Revelation 3:8 (New International Version)
I know your deeds. See, I have placed before you an open door that no one can shut. I know that you have little strength, yet you have kept my word and have not denied my name.

The child is the beauty of God present in the world – that greatest gift to a family.” (Blessed Teresa of Calcutta)

Thursday, February 18, 2010

Some of the wonderful people we met along our walk to the orphanage.

Here is a picture of a man who sat almost every morning outside the apartment. Every morning we would smile and I think he enjoyed the company of sitting on the bench.
This is a picture of one of the staff nurses at the orphanage. She actually spoke some English. I think she had a "crush" on Steven. She would always find him and then giggle. I thought it was so cute. We need to send her this picture because she had told us she wanted a copy. The other picture is of a sweet sweet older lady who we adored. We met her during our walk to the orphanage. She sold pears that fell off her tree. We would give her 25 cents and she would want to give us 6-7 pears. We would only take 2-4 since many were rotten. She would be very offended if you did not take any. She was so sweet after a few times she would "save" some of the better looking pears for us. She looked forward to us passing by and saying hello. The problem was she would talk to us in Russian and we could not understand a word. One day we put the translator on the phone to tell her that we did not understand Russian and tell her why we walked past her house everyday. She said she knew we were headed to the orphanage. On the last day there we bought her a small gift basket and showed her the children. It was very hard for her to understand why we chose these special needs children as oppose to typical children. She felt as if it would be a "burden" but I think she could see by our smiles how happy and blessed we felt. She asked us to write to her but our translator had to remind her that we could not write in Russian. God Bless her. I hope she kept warm this cold winter.





Our walk to the orphanage-

These are pictures of the apartments, inside they actually looked nice but there was not much the people can do about the outside since it was government owned. The small little "snack shops" were very convenient. They would be seen frequently. You could buy beer for 25-50cents at the most. It was more expensive to buy Pepsi or Coke. The house pictured below was very cute but no running water.




Tuesday, February 16, 2010

Some more pictures to capture the moments





Some pictures of the children during our first visits.

















We visited our children the very next day. We would actually walk to the first orphanage to see Oksana and Nicholas which took about 40 minutes then we would visit Noah. His was a little further so we had to take a taxi. We visited them every day. Claudia and Elijah ( 12 and 11) truly enjoyed visiting. I think it gave them a true understanding of our children's way of life. It also hopefully inspired them to be open later in their grown life to adopt or do mission work.

Ok Now I really have to Update this Blog!

Can I do this in one night? No! I really will have to make this my goal this week. Mmmmmm...I am now wishing I wrote something every night.
There are so many new pictures of the kids that have to be added but before I do that I would like to add a few more pictures of Ukraine. So tonight I will start this project (once all the kids are in bed). I also need to add a new family picture on the top with all our kids. So please check back tomorrow and we will see just how far I have gotten on this blog.