Sacrifice

As the clock exacts its unstoppable toll, the notion of sacrifice is everywhere evident in this process.  What kind of sacrifice do I mean?   I am not referring only to money (cost of adopting and lost wages), time away from family, work impact, the difficulties integrating institutionalized orphans into family life, parenting children who don't speak english, all of which are significant.  What I am coming to realize in technicolor is that adopting orphans is risky business.  No doubt, Sacrifices both obvious and unknown are required.

Lately, I am often caught up by worries about my practice with rescheduling patient appointments and surgery, and missing out on Jake and Garrett back home.  Ok, feeling sorry for myself a bit. It has been refreshing for me to step back and look at the families with us here in Ukraine.  We have been priviledged to observe the very real sacrifices of these families who are weeks ahead of us in the adoption process.  For example, one of the families has five biological children and is now adding one more.  They described how the substantial financial barrier was overcome, and how their whole family has sacrificed to adopt one more child.  I could go on and on in discussing the other families sacrifices, but the bottom-line is that taking care of orphans in this way is a multidimensional sacrifice.  We have found new heroes here in these families.

The truth is that adopting any child whether domestic or foreign is a sacrifice.  Time, money, and tears are all spent in the process.   When viewed through the prism of this world it seems foolish, but in the clarity of eternal light such sacrifice is shown to be a fabulous investment.  God loves orphans.  I believe He rewards the sacrifices for them, but not necessarily in the way or in the timing we would expect.  When we see the faces of our kids the sacrifices are all worth it.

Driving through the gates of Yuglegorsk, you see a broken down black and white documentary of neglect and rejection, hopelessness and despair,  but when you see the faces of the children the vivid beauty of technicolor reveals real kids with heart and hope who love and sacrifice for each other.  For most of these children their peers are their family.  They depend on each other to make it.  I was amazed watching two boys of maybe 10-12 working together ringing out their laundry and hanging it out to dry.  All over the orphanage we see many examples of kids taking care of each other.  Like soldiers in combat, their joined misery creates deep bonds.  Seeing our girls interact with their friends has been very heart warming.

Today our time together with Inna and Rada was very enjoyable, playing games, slogging bad russian and broken english back and forth, laughing and just enjoying being together.  Inna and her friend Cristina played rummikub with Cari and Anya and then worked on some very nice art projects together, while Rada and I played "Blink."  She crushed me 7 games to 2, and then we played an English as a second language learning game.  Wow, she is doing very well.  I think these girls are going to learn English very quickly.

Today we went to the notary and signed documents for the girls passports and visas to get back to the USA along with the other families.  Eventhough, the time horizon is further out for us, it still felt good... moving forward.  We also learned that we will not have any tranlator help for several days, so will have a great opportunity for deeper immersion in russian.  I am getting very good at saying  "I only speak a little russian, I speak english, do you speak english?"  Most of the time all I get is "Niyet."  Please pray for us to get our court date next thursday.  As always, pray for our girls to bond with us and feel at home and safe in our presence.


By the way, we just learned that the upcoming Christmas hosting is now in danger of being cancelled since there are only two families signed on and there must be at least three to go forward.  If any of you are interested, it costs $2,800 per child and paperwork must be done this week.  Check  out Grizfamily@blogspot.com  for pictures of kids who are hoping to get hosted and/or adopted and details at www.ukrainianresourcecenter.com (Laura Passanita).

Ray