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!

Dossier Approval and Benefit Concert!!

Our dossier was approved and submitted on June 10th. It was actually accepted on the first time! Which is unusual from what we hear? There were no mistakes with our paperwork! Thank goodness because I don't want to do anymore paperwork! ha. Anyways, they say we should know our travel date anywhere between 4-6 weeks from the time it was submitted. So we are looking at the end of July now for traveling the first time. (I know, every time I post the date keeps getting pushed back and back) We would like to think we are on the home stretch now with the waiting game. We are so anxious to get to Ukraine just to see V! Right now V is at a summer camp in Odessa Ukraine. He says he is not having any fun and is counting down the days until we come to him. He misses his family so much. We had bought him a cell phone before he left for camp so we could keep up the communication, but unfortunately it was already stolen. In the middle of the night under his pillow, might I add! UGH! This is cell phone #3 that has gotten stolen. I can't wait for the day where we don't have to worry about communication issues and I can lay my own eyes on my child every day! I'm sure it is a lot harder for him to wait than us, but we are hoping and praying for a speedy process from here on. We are still planning on traveling 3 times to Ukraine. Jerry will go all 3 times and I will only go 2 times. We will be gone approx. a week every trip. We are doing our last adoption fundraiser this next weekend. July 7th. Our friend, John Waller will be singing a concert in our backyard! Please help us spread the word! We will be selling the rest of our t-shirts and hoping to raise the additional money that is needed for us to complete this adoption. Follow John Waller music on Facebook! He is awesome! :) I will include some pictures of V and the picture of our fundraiser event. I feel like our child has grown and changed so much in the past (ALMOST 6 MONTHS!!) :((( We miss him!!!

God's Love for us

I have been thinking about God's love for us lately. That he is the ultimate Father of adoption, who adopted us. Without God's grace and love our adoption with V would not be possible. Jesus hears the orphans prayers and we have followed his calling. The love of a child through adoption is the greatest feeling! For a child who only spent 4 weeks of his life here with us is now our family. What a great God we serve! I am reminded by this just when V says "I love you mom!"

