What is wrong with the world?

I'm supposed to be posting an update on a sweet little girl who will be joining us for Christmas in a few days, but instead I'm sitting here with tears in my eyes for eighteen innocent little children and eight heroic adults who will not be spending Christmas with their families. What is wrong with the world?

Many will blame God, but this is not how God intended for us to live. In Jeremiah 29:11 God says to us "for I know the plans I have for you...plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future."

We were not made for despair. We were not made to live with the stresses we inflict upon ourselves and one another. We were not made to turn a blind eye to one another's pain. We were not made to destroy one another.

He gave us free will so that we could fully experience love, but with free will comes the freedom to make poor choices. He wants us to choose Him! In II Peter 3:9 we are told "the Lord is not slack concerning [His] promise...but is longsuffering toward us, not willing that any should perish..." The God I know is greiving with us. And that is why I am thankful to know Him and to be able to cling to Him for hope and to pray at times like these.

Please pray everyone. Pray for comfort for the families of the victims today. Pray for those who witnessed the terror at Sandy Hook and survived. Pray for the young people in our world who are increasingly filled with dispair and trauma and can't seem to find constructive ways of dealing with it. Pray for those in our communities struggling with mental illness. Pray that God will give each of us the ability to see into the hearts of those closest to us and recognize when they might be struggling or in pain or need our comfort.

I hope that we will ask God to help us keep our priorities in order and to focus on what is truly important this holiday season. While I have lots left to do to prepare for Nastya's visit, my primary focus for this afternoon is going to be to snuggle with my kids and make sure that they know that I love them.

Bunking up!


It's hard to believe that the time has already come, but we spent a big part of this past weekend transitioning Samantha out of her room and into her "new" shared space with Trevor.

Here is what their rooms looked like before:


Trevor's Room

Samantha's Room






Everyone pitched in to help switch things up...



Trevor packing up some dinos

Greg flipping Trev's bed 

Samantha settling into her new digs

I was so impressed with our kids! Trevor had a little trouble on Saturday when we flipped his bed over and brought Sam's bedding in (there were some shouts of "my room" ringing through the halls) but, in all fairness, it was late in the afternoon and he had not had a nap.

On Sunday we moved the rest of Sam's stuff in and he was fine. Samantha has been nothing but agreeable about everything which is not like her (calm before the storm?) She willingly helped me pack up a bunch of her little knick-knack items and she even went through her treasure box and picked out some special things that she said she wanted to gift to Nastya.

Here's the "after":

Samantha and Trevor's new set up

Nastya's Room!

 

  

We will be displaying her mail on this  clothesline...

Mr. Panda will be coming to the airport with us!







There's a pretty good chance that Nastya will end up in the same room with our two kiddos during her visit (she is used to having a few roomies back home) so we are prepared for that to happen. There's even a possibility that she will end up on a mattress on the floor of our room...no worries.

 

We just wanted her to have a space of her own to be able to go decompress if she needs it. She is going to have a lot to adjust to when she first arrives (someone described it to being transplanted onto Mars) so we hope that having Samantha's room as her own will be a blessing to her.

 

We still need to make some welcome signs for Nastya to help her feel like Samantha's room is hers, but I've still got 7 days to make that happen, right? Eeeek!! Thanks for your continued prayers that everything else will come together...we are so excited!

Simple Gifts

Several of you have asked about sending gifts for Nastya while she is here (thank you!). While I know she would love to receive them, she only has one 50 pound suitcase to take back with her and that will primarily contain clothes and other necessary items that we can squeeze in there. That being said, I have an idea for those of you who would like to bless her...a simple and inexpensive gift that you can provide (even for those who are not in California) that I hope will put a big smile on Nastya's face while she is here.

I was struck with this idea while reading one of the books recommended by New Horizons for us to read in preparation for her visit. The book, "Infinitely More", is written by a Russian Orphan named Alex Krutov who was living in the orphanage system in the 90s. He shares the story of visiting the United States on a student visa and living with a family for an extended period of time. He describes how he would run to the mailbox of his host family every day to get the mail and was so excited about even the most inconsequential piece of junk mail. He couldn't figure out why none of the family members were excited to go to the mailbox. He had never (or at least rarely) received mail of his own before.

