wasn't until I got on the airplane; as we were taking off, that I lost it. I realized I was leaving Ukraine, without V. Sending him back to that God awful camp/orphanage not knowing what would become of all this. As soon as we landed in Kiev my phone was ringing as it powered on and V was on the phone crying his heart out to me. Telling me to come back... he wants his mama and to come home to his family. <Insert - heart ripping out of my chest> UGH. So hard. Well we have re done the paperwork since all of this and it got to Ukraine today. They will re-submit soon and will let us know within 4-6 weeks if we are approved this time. This new paperwork has had many prayers, tears and smiles over it and I hope it is on the wings of angels as it enters that SDA office. We know and trust God is bigger than this and he will overcome! God has the same promise to us as his promises to the orphans. "I will not leave you as orphans, I will come to you!" John 14:18. So if you are reading this, please say a prayer that all this will work out. We know in our hearts that V is our son and is a part of our family. God gives his biggest battles to his strongest soldiers and He knows we will fight for this kid until the end. I will keep everyone posted as I hear the news! Thanks for all the love and support. We truly need it!

Kendall and Jerry

Here is the link to the video of the surprise on YouTube!
Surprise Visit!

still no word

waiting anxiously. No word yet. Maybe in the next two weeks we will have our travel date. From the looks of everything, we will be going mid August now. :( Please keep us in your prayers!