Adoptions

Today I just wanted to talk about the adoption of our boys.
Micheal and I wanted to have babies together, but we also talked about adopting even before we were married.  After 3 years of trying to have a baby and not having a baby, we decided that we would adopt through the foster care system. We chose that route because we knew that private adoption was expensive and we did not have the money for that type of adoption.

If you have ever been involved in the adoption scene, it can be emotionally taxing. But, we filled out our paperwork, got physicals, finger prints and all the stuff needed to qualify to be in the FosAdopt program. The last step was to have the social worker come to our house and do a homestudy. But, for some reason (later I knew it was God's reason) we decided not to go through with it. We decided that if God wanted us to have babies, then we would get pregnant.

Fast forward to 2004. I got an e mail from a friend of mine named Kelly. The e mail stated that a group called Adoption Ark was sponsoring several Russian orphaned children to come to America and needed host families, with the premise of finding adoptive homes for these children.
 I knew that adopting from Russia was much to expensive for Michael and I, but I did know someone who might be interested since she has adopted from Russia a few years prior. I also chose to not tell Michael about the e-mail, as I didn't want to burden him with any of the emotional stuff.
Within the same week that I had gotten the e-mail, Michael came home from work and asked me if I knew about a group of Russian kids coming to Hanford. One of the guys he delivered concrete to had mentioned it to him and he was interested. I showed him the e-mail. I knew at that moment that God had a plan and it was much bigger than me or any plan I might come up with.  I told the Lord, if you want us to go to Russia, you are going to have to make the way and provide the finances.

So we met with one of the coordinators and she let us know that usually you must travel two times to Russia in order to adopt. But since we would be meeting the child here, we would only have to go once. We looked at the pictures of the children that were coming and I immediately fell in love with Ivan♥. He was the youngest of the group coming. He would be turning 5 yrs old just before they were to come. But we figured he would get a home easily, so we chose a sibling group of a boy and a girl.  A few days went by and we were told that those two had already had host families, so we chose Ivan♥.

 Ivan in front of the Russian Orphanage in Ivanovo Russia.

June of 2004 is when the kids were to come to America. But Ivan did not come. We were told he was sick and unable to make the trip. Our hearts were broken. But we loved this little boy. We already considered him ours. We were going to find a way to travel two times to Russia.

Fast forward again to Nov. 2004 and our coordinator called us to tell us that the director of the orphanage said that Ivan has severe mental problems and that he was not recommended for adoption, that we would have to chose someone else.  We will never know the real reason that we could not adopt him, but we trust the Lord that he has a plan for Ivan and pray he is in a wonderful family.
Michael and I cried. We were crushed by this news. This little guy is who we did fundraising for and unknown to him, he was in our hearts. This is the reasons we chose not to continue with the previous adoption adventure. Our emotions were raw.

After a few days of prayer and contemplation we knew that the Lord still wanted us to continue to adopt a child from Russia, so we called our adoption coordinator and asked her to find us other child/ren.

Early Jan 2005  we got news and pictures of two little boys in the Siberia area of Russia and if we wanted them, we needed to be ready to travel right away. We accepted.

End of January 2005 those boys were no longer available, and we took that news much easier as we were now guarding our hearts. That is when we got offered yet another set of boys.

                                                                                                                                                 

ABOVE: Valera 6 1/2  Now called David



RIGHT:  Dmitri 7 1/2 now called Timothy

So in February we traveled to Russia and met the boys and in April we traveled again to pick them up and bring them home.

The first year home with them was extremely hard.
Then in 2007 we found out why it was so hard. Both boys have Fetal Alcohol Syndrome.  If you would like to know more about what FAS is, then please visit my web site at www.FASD101.com.



Left to right is David Valera, mommy and Timothy Dmitri

After we made the adjustment and educated ourselves on FAS, we decided that we wanted more boys who were effected with FAS, and we wanted to adopt in the USA, So we had to re-do our FosAdopt paperwork and wait for the next child God would bring to us.

In February 2009 Orion came to live with us. He was 22 months and very delayed and very very small for his age. He wore a size 9 months.  

Here is mommy and Orion meeting for the first time.

Orion became Daniel in August 2010 with the finalization of his adoption.