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