Education

The adoption process drags merrily along. I went today for my second round of fingerprints. The first set were not acceptable because my fingertips are too dry. I wanted to yell, "Hey, come on guys! I'm a good person. To prove it, I have dry fingertips because I'm a teacher and wash my hands every chance I get throughout the day and handle paper all day long, everyday. Doesn't that count for anything on the self-sacrifice scale? Dry fingertips are an occupational hazard for a good teacher!" I don't think it would have done any good to share that insight with the federal authorites or the fingerprinting personnel. So, when the request came for another set of fingerprints I just slathered on vaseline for several days and went back. I still have dry fingerprints! I'll send this set in and keep using the vaseline. I may need another set. It's crazy.

In addition to getting an education about proper fingerprinting procedures, Mark and I have been learning so many new things. We are learning words like "apostil" (a special notary designation only given through the Secretary of State's office), initials "USCIS" (stands for United States Citizenship and Immigration Services), and "dossier" (the finalized packet of all of our paperwork that will be sent to Ukraine for translation and scrutiny).

We're trying to learn some Russian. Mark is very diligent about it. He takes an hour lesson every day from the CD's we purchased to learn conversational Russian. He can now say, "Would you like to have dinner with me tomorrow night?" He can also say, "What would you like to buy?" Or, "I would like to have lunch in the hotel with you today." He hasn't learned to ask where the restroom is located yet, but today's lesson was about how to order beer and vodka! Mark thinks he'd better skip this lesson and go straight to the one about the bathrooms. I haven't been as good about fitting in my Russian lesson everyday, but I try to put the CD's on in the car on my drive home from work. Road rage in Russian is quite interesting! It adds a whole new dimension to an otherwise humdrum day!

Another part of our education is the social science aspect of all of this. We have met or learned of many others who have done or attempted to do what we are doing right now. We just learned of a family here in Albuquerque who adopted three sisters from Ukraine 10 years ago. The mother then wrote a book about their experiences. A friend of ours who goes to church with that family loaned us the book, and I've started reading it. How helpful it is! It really helps to know we're not alone, and to be encouraged to keep pursevering for the sake of the kids. They are worth it.

The books paints a dim view of the lives of some Ukrainian children. The three sisters in the book were not much more than toddlers when they were removed from the dirty and unsafe home of their drunken and immoral mother and placed in an orphanage. We're not sure what our own two girls have experienced, but we want to be prepared to help them through making sense of whatever their lives have been in the past. We recently received an email from someone associated with Eastern European Missions who gave us some pretty sobering statistics. He said that when the children are released from the orphanages at age 16, 20% of them commit suicide within the first year. Of those that remain, 80% of the boys wind up in the Russian mafia and 50% of the girls become prostitutes. If only we could rescue more of them. But we long to save our Jana and Ella from a future like that. We,like God, long to give our girls "a future and a hope." We long to "prosper them and not to harm them." (Taken liberally from Jeremiah 11).

The biggest lesson we are learning right now in this educational experience is patience, patience, patience. We are truly "waiting on the Lord." It is so hard. We want the girls here with us today. I walk through the stores and long to buy things for them. We think about the holidays and wonder what their experiences have been in the past and want them here to share our traditions with them and to build memories with them. We are growing in love with them more and more through our prayers for them and our thoughts of them. In our minds they are firmly and forever, "our girls."

We are prepared for whatever comes with the girls becoming part of our lives. Another term we've learned about lately is "reactive attachment disorder" (negative learned behaviors many older orphans engage in as survival skills). We didn't observe any of these behaviors in our girls, although we certainly did in many of the other orphans at the camp we were at. But we are aware that things may surface once the girls become part of our home and family. We are realizing more and more the magnitude of adjustment that the girls will have to make in leaving everything they've ever known and coming to an entirely new life. They will be amazed and astounded by much of it, but we are aware that they may go through a grieving process at the same time. They will be thrown into an entirely new and different culture, and will have to learn an entirely new language. Who knows what other educational and emotional adjustments they will have to make? We just hope and pray that the love of God, the love of a good church family and many others, and love of a real family will help them overcome whatever hardships they may face. God will give us all we need.

So, our education continues to broaden our horizons and our hearts. Growth is sometimes a painful process, but we're sure God intends for these "growing pains" to bring about two beautiful new limbs in our family tree.

God is good. Much love to all,
Dawn