#waiting

I haven't updated in a while so I figured this was a good time! So many exciting things are happening as we are coming to the end of our paperwork. From the last time I posted, we have filed our Immigration paperwork with USCIS. That was 9 weeks ago!! We still have not gotten our approval, but should any day. It gets easier when you get assigned a case worker and have a "real" person that you can talk to instead of being someone's paperwork on someone's desk. We get updates from the case worker often. We have finished our Dossier paperwork, and as soon as we get the 171 approval from USCIS we can mail it to Ukraine. We are hoping within the next week or so. Starting next week, Ukraine will go on a 2 week vacation to celebrate Easter. All government offices close down. So we were told that our Dossier will be submitted to the government after May 13th. This will probably put our travel date in the middle of June for our 1st trip (SDA appointment) we are hoping. You never know because you are at the mercy of someone else's time with processing paperwork. There is nothing that we can do at this point but wait. Seems like this is the main theme for an adoption, waiting. Trying to remind ourselves that everything happens on God's timing and He knows best. We will get there, but the closer we get the slower time goes. We know we won't get to see V in May but June hopefully. Keep telling ourselves that we only have to go one more month without seeing him. The wi-fi has been out at their school for 3-4 weeks and we have been talking on the telephone and through VK. The past two weeks more of the telephone than anything. (EEEEEKKK) I'm going to have to work extra hours to pay for these international calls, but it's worth it. That 30-45 min of us talking makes him so happy!! (us too) You have to take the good with the bad. Some weeks we won’t speak to him for 7 days and then some weeks every day. So we talk as often as we can, when we can. He is practicing his English talking to us and he rather speak to us than type back in forth in Ukrainian on VK. He knows we will be coming soon, so he is having a hard time waiting. V keeps telling me what he wants to do when he is "home." He wants to play outside every day, eat good food, and spend every second with his new family. I asked him the other day about making friends in America and he said ok, but he rather spend time with his family. :) That makes me smile! We have decided that we might have to take two trips to Ukraine. If we did it in one trip, we would have to stay an awful long time. Two months. Well we can't do that because we both have jobs so we will have to break the trip up into two visits. Our first trip will be an appointment with the SDA (adoption agency in Ukraine)for them to approve us for adoption. Then we will get to go visit V at the orphanage and spend some time there with him. We are hoping he will not be gone away at camp for the summer. If the kids aren't on a hosting list they have to go to camp. We will then have to go to wherever he is to see him, if that is the case. We are hoping that they will let him stay at the school because we will already have a date assigned to visit by then. We will then be assigned to a court date. During that waiting period we will be returning home. It will probably be a 3 week span. We will go back to Ukraine for court and stay for another 2 weeks. The second trip can be the longest. After the court date the judge will make the child wait at the orphanage for 10 days before he can officially "come with us." They do this when the child has living parents in case they want to re-new their parental rights. That would not be the case with us, and have nothing to worry about. His dad is living but wants nothing to do with V. After the 10 long grueling days we can finally pick him up. We will then have to get new birth certificates, visa's, passports and we will have a meeting with the US embassy so he can be cleared to leave the country. All of that takes about 2-3 weeks so we will be hoping for the 2 week end and we can return home as soon as possible. We won't be taking Tripp or Hannah with us when we go. We will just be doing so much traveling in country; with the time change and the busyness of the trip we didn't think a 2 year old would enjoy it. It would be more torture than fun for him. For us too!!! Both times Tripp will be staying with grandparents, probably not realizing that Jerry and I are even gone. He loves them so. The region where V's school is, is about 8 hours away from the capital of Ukraine and we will be traveling back and forth doing a lot doing paperwork. Well, it seems as if our paperwork is almost done on our end... now it will be the hard part. Waiting. Waiting, Waiting, and more waiting. I will update when we get our approval from USCIS and our Dossier is accepted by Ukraine :) Keep praying that things go smoothing and in a timely manner for us! God is SO good ALL the time!! :) In the meantime we still need donations. We have a little bit of stuff left to pay for. All of the in-country travel can be expensive and we will both be out of work for a while. We still have 150 shirts left to sell! Please consider buying one to help out with the adoption. You can order one via PayPal here on the donation site: http://www.youcaring.com/adoption-fundraiser/bringing-vitalik-home-to-america-/39023 we can even ship them! They are $20 and come in sizes: S, M, L, XL and XXL. Just e-mail me your size and address if you need them shipped. kendallhudgins@yahoo.com Thanks for all your prayers and thoughts!! Blessings, Kendall, Jerry, V, Hannah, Tripp.

New Update

I realized that I haven't updated the blog in a month! Wow. Well not much has changed. We still miss him terribly. We are busy trying to finish paperwork and get things organized for our fundraisers. We are almost done with our home study. We just waiting to file our taxes and then we can submit all of our information to the immigrations office to be accepted to adopt internationally. At this point, best case scenario is we will be traveling at the end of May-1st of June. This is just for the first time. WHY DOES THAT SEEM LIKE AN ETERNITY TO ME?!? Probably because I have no patience and when my son is 6000 miles away and I can't see him or talk to him every day makes it worse. We are trusting in Jesus and knowing that his timing is everything. When I do get to speak to V he tells me that he misses us and is not happy. He wants to come home now to be with his family. This makes it 1000x's harder for me and my patience with this paper work. This past week we both had our physicals. It's crazy to me how they took 10 tubes of blood and tested us for every disease under the moon! All of the blood work was for Ukraine paperwork. I guess it's good in a way but they are so skeptical about Americans’ so they have to make sure!! One thing that I have found out for sure... ADOPTION... IS. NOT. FOR. THE. WEAK. It consumes my every thought, every day of the week. I will do anything to get him here faster, but that's just it...every day that's all my brain is thinking about. I'm constantly daydreaming of what it will be like when he is here with us and we don't have to worry anymore. How much fun are we going to have when he is finally here forever! My brain is also functioning 7 hours ahead. Wondering how is doing in school and if he is ok. He tells me he doesn't like the food at his school and he doesn't sleep well. This past week he told me he was sick too. As a mother... all these things are always running around in my head. Is he hungry? Is he sad? Is he ok? This is still a very humbling experience. That we, as Americans, take so many things for granted. I just want him to have the best 24/7 because that is what he deserves. I am very thankful that I only work 3 days a week. If I did not have Thursday-Sunday to get stuff done it would probably take more than a year to do this!!! I am also very thankful that the doors of God's will are still opening left and right. Our prayers are being answered one by one. It's amazing!!! God is so good all the time! On another note I went to the doctor this past week about my throat. I have been having problems swallowing lately (actually for about 2 months) but I finally went to the ENT about it. They numbed my nose and throat and stuck that "light tube" down my nose to look around. Well I have a cyst at the base of my tongue/left side of my throat. He said it was an enlarged salivary gland. They put me on antibiotics for a month to see if it will go down. If not, I will have to have surgery to have it cut off! The first thing that came to my mind is, “I don't have time for surgery!!" So please pray that the medicine will work and I won't have to go through all of that. I literally don't have time for that. haha. Our fundraisers are going well. Please help spread the work for our Golf Tournament that is March 9th at 10 am at Orchard Hills golf course in Newnan. This is our main fundraiser for the adoption and we are hoping and praying that our fees are raised! God willing! We are thankful for all the continued support we are having. It's really amazing how the community, friends, family and strangers come together for a good cause. We are still praying that everything goes smoothly for the paperwork... we have an older child that is waiting to come to America! Until next time. Much Love.

