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.