I was thinking...wouldn't it be great if Anastasya had this same experience? It would be an amazing and inexpensive Christmas gift for her to receive some mail while she is here.

So I'd like to ask you to to send her a note...maybe decorated festively (including a picture of you and your family if possible). You could include a package of stickers or a CD with some favorite music she might like if you want to get fancy with it...be creative...just think small.  I'll read it for her using Google Translate. If you don't already have our mailing address, you can e-mail me at chefanies@yahoo.com and I'll be happy to share it with you.

Nastya arrives in 11 days and we'll be checking the mail for the first time on the 19th (so if you'd like to mail something, shoot for that date or later).  I'm really excited about this and will be making an effort to document our trips to the mailbox here. Thanks in advance for helping us give her yet another experience to make her feel special and welcome!

The "A" word

This weekend we attended a five hour training session to help prepare us for our quickly approaching month as host parents to Nastya. We received a lot of great information, asked a lot of questions and enjoyed hearing stories from a few families who had previously hosted. It's hard to believe that the rubber hits the road in just two weeks!

One of the most important things we discussed was use of the "A" word...Adoption. Although many of the kids who are hosted this winter will go on to be adopted here in the United states, I want to emphasize that New Horizons is not an adoption agency. It is an orphan hosting program and any mention of the "A" word can jeopardize the program. Additionally, use of the "A" word can cause extreme confusion and heartbreak for Nastya if she hears it and misunderstands the context.

I bet your thinking that there isn't much chance that this topic would come up in your day to day conversation, but there have been several cases in past hosting seasons where this has happened:

* In the process of discussing a pet’s “adoption”…a hosted child heard the word, didn’t realize it was in relation to a pet, and instead thought it was him! It wasn't.
* When attending a church service, the pastor was so excited to welcome the hosted children present, he asked for church members to pray that each child would get adopted.
* When a mom was driving down the road, with music playing, she thought her hosted child couldn’t understand, so she called someone and discussed adoption of the child. The child heard and soon spread the “news” to others at group events that they were all being adopted!
* In discussing the joy of personally being an “adopted” child, a parent was trying to share a personal experience, but the hosted child misunderstood and thought it was about him/her.

It will be easy for all of us to assume that because Nastya does not speak much English, that we can speak freely and she will not understand what is being said. However, she may actually understand more than we realize and be able to pick up on various parts of our conversations...enough to be confused by words she recognizes even if they are out of context. Please partner with us in not discussing the "A" word or anything relating to it in her presence.

While I'm on the subject, some of you might be wondering if we have thought about the possibility of adopting Nastya. The short answer is that not all kids who come here for hosting are available for adoption. We have reason to believe that Nastya falls into this category and so we have not gone into this hosting program with any expectation of adoption. Instead we share her understanding that she is coming to America for a four week vacation (and we plan to make it her best vacation ever!) She knows that at the end of the four weeks she will go back home and it is our hope that we will bond with her in a way that will facilitate us all staying in touch.

We appreciate the tremendous support we have received from all of you: incredible words of encouragement, beyond generous financial help, clothing and material donations, and even offers of various personal services. Your outpouring of love and your ongoing prayers have been overwhelming! Thanks for adding one more thing, avoidance of this potentially damaging word, to the list of ways you can support us.

20 days...



 And the countdown is on! We just received Nastya's connecting flight info today so pending any unforeseen circumstances, it looks like she is officially coming...YAHOO!

 

 

 

Can you tell we've been eagerly anticipating her arrival? Samantha and Trevor decorated our countdown calendar and have been vying for the rights each evening to check off that day's box. Twenty more days and she will be here!

 

In preparation for her arrival we will be attending our "host family training" session this Saturday, December 1st, here in Sierra Madre California from 10am to around 3pm. If any of my local friends are considering hosting this coming Summer or are just interested in knowing more about New Horizon's programs, you are welcome to join us. Please let me know if you are interested and I can get you all the details.

 

For the rest of you, you can be assured that there will be some new blog posts spilling over from all the information that we are going to be receiving. Stay tuned and please send up a prayer for our meeting this weekend...that all of the families in attendance will take home what they need to know for their particular host children and that we will all be able to connect and build one another up as we prepare to go on this crazy, fun, emotional and blessed journey together as host parents. Thanks everyone!

I'm not worried!

