Zhenya’s birthday was today and we did take a cake and some Orange Fanta to his internat to celebrate with his class. Zhenya was all smiles and very excited about the cake! We lit candles and sang Happy Birthday to him. There are 4 boys in all in his class including Zhenya. They are all sweet boys that we really like.
We stayed for a couple hours at the internat spending time with Zhenya and some of the other kids. I must say that we are not having the same experience with the older children that I have read in some blogs. Maybe it is different in different internats, but we have found the teenagers in this internat to be rude for the most part. They said very bad words in English and rattle off stuff in Russian and laugh. They are very clearly “mocking” us after they ask us our name or whatever. We would just walk away and they would follow. At one point they were throwing things at us!! I was surprised at the level of rudeness after reading other blogs about the older children being so sweet. Maybe those bloggers just left our the negative stuff. I am certainly not a negative person…but I can’t wait to get my boy away from those kids. They of course are a product of their environment with little to no adult supervision they have few boundaries and little respect for adults. Now, I must clarify that there were some teenagers that were precious. They were polite and said nice things to use and clearly wanted our attention. I feel bad that the other naughty teenagers shred such a negative light that I can completely understand why people are nervous about adopting older children. Anyway, Jeff and I talked about it and decided that we clearly need to pray for these teenagers. They need Jesus and they need some love. Sadly, many will not receive appropriate attention from an adult. After enduring their mouths for as long as we could and seeing that Zhenya was safely playing with his same aged classmates, we left the internat. Praise God, we are getting Zhenya out of there soon. He is such a sweet boy. He had a necklace on yesterday and I asked to see it….it was a wooden cross. He pulled it out of his shirt and smiled really big at me. He knows we are Christians, because we have prayed with him several times.
Today was the end of our 10 day waiting period, but we did not get the court decree until late this afternoon. Therefore, we aren’t getting the children just yet. Trust me, I am soo eager to get them now that they are ours to get. Our facilitator says we need to wait until Wednesday morning, because tomorrow we will be running all over getting their birth certificates and other papers signed. So it looks like we will get them Wednesday morning and then head to the Nickolaev for passports. I have protested about getting them sooner, but the facilitator said that all the running around for paperwork would be a challenge for the child. Maybe he’s right…but we waited and waited and I want my kids!! I definitely want my boy out of that internat!! Trying to be patient, however…………..this entire journey is a practice in patience. So as far as our timeline…it looks like we will leave for Nickolaev on Wednesday morning and apply for passports. Then we will wait for hopefully no more than 3 days for them. We hope to be in Kiev by Saturday which means we will get the medicals done on Monday and Tuesday and be able to come home on Wednesday or Thursday the 15th or 16th. Still another 10 days…………….I won’t tell you how I feel about that. It is certainly not within the timeline I was hoping for! Our plane tickets are for Saturday the 11th..so clearly we have to change them.
Another interesting development was a strained meeting with the children’s older brother. He wanted to meet us which was totally fine with us. It was an interesting meeting that I am not going to go into detail about since I plan for this blog to be read by Zhenya and Leeza one day. I will talk with them about it when they are old enough to understand. The brother did ask us if he could call Zhenya in America.to which we answered yes. He gave his number to our facilitator and I guess they will work it out. I told our facilitator that I would like to have the number in case Zhenya or Leeza wants to contact his brother one day to find out more about his family.
Tomorrow we get birth certificates with Jeff and I listed as their parents!! Woo Hoo!
2 comments:
Your facilitator is right that spending an ENTIRE DAY in the car is NOT FUN for little kids. And it puts more stress on all of you... not a fun first day together as a family!
You are on the finally stretch and it will be OK. I toke the girls with us and it was not easy. They don't understand what is going on and just want to go and have fun. The places you have to go to could take hours of standing in long lines. So they will more fun playing with there friends for the last day or two. Just hang on your life will be so different so soon. On the kids at the internot and there behavior. Some of it is out of jealousy and fear of the fact that no one may come for them one day. They no what that means for there lies. So yes all you can do is pray for them. It will be a hard day the day you take the kids. MAke sure you and Jeff go in prayed up.
Post a Comment