Missing him!

This week has been up and down with emotions: for me at least. I guess the mom in me has gotten the best of me. Isn't that what women do anyway? Worry? Well this whole adoption process will be full of ups and downs. It seems like one minute we will be so excited and the next not so much because of something that is out of our control. We will always be ecstatic that we are adopting V, it's just the technically stuff that gets in the way. We have begun our home study and will have our home visit done next week. This is where the agent will inspect every inch of our home. It is also about digging in your WHOLE entire life; past, present and future. We even have to get blood drawn! haha. FUN! Once our home study is approved we will file Immigration paper work with the US. Then we file paperwork with the government of Ukraine. After all that is complete we will get our invitation to travel to the Ukraine. The social worker and government will interview Jerry and I for adoption approval. It seems like our SDA appointment is so far away, but I'm determined to see V sooner than later so I'm doing all possible to get fundraising and paperwork underway. Not to mention all of the above is what costs thousands of dollars. We are continuing to take this leap of faith and trust that the Lord will provide. We have had many instances this week where doors have opened and we are continuing to follow God's lead. We have had some negativity towards our family about this whole adoption. We will just continue to put on our armor of God. I like this verse. "No weapon that is formed against thee shall prosper; and every tongue that shall rise against thee in judgment thou shalt condemn. This is the heritage of the servants of the Lord, and their righteousness is of me, saith the Lord." Isaiah 54:17. I also understand if it IS GOD's will, it WILL happen. When you go into adoption you have to go into it with that in mind, and be pro-active at the same time. No one has $20,000 sitting around to commit to. We are also doing God's work, which in the bible it states to take care of Orphans and Widows. What we are doing is certainly not negative, it is a blessing. To take in a child that has no future or family is God's greatest blessing to our family to say the least. We have talked to V two times this week. Tuesday on "FaceTime" and today I spoke with him on VK; which is the Facebook in Europe. Of course all of our talking was in Ukrainian and I'm thankful for my itranslate app on my phone. All I have to do is copy and paste. He told me twice in our conversation that he wants Jerry and I to come get him and take him home "forever." I told him that I'm so happy that he chose to come live with us forever and he said, “me too" "only a little bit longer to be sad." Wow. This is where my motherly instincts kick in and I want to get on the next flight to Ukraine. I want to save him and bring him here where I know he is safe and happy. No government laws, no rules and no court dates. I could only wish. We are so happy for the support that we have been given. I have connected with other 'host' moms that are now in the process of adoption. They have been my glue this week. They are the only ones that truly understand all of this! We can share all of our struggles and such. We might be crazy, but this is what GOD has called us to do. We aren't doing it for us; we are doing it for Vitalik who needs the life he deserves. He hasn't had half the life I have and I plan on spending the rest of my (our) life making it up to him. A mom and dad, is just that. Someone that will NEVER not be there for you, unlike his past. Anyways, another good note! My sweet neighbor gave us an Ipod touch 4th generation today! I am syncing things to it right now and I can't wait to send it to him next week. Our other neighbors, John and Josee Waller, received their court date in Ukraine today and will be traveling to the Ukraine next week! So excited for them!! I can't wait to be where they are in this process. They will be taking V's ipod to Ukraine and mailing it to an "outside" chaperone. Who will then hand deliver it to V. The thing is in Ukraine, if I was to mail it to him 1) Customs would take it or 2) his school would take it. They examine every package that comes in. It would most likely never make it to him. We will be sneaking this in the "back door" as you could say. haha. Thank goodness for hook ups. This will make our communication with him 100,000 times better. He will have this to FaceTime and to text us every day, anytime of the day he wants! No more waiting a couple of days to pass by! yay! I just hope it makes it! :/ I've done enough ranting on. I just wanted to update everyone. Thanks for all your support. We appreciate it a million x's. Love to you all!! Kendall and Jerry

