Jeff The journey begins

Picture this: 5:30 AM on a Saturday at the San Francisco airport. A little girl is walking at the tail end of a group of children as they walk through security. Just as she gets ready to turn the corner to where she can no longer see back into the ticketing area, she stops and looks back. With her backpack looking almost as big as she is and her hood up over her head, she looks very small and very fragile. I catch her eye, wave one more goodbye to her. She waves back, smiles. Then she’s gone. Our long wait has begun.

Sue and I had started this part of our journey eight years prior. We had always wanted more children, and the biological door was closed - definitively. We started looking into the different ways of adopting child. At the time, Connor was 7, so we were looking for a younger child. We had really decided that the right child was probably not an infant, but somewhere between two and five to maintain a distance between Connor and the next child. Listen – there are a million decisions along this path, and of course they all go out the window when you meet the child that is destined for your family. But we started with certain ideas, and the age difference was one of them.

Over a period of time, we decided that foster-adoption was a good program for us. We went through the entire program at the County, with the notion from the start of the program – stated and discussed with the staff – that we would really be looking to foster a child that we could adopt. At the end of the 14-week course, we were told, “oh, no – we can’t guarantee that the child that we place in your home will be available for adoption. You need to foster whoever we place with you and then we will try to find a child that is adoptable”. Well. End of story for Sue. Again – one of our choices – how do you care for a child in this scenario and then give them back? Of course, it’s a different mindset and God Bless the people who do this – this was not what we had in our hearts – we really wanted a child who would become a permanent part of our family.

Enter David Avilla and his culture camp. David brings children to the US from foreign countries – Russia, when we first met him. The first time we partnered, David had about 26 children in the group that arrived from Vladivostok. Six years ago, we hosted two boys from Russia through David’s program. Two boys who spoke no English arrived in our home late one evening, and of course we spoke no Russian. It was really amazing learning what we called “command and control” Russian – sit down, come here, go to bed, stop feeding Sabaka (the dog), and they learned bits and pieces of English. Boy, did they ever think it was cool to have a large slobbery yellow Lab scarfing food out of their hands. After having a very serious eye to eye discussion in two very broken and tortured languages and a significant amount of (non-ASL) sign language, we received a response of “dah, dah, dah” to our request that they no longer feed the dog. Then I turned around to go do something else. As I glance over my shoulder, of course one of the boys was feeding Sabaka.

Some “battles” were never won, but it was an absolutely amazing experience to see these boys working to communicate with us to keep up with the very busy schedule of the culture camp. Honestly, with love and patience, it is stunning just how easy it is to communicate even more advanced concepts with willing children. I must admit, Sue is the better Charades player – she figured out what they were trying to say sooner than I did on many (most) occasions. But it was fun – pointing at what they were doing while asking “shto etta” always started a conversation, and usually some education from the children to the adults. They were very patient with those slow adults, and were more than willing to help correct our meager skills of pronunciation of those Russian words.

One of the boys was with us for several days before joining another family who had planned to host him but were not available the first several days – and they did ultimately adopt him. We saw him again several months after he had finally arrive in the US permanently, at a baseball game, and he had a great time talking to us in English – after less than six months! The other boy that we hosted was a delightful young man, but we decided that this was just the wrong thing at the wrong time for our family. He was ultimately adopted by another family who adopted two boys at the same time! He called us on the phone, also after he had been here for about six months, and I had quite the conversation with him. When he had stayed with us, his dismissive response to things he didn't want to deal with was "dah, dah, dah!". In English, it became, "I know".

Working with these children for the three weeks that they were here was extremely touching, and it was pretty heartwarming, yet extremely strenuous for us. We went into the process pretty much sure that we would be adding another child to our family out of this group of children, but that just didn't work out for us this time.

Fast forward to March, 2009. David has kept us on his mailing list ever since our first experience with his program. We had just returned from a missions trip to Cambodia with Connor’s marching band. Talk about heartbreaking – to see the living conditions in that country and what the children had to do to eat. It definitely opened our eyes to the needs of children in this world. So when David sent the email with the next group of children, I suggested to Sue that we should offer to host – just in case David didn’t have enough families. Notice I said host - we still were not thinking adoption – we were thinking that we needed to make sure that the children coming from Ukraine had every opportunity to meet families. God had other plans. If he brings you to it, right?

Here’s what happened next:

March would have been a good time for us, having just returned from Cambodia, being in the middle of the school year, this that and the other – we were pretty excited that we would be able to help with this group. So of course there was a problem with the travel arrangements for March and the group was postponed until late June, early July. Turns out this window would work horribly for us – imagine! But come on, we can fit it in somehow, right? Well sure, we need to take care of widows and orphans, so of course we will figure out how to make it work. OK – let’s proceed with hosting one of these children.

We received the pictures of the kids coming to the camp. One little girl, Nastiya, just immediately stood out to both Sue and me. She had a glint in her eye – we both said immediately that hey – maybe we should think more about our stance on adoption vs. hosting. But the write-up said that little girl already had a host family. Oh, well – no heartbreak – just back to the idea of hosting. No, really.

Several days later, as David is having the conversation with Sue (I think his slant was adoption, not hosting – more on that later, maybe), she told him that we’d be happy to host. Didn’t we want to adopt?

“Well, none of them stood out to us except one who already has a host family. “

“Oh really? Who’s that? “

“Nastiya. “

“Wait a minute – she doesn’t have a host family – she’s available for hosting.” (uh oh – hear the heart speed up a bit?)

“Really? Well, we’d be happy to host her!”

The rest of that conversation is details. Did I mention that God has a way of speaking in the quiet parts? I will definitely leave it to Sue to document elsewhere how the image of Jonah sitting quietly in his armchair as presented by our pastor in his April series was quite motivating to her.

Do you see a pattern here? March would have worked, but somehow the group was postponed until July. During that postponement, our pastor later told us that he was compelled to change the sequence of his messages – Jonah was going to be later in the year, but he brought it forward to April. Nastiya had somehow looked “spoken for” but wasn’t. July is a bit difficult, but how can we say no after the message from Pastor Dan? What’s a little extra coordination compared to the need of these children? At this point, both Sue and I were pretty sure that God had a plan for our family, and it included a member of our family that just happened to have been born several thousand miles away. Sometimes God has to send the message a few times – maybe hit us over the head. But we’re listening now!

Luke 6:38 Give, and it will be given to you. A good measure, pressed down, shaken together and running over, will be poured into your lap. For with the measure you use, it will be measured to you.

Who ever said Jesus was talking about money? Buit that's the next part of the story...