Gotcha Day-January 10, 2009!

Kari:
We are so thankful! Today Ashley and Joshua are officially our children! We will celebrate this day every year.

When we were thinking about adopting, our friends, Richard and Cindy, lent us a book to read. It is called, "The Strength of Mercy," by Jan Beazely. I loved the following excerpt, and I typed it out and carried it with me through Ukraine, reading it over and over.

As I have repeatedly witnessed the miracle of adoption, I've come to realize that an earthly judge does not preside alone over these human transactions. From the courts of heaven, another Judge is looking on as well. The earthly process is a reflection of a divine transaction. Adoption holds a special place in God's heart. After all, He sent His Son so that we could have the opportunity to be adopted into His family. His Son came in mercy and intervened on our behalf when we were helpless. He bought back our empty lives. He redeemed us from the ravages of sin. He gives us His name. Everything He is and has becomes ours. He even gives us a pledge of our inheritance to come. We come to God in less-than-perfect condition, scarred and hurt by the actions and choices of others. We carry an orphan's broken heart. God chooses us and offers us a place in His royal family. The Son goes before His own Father, our righteous Judge, and shows Him the nail prints in His hands and the scars still visible from the soldier's sword. When the Heavenly Judge asks if the courtrooms of heaven contain all the right documents with all the right seals to guarantee us a place in His family, our Advocate speaks confidently, "Everything is in order. Every letter of the law has been satisfied. I have paid it all. They were bought with a great price. My blood has covered it all. They stand blameless before you. Their sins, their past lives are gone. This is my child, a part of my family. They are safe in my arms. They are promised a place in my heavenly kingdom. They are joint heirs with me." Once we understand the great lengths to which God has gone in order to adopt us into His family, we can only exclaim with Paul, "How great is the love the Father has lavished on us, that we should be called children of God!" (1 John 3:1, NIV).

348 days since we began the adoption process, and now our hope for more children is complete. Thank you, Lord! With pleasure, I deleted the count up gadget at the bottom of our blog today!


Jim:

We have 4 kids!

As I was thinking yesterday about what I was going to do with Josh and the rest of the kids at SB, it hit me that I should have an ice cream party out there as well, so when Vitaly picked me up this morning I asked him to stop at the supermarket. I bought 30 individual ice cream cones and bars and 10 juice boxes just in case someone actually didn't like ice cream. When we got to SB I was surrounded by kids before I was 10 steps from the car. Vasya was the first to see me and he let out a yell and came running. Raisa was trying to take the bags from my hands but I wouldn't let her. Then I saw Vova's smiling face so I gave him an extra strong hug. He has been at his grandmother’s for the holidays. There was also Ilona, Sergey, Sasha#2, Natasha, talkative Tanya and Kostya. We walked as a huddled mass into the big room with everyone wondering what was in the bags. I set them on a window sill and then playfully kept pushing them away and hiding what was in the bags. I dumped out the ice cream and juice and told them they could each have one until everyone had a chance to get one. Of course they thought they could have one ice cream and one juice, but I was able to get them to understand. Vasya was the first to offer me a bite of his, then Josh, then Natasha and Tanya at the same time. Tanya got impatient and just pushed it into my face and cheek a couple of times. Vova begged me to call Kari so he could say "Privyet", but I explained to him that it was 3:30AM in Colorado, and she was sleeping. (Kari said next time that I can wake her up)

I pulled Josh aside and we sat down on the couch for a nice quiet father-son chat. I pulled out a note I wrote in Cyrillic saying, "Today you became our son!", and I underlined "Today". He smiled and nodded his head. By now, the kids noticed we were on the couch, so now it was a nice quiet father-son-and 6 kid chat. Then I told him that he's no longer "Sasha". Now his name is officially "Joshua". Then I told him that I plan on taking him out for good on Tuesday or Wednesday (but now I'm thinking Tuesday).

Since Oksana was not with me, I pulled out my palm pilot to help with some translations. Of course the kids were interested in that, so I started playing a game with them. I'd point to Sasha#2, and then type in "crazy", translate it and then show it to everyone. Everyone wanted me to pick something for everyone. Vasya was "perfect", Josh was "son", Natasha was "beautiful", Andre was "handsome", and Vova was "strong". I showed them how they could type in Cyrillic and translate to English so they all took turns doing that. Sasha#2 was able to type in "Jim" in Russian, and he asked me to type in "Kari". I did, but unfortunately it's not on the list. Pretty soon Josh ended up with the palm pilot and he was off. He figured out how to get to the videos so he was watching Indiana Jones after a while, with a couple other boys watching with him.