Donation website!

Please visit this website for dontations! http://www.youcaring.com/adoption-fundraiser/Bringing-Vitalik-home-to-America-/39023

24 hours

Well yesterday Vitalik left to go back to Ukraine. He has been gone from our family for 24 hours. We are all super sad around here. Yesterday was one of the worst days I have ever experienced. We were emotionally and physically drained when we went to bed last night. We went to bed one child missing and woke up this morning with one child missing. As I was fixing waffles this morning for Hannah and Tripp I felt myself tear up because I wasn't fixing 7 waffles (V always ate 4!!) :( The process can't go by fast enough so we can go to Ukraine for our adoption appointment. I'm praying God helps us raise the money quickly and that we will have patience through this process. When you a love a child and then they have to go away it's the hardest thing ever! BUT I do realize that this short time will be nothing compared to when he can move here forever. V reminded us of that when he said, " ME school mini-time and American BIG time" haha. We have already talked to him a couple times since he left. He called 2 times yesterday. His phone no longer will work overseas but we got a FaceTime from him this morning when we first got up! One of his good friends got an Ipod touch for Christmas and he borrowed it just to FaceTime us. (They were in the airport with wi-fi) I can really tell he misses us. When he gets to check his VK account (European facebook) he will REALLY realize we miss him. We have sent him several messages in the past 24 hours. We have to be able to communicate with him every second we can, so I hope he can get his phone working with a Ukraine SIM card. If not we will ship an IPOD touch to him so he can FaceTime us. He is only allowed to get on the computer a certain amount of time at school. Sometimes only 2-3 times a week; that is not OK with this mama. He doesn’t have wi-fi at his school but he told me there is a restaurant next to his school that has wi-fi that they link up too. Funny how technology is worldwide! His orphanage is in the middle of a big city so he has access to wi-fi other places that are close by. I hope he is ok, because it will take a while for us to be. I keep reminding myself that this is in God's hands and it WILL happen. I'm going to paste the link to make donations here. We have only raised $200 dollars. We have a long way to go! We will be selling shirts, having cookouts and a golf tournament soon! Thanks for the prayers and support!!! We appreciate it! Love, Kendall and Jerry http://www.youcaring.com/adoption-fundraiser/Bringing-Vitalik-home-to-America-/39023

