In Honor Of National Adoption Month

Well, I just did make it....Today is the last day of November and since November is National Adoption Month, this post will be dedicated to this special time of adoption awareness! I love this time of year (Even before I was an adoptive parent) because our local radio station airs Family Life Today and they normally have such great adoption info for this month. I know a lot of emails went around about the 20/20 episode on adoption this week too. We were so blessed to have an adoptive family at our church of children born here in America speak today on their new ministry for adoptive families/children.

We believe that God called us to Ukraine to adopt our children and since we came in contact with so many of the orphans there, we have a special place in our hearts for them. I put this video on the blog once when we first started the blog, but thought I would add it to this post today also...you may have to turn the music off at the bottom of the blog page to hear music on the video.....



This video gives some of the unfortunate sitations the orphans face and in my opinion probably doesnt even touch the surface of some of it. In Vitali's orphanage, I do believe that the caregivers did the best they could with what they have and we actually loved many of the caregivers and orphanage director, but when we got home, the doctors told us that for Vitali to be in the condition he was in when we arrived home, he would have had to have been in a baby bed about 20 hrs a day most of his life. That we are aware of yet, he actually has no gene to be special needs or disabled, but all of his special needs are results of his living environment at the orphanage and choices others made that affected him while he was developing in the womb. Inna's orphanage had approximately 300 kids and Inna is very open and tells us often about the things she experienced there and in her past.


(I certainly am no expert on adoption, but these are just some of my thoughts from what I have seen)
Like the video showed, most kids over 4 or 5 are rarely adopted. I have to believe this is in the U.S. and international. From what I understand, it seems the reason is that most families are concerned with psychological/behaviorial issues from a traumatic past in older children. I am sure there are those who do not have such issues, but the truth is from what we have found, Yes, when you go into these older kid orphanages, you should be prepared for such things as it is almost impossible for a child to miss the basic stages in life and parental bonding, go through the trauma that they have that landed them in the orphanage, and experience orphanage life without having some sort of psychological/behavior/emotional, etc...issues, even if just a mildly temporary thing for some. That is one reason the decision to adopt is taken seriously, but will be worth it. To be honest, we have been through several of the behaviors talked about on the 20/20 interview and it is not easy, but when God calls you, he also gives you the strength to get through it and blesses you and he certainly has for us. The decision to adopt is the decision to love unconditionally. Not to mention, sometimes we have to go through lifes hardest things to experience God's greatest miracles! There are many ways that we have been able to understand more of the heart of God through watching him work in HUGE ways in our older adoptive child. We have learned to live life one day at a time and focus on the day at hand and turn the past and the future over to our heavenly Father who wants the best (best= that which draws us closer to him) for each of our family members. There are so many awesome older children in these orphanages who need an earthly family who is willing to love them unconditionally and in return, if that is your family who is willing to take them in, I do believe God will bless you more than you can imagine!!!

Before I close~ In honor of adoption month, we would like to bring before you 3 specific children from Inna's orphanage that I ask you to be in prayer for.
The first 2 are Lena and Valya that I have brought up before (Inna's best friend and best friend's sister). We receive letters from them often and Inna writes back. Jason and I pray for them and have been checking into trying to get them to America on a hosting program, hopefully in the summer for a little while in our home or however the Lord leads. We are prayerfully going forward with this and not sure where it will go, but taking it step by step for now to try to make it possible. Would you please pray that God will give us clear direction with this along the way and please pray for these girls. We will update you as we get more info!

Also, the other girl we ask you to pray for is Olena. Some of you may have seen in the comments section a few post back from 21 yr old Cristina from Italy. She contacted us through the blog about Olena that happened to be in the same orphanage as Inna and Cristina's family desperately would like to adopt Olena. I have asked Cristina if I could share more about her story and ask my blogging friends to pray specifically for her situation. It turned out that yes, Inna knows Olena and even remembered Cristina visiting her orphanage after pictures were sent. One very upsetting fact that we learned while at Inna's orphanage was that many of the children there are not available for adoption because their parents took them to the orphanage and signed that they will be back in 3 yrs (because it looks better), but have no intentions of ever coming back. This was told to us by our facilitator/translator. Most of the children are only available for adoption if their parents loss rights for abuse/neglect or died. The other children will never have an opportunity to have a family and will "graduate" from the system into what you have seen in the video. I am so amazed with Cristina of how much love she seems to have for Olena. She travels from Italy to visit Olena in the orphanage and has even spent the night in the orphanage with Olena, which believe me is a HUGE thing. Olena is one of the children that have not been released for adoption by her dad, but yet from what I understand does not see Olena or would not be fit to take care of her. Would you please join us in specifically praying that God will cause the things that need to take place in order for Olena to be in the best care and that His will will be done for Olena. Please pray for Cristina and family that God will comfort them and bless them in the meantime. Let's let Christina know that we will be praying!! Cristina let us know if there are any changes!

Comments:
"Our Family"~ Thanks for the comment on our blog. By the way, we heard you on Faith Radio with Jill the other day while we were riding in the car...it was a great interview!