There was more than enough ice cream, and I noticed some of the older kids coming in and helping themselves, which is what I wanted. I got the camera out and took a video of Vova doing a little gangsta rap/dance. That opened the floodgates of Sasha2 and Vova wanting me to video them doing all sorts of stuff. I asked some of the girls if they would dance while I filmed them. They all said "NO", but pretty soon Natasha and Tanya were dancing a little and kept looking over, so I filmed them. They acted shocked and embarrassed, but kept on dancing. Natasha's sister and brother even got into the act a little. Sasha2 was doing flips onto the couch, so Natasha's brother did a handspring from the couch onto the floor. Then he came over to watch his video. I later saw him dancing with Natasha, and giving her a hug. It's nice that she has him here.

Ilona brought out her Babushka Judy's photo album and showed me all of the pictures. Then she brought out a stuffed kitty which I think came from Judy as well. Have I ever mentioned how important pen pals are to these kids?

At one point Vasya grabbed my attention and, smiling the whole time, pointed to himself and said, "Dom? Colorado?" I said, "No, I'm so sorry" and gave him a long hug. He was still smiling and gave me a kiss on the cheek afterward. He probably hugged me 20 times today and gave me 5 kisses, and stroked my hand several times. He was right next to Josh during the "quiet chat". I thought about postponing the talk, but just felt that it was OK to talk about in front of Vasya, and it went well.

Vova wanted to play connect four with me so I did. After a few games I had to let him win cuz he just couldn't grasp the concept of blocking. He also seemed to think the game was a race. :-)

Natasha asked "Karta?", and I actually know that means "cards", so we played Uno for a while. In one game I had about 15 cards and Natasha was down to one. On my turn I could have played the color, but instead I laid a wild card and changed it to the color of her card so she could win. She knew what I was doing and gave me a high five. I said I had to go, got through all the "Nooooooo's", and got my palm pilot back from Josh. Natasha was indicating that she wanted to keep the Uno cards. I got out my palm pilot and showed Natasha "be in safe keeping" (that was as close as I could find to "keep them safe"). I told her to keep them until I got back on Monday.

Then I told Josh I wanted him to come with me to the car so I could show him his bible in private. This just meant that I had to shoo away all of the kids when we got to the car. Pretty soon they understood and started walking away. But as soon as I had the bible out, and was giving it to Josh, they were all back. Oh well.

Vitaly and I went and picked up Oksana. We then picked up Ashley to go get her passport photo taken. She didn’t want to go because there was a “really good movie” on, but Oksana said she had to come, and Ashley didn’t put up too much of a fight. So she grabbed her coat and we went to a photo shop and snapped her picture. Then we went to a candy shop for treats for Ashley and her roommates. I was going to do ice cream, but cakes work, too. We bought 2 cakes and went back to the orphanage. On the way in I asked Ashley if she knew that today was the day it became official, and she said yes. She said it will take her a while before she can start calling us Mom and Dad. I told her that's OK. I was going to tell her she can call me Almighty King and Master, but I held my tongue (good thing I read Proverbs 10:19 this morning!) We went to her room and I gave her the bible we bought for her at the bible house. Next, I told her that we've enrolled her in the same school that the Roge's enrolled their new 12 year old daughter, Nadia. They'll be in the same class together, so they will both have someone they can speak Russian to. I couldn't really read how happy she was about this, but it has to be a huge relief. Then I showed her Anya's letter which tells about how happy she is to be adopted and some of the fears she had. I google-translated it back to Russian. Oksana said parts of it didn't make much sense (which I can understand since it's a translation of a translation), but she read it to Ashley as best she could. Ashley asked if Anya can speak Russian, which of course she can, so I think that helped some. Now Ashley said she wanted to go watch the rest of the movie, so we said goodbye. I guess they'll eat the cake later (and it looked so good, too). Aside from wanting to watch her movie, she seemed more at ease today (she actually ran down the hall when we arrived to give me a hug). But she’s still scared, so please keep praying for her to focus on the positives and to start to get excited about coming.

Now, a night off without work. I'm going to zone out and watch a movie. I'm still looking forward to the boring part of the trip.