2 days

Is it really time? NOOOOOO! I feel like a little kid and wanting to stomp my feet to demand my way. Only 2 more days with us. This past week V has gotten closer and closer to us. He has opened his heart up more and we have had many great memories. I feel like 4 weeks is not enough time!!! We spent the first 2 weeks getting him used to American culture and our family. Now that we are EXTREMELY attached and love him like he is our own child, how in the world are we going to send him back? I'm not sure, but we are trusting that the Lord will get us through Saturday because we HAVE to send him back by law :( We have to be at the airport at 5:45 am because it takes almost all day for him to travel back to his orphanage. He will have a 2 hour flight to New York, 7 1/2 hour flight to Amsterdam, 2 hour fight to Kiev, Ukraine and a 6 hour train ride from the capitol of Ukraine to his school. Wow. Long day. All of this of course with his other classmates and the chaperones from his school. I will be praying non-stop for his safe return. We have started the beginnings of the adoption process. We have got in contact with the facilitator (Ukraine adoption agency) and will be starting our home study soon. We received all the beginning paper work for Ukraine as of yesterday and when I was glancing through I realized we have come across our first bump. By Ukrainian law the age difference between the parent and adopted child can NOT be less than 15 years age difference. Well folks,........ V and I are 13. ugh. He is 14 and I'm 27. Luckily my husband is 35 and he qualifies. So Jerry will be the only adoptive parent. I will have to be a part of the process and still do a lot of paperwork because we are married. They told us as soon as the adoption is final in Ukraine we "re-adopt" him in the U.S for both of us to be his legal guardians. The facilitator assured us it was ok and it happens all the time. oh-well. I'm sure this is just one of many "paperwork/laws" that we will not be happy with. I still don't understand why it's so difficult to adopt a child that doesn't have parents and it is so easy for a parent to have a child that doesn't want one. It's just how the system works I suppose. These next two days we will be spending every waking moment with him. When he returns to his school, we will only have contact with him maybe 3-4 days a week. It depends on his school load and when he gets "permission" to go the computer lab. This week we met with some other host parents and the particular host dad has been to V's school in Ukraine before. He is a volunteer with Project One Forty Three. When I say school, I mean orphanage. Anyways, he told me it's a nicer place for him to be, considering that there are far worst places he could be over there. The place is clean, they get fed 5 times a day and their computer lab at his school is VERY nice. V's orphanage is dedicated to academics and it is one of the best. We set him up a Facebook and Skype account as some additional ways for our communication. The time difference is going to be killer because when he is allowed computer time it's between 2-5 am here. Oh well, I’ll be glad to wake up to talk to him! We will be starting a lot of fundraising projects soon. I'll be posting a site today where you can log on to donate money if you can. Anything will be appreciated! We are taking this huge leap of faith and trusting that God will lead us in the right direction. We have a long road ahead but HE will be with us every step of the way. We WILL save this orphan's life! Until next time, Kendall

Excited for what is to come!

We haven't really posted much about the hosting on this blog because we just started it. A week from today Vitalik will have to leave us and head back to the Ukriane. We really wish he could stay and I'm trying to block out everything for next weekend because I really wish it wouldn't happen. I wish he could just stay! Why do we have to send him back? haha. Unfortunately we had to sign our life away that we would send him back at the end of hosting. The first night that Vitalik was here was very awkward (not gunna lie). The language barrier is HUGE!!!! We had so much we wanted to share with him and so many things we wanted to ask him. He doesn’t know English AT ALL. Little did we know that it would be 100 times better in the week to come and the use of charades would be the way we communicate. We have a translation app on our phone to help if we needed it and we used it when we had to communicate long sentences or tell Vitalik important things. He fit right in with our family. He is caring, fun loving, active, computer loving, wii playing, soccer kicking, football throwing, and golf cart riding young man! Everything they prepared us for in the training before hosting, Vitalik was the complete opposite. They had warned us that the children would not want to bathe, flush the toilet, use toilet paper, not want to eat, not want to communicate or flick us the bird finger every once in a while. Vitalik did none of those things. In fact he was the complete opposite and had very nice manners. Saying "shank you" (thank you) for everything and always making sure his room was clean and the bed was made. What a gentleman. Hannah is at our house every other weekend and Tripp everyday but they all have gotten along great. Hannah enjoyed taking him for a ride in the golf cart and Tripp enjoyed fist bumping and crawling all over "V". Vitalik is definitely a great big brother for both of them. He would even get down on the floor and play with Tripp and his toys. He would pick him up when he was crying to console him or just tickle him to make him laugh. We had a birthday party to celebrate Vitalik when he was here. He said they don't make a big to-do about his birthday in his country, so we told him about American traditions and made sure he had a cool birthday party here. Some videos and pictures will follow when we make a video slideshow of our experience. "V" is the nickname we have given him. It was a little hard for us to say Vitalik when he first arrived let alone Tripp would never be able to say it. His name is pronounced (Vee-TALL-uk). We have enjoyed him teaching us words in Ukrainian as well as us teaching him words in English. He agrees that English is a LOT easier to learn versus Ukraine. We sound really funny when we try to pronounce things because the roll their "r's" and I can NOT seem to do this. Oh well. We have shown Vitalik what the true meaning of family is. He has really enjoyed just spending time alone with our family at home. He hasn't been too big of a fan of going out into public where too many "English" things are to intimidate him. Even though he has warmed up a little more this last week he is with us. He shared some of his past with us and that his mother and father are both alcoholics and his mother actual has died from the "vodka" as he explains it. He has been at his orphanage for the past 3 years. That's all we basically know. We do know that he has an aunt that check in on him from time to time at the orphanage, but that’s the only family that seems to care. What a great young man with such a sad story. :( This experience is so humbling for Jerry and I because we have such great families. It just goes to show us that we take so much for granted. The little stuff to us is the BIG stuff to him. We are excited to announce that we will be pursuing adoption of Vitalik and we will be posting on this blog everything that we experience during the adoption. This will be a long process but it will SO worth it in the end. We really aren't sure how we are going to get $20,000 dollars either. We will start praying about this and we would love for those who are reading to pray for us as well. We will soon have a paypal account set up for anyone who is willing to donate to us. Until next time, Kendall