OK, I'll admit it, I'm a worrier. I come by it honestly. I was born into a long line of worriers. My Mom will admit she's in the mix, and her mother before her was the queen supreme of worrying. Case in point, my grandmother used to have her bags packed days in advance for a trip (Afraid she'd forget something? Miss her flight? I'm not sure). We've always laughed about it, but it really was just an outward manifestation of the worry that gripped her.

As a Christian, I'm aware of all the biblical instruction on worry (and why not to do it). For instance, Matthew 6:27-30 assures me that worrying accomplishes nothing and that God, who cares for the smallest wildflower, cares for me. Jesus has a similar message in Luke 12:22-26, and goes on to ask how worrying about something will add a single hour to my life? And yet I struggle.

No matter how hard I try, there are some stressful situations in life where I go directly to my default setting and worry. This has been known to happen when one of my kids is sick (what is a simple cold quickly becomes pneumonia in my mind), or when Greg is working late one night and forgets to call to give me a head's up (surely he's been in a terrible car accident). More often I'm tripped up by legitimate things like worrying that we won't have money to cover our bills, that I'm not parenting my kids well, or that I've said something to offend someone. Other times it's relatively small things like wondering how I'm going to get everything on my to-do list done before picking the kids up from school that causes me more worry than necessary.

You would think that having a young child coming to stay with us for four weeks...a child who is not my own, an orphan from another country, who doesn't speak my language, who has possibly experienced some traumatic events in her short life, and who has very likely never known a proper loving family relationship...would be one of those things that I am completely enveloped in worry about. I, for one, would have expected the insomnia to have set in by now, the obsessive list-making to have begun, the fretting and hand wringing over all the things I don't know about her, and the concern over the lack of details I have at my disposal in preparation for her visit to be all consuming.

But I'm not worried. Not one bit. We started this journey with a prayer and God has very clearly answered it. Since then, He has continued to answer our prayers and to meet our every need to make Nastya's visit possible. I can even look back to points beyond this past Summer and my first awareness of New Horizons and see that God had already set our feet on this path.

Philippians 4:6-7 says "do not be anxious about anything, but in everything, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God. And the peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus."

Thank you Lord for granting me/us peace in this decision and for helping the planning for Nastya's visit to come together so seamlessly. It is unburdened, and with joyful anticipation that we look forward to her arrival in 22 days!

Early Spring Cleaning?

So as I mentioned in my last post, we have a few material things that we are required to get for Nastya while she is here. At this point we are prepared to buy these things for her if necessary, but I thought I'd reach out first and ask if maybe some of you have some things that you were looking to get rid of anyway and would like to donate? Take a look, maybe we can help you with some early Spring cleaning:

1. She comes with the clothes on her back. We plan to buy her a few things (underwear and shoes for sure), but if any of you have girls clothes sized 7, 8, 9 or 10 that you are done with, we'd love to take them off your hands. Jackets and snow gear would be much appreciated too. The reason for the wide sizing window is that these kids are typically a bit smaller than the average American child of the same age. I won't know until she gets here what size best fits her, but it would be nice to have some things for her to try when she arrives.

2. We need to send her back with a suitcase for all her new things. There is a standard size: 26 to 28"  soft sided suitcase. It must fit into these measurements and be on wheels (rolling). Any chance anyone out there has one that they want to get rid of? If not, can you let me know if you see a good deal on one somewhere (it can even be used from Goodwill or whatever...just needs to get Nastya and her stuff home)?

3. She has expressed an interest in rollerblading while she is here. I'm wondering if any of my local friends have an extra helmet/pads, rollerblades or a scooter that they might be willing to let us borrow while she is visiting? We would obviously return them upon her departure.

4. Some of you have expressed an interest in getting her gifts. If you wanted to send her a small denomination gift card (Target, Kohl's, Marshalls) that she could use to buy some clothing items, school supplies, toiletry items and other necessities, that would be the best type of gift for her to receive. Everything she takes back with her has to fit in that 28" suitcase so we have to be very strategic about what she gets while here. Just getting to go shopping for clothing herself will be a fantastic gift for her!

Of course the main thing she needs from us is love and the knowledge that she is wanted. I have some ideas of ways that we can all welcome her that I will be sharing as we get closer to her arrival day so for those of you still looking for a way to help...keep your eyes open for an upcoming post!