This is the first and only picture we had of our new host child. It gave us a short bio of what he was like and that's it! We wanted to know so much more! His birthday was on 12/14 so he turned 14 the day before he arrived to us. He is such a cutie. :)

When we decided.

I have always had a special place in my heart for children whom didn't have families. Before I had a family of my own God placed the thought of adoption/fostering/hosting on my heart. I can still remember when I first had this feeling. I was sitting in church one Sunday morning when they launched the "heart cry" ministry. They showed a video of children within our own county who didn't have families or needed a temporary home. I remember exactly where I was sitting, exactly what was shown on the slideshow and the exact song that was played. From then on I knew that one day, when I was able; I would want to be a part of someone else's story. I have always been a fan of John Waller and his music. I grew up listening to the Christian singer from he was a part of According to John, to when he started singing by himself. We were living in Texas at the time his latest CD came out and I remember listening to a song that brought me back to the way I had felt about adopting children. The song is called "Someone Else's Story." Little did I know that within the next two years I would become his neighbor, and they would lead us to be a part of "Someone Else's Story." Well things always happen in God's timing and I couldn't be more pleased about this. We found out about "hosting" from the Waller family. They talked about adopting children from another country but wanted to go through with the "hosting" experience first. What in the world is "hosting?" Hosting is where children from another country get to come to America to stay for a length of time (winter 4 weeks and summer 9 weeks) to try to find their forever family. Most of these children come from orphanages or foster care. Most of them are older orphans and the advocacy is greater for them. The children, who are orphans in Ukraine, only go to school until they are 16/17 and then are put out on the streets to fend for themselves. Would we want to host/adopt an older orphan? We have a 21 month old and a 10 year old…….. The hosting program is through Project One Forty Three, Inc. They are currently hosting kids from Ukraine and Latvia. The Waller family hosted 2 children this past summer and is currently proceeding with adoption of 3!! We saw all of their posts on twitter and Facebook about finding people with open hearts to host for this winter. My husband Jerry and I had some discussions about it and I put the flyer on the fridge. We both knew we wanted to be a part of the program but wasn't sure about timing. It’s very rare that my husband and I agree (without discussion first) 100% on a major topic. We both were in on this from day 1. The hosting program was closing in one week by the time we found out about it. Would we have time? What about the money? My husband travels A LOT for his job? I work? These are all questions that came about quickly. I spoke with the hosting coordinator several times and e-mailed back and forth. We knew we wanted to host FOR SURE, but an older orphan??? We decided to just pray about it and see where God was going to lead us. We started looking through the pictures of the children whom needed host families for the winter and we automatically decided on a 5 year old. Our son Tripp, who is almost two, would love to have someone close to his age to play with! Right? WRONG. Little did we know that we would be hosting a 14 year old boy :) After looking through the pictures again, God led us to host Vitalik, a 14 year old boy from Lviv, Ukraine. Ok, so now we decided on our host child. How are we going to get $2,500 dollars? The costing of hosting is just basically the children's travel and such. Christmas is coming up and we already had a trip planned to New York. AHHH!!! We need money!!! The only way I knew we could get the money is to have a benefit photo shoot. I do photography on the side and I knew with the holidays quickly approaching us some people would want to have family photos done. We put the ad on Facebook and on our yahoo message board and we ended up raising $2,410 dollars! God is so good! After a lot of praying, taking pictures, and editing we did it! Yay! At this time we had 1 1/2 weeks until Vitalik arrived.

Testing our new site! :)

So as we are coming to the end of our hosting experience we will be posting a lot soon. Can't wait to share "our story." Kendall