PICTURES!!!!

Since it is the weekend and cheaper for our internet use, I thought I would post some pictures! Enjoy!





This is the kids playing outside the orphanage, the first window on the 2nd floor is where their group sleeps and eats.










Maria is a beautiful girl, very sweet and both of them are very loving.













We visited on bath day last Friday, we thought it was on Saturay. They asked us to please stay and wait for them, they were back in like 5 minutes! They are holding their favorite new toys, Nathanael's game boy and our digital camera!












This picture really captures Anastacia's personality! She is such a fun free spirit!

Some More Disappointments

I guess God has decided we needed to practice more faith. This week we got some bad news, but not anything we cannot deal with. First of all we were officially informed that we would not be allowed to adopt this little boy in the baby house. It is discouraging but must be the will of God, because the excuse they gave us is not valid because we know of a couple that adopted two sisters in the same orphanage our girls are in, and a baby from the baby house that were not siblings just last month! Oh well, it is not meant to be. We felt that prior anyway.

Secondly, we found out that for whatever reason our court date is not set until August 8th. That is a week later than it should have been. It is discouraging news, and Larry is worried about missing so much work, but what can we do. We are grateful for his assistant back at work who is filling in for him, and everyone else at Princeton. They all have been so supportive. Shannon even rescheduled her own vacation for us, thank you so much!!! He will be working hard to catch up.

I will post some more pictures this weekend. It takes so long to download on this dial up internet! But they are so cute, I want everyone to see them!

Caleb has been having a hard time, and this adoptin process has brought up some feelings in him about adoption. He just wants us to be normal and for all of the children (him included) to have come out of my tummy like everyone else. We were talking about how sometimes Heavenly Father doesn't always works things the way you want, like him being my natural child and coming out of my tummy, but the end result is what counts. That is that we are all together as a family forever! We have to remember this as well. It doesn't matter how long it takes, or how much money it costs, he will make sure the end results happens, and that is we will be together. The girls will come home....eventually. Sometimes I wish he made it a little bit more easier though!

We will be home probably on August 11th. Then I will return the last week of August to come and bring home the girls. I really wanted to stay here, I love it here, but after prayerful consideration we decided that I was needed at home. Larry will be working a lot of late nights to catch up, the boys need to get in school, and they will miss the first week of school and need to catch up. I know the girls will be OK, I know the Lord will bless them and they will be surrounded by angels, but I still cried last night thinking about leaving them. That will be so hard for me. We will leave the girls in the Lord's hands.

We have had some great visits this week with the girls. Today we had our first family prayer. We talked about God and how we pray everyday as a family. We knelt and prayed and Anastacia started giggling a little in the prayer. Boy, did Maria scold her afterwards. I was impressed with her reverance and the importance it was for her. It was a really neat experience to kneel down and pray with these girls, and we had Masha translating for us.

Maria has been singing for us and she loves doing gymnastics for us. She is always going down in the splits! Nastya is just so cute with her dark hair and blue eyes. She is constantly giving us hugs and kisses, and today even Nathanael let her hug him! Small bits of progress are great!!!!!

They also wore their new clothes today and were so proud of them. But I realized that I had mistaken on their sizes. Maria is bigger than I thought!!! She is actually a size 8 and maybe could wear 9, and Anastacia is a size 7 going on 8. I was able to take back their clothes today which I am grateful for because they don't do returns here in Petropavlovsk. But I had been that store many times, and bought clothes for the girls and the boys. They thought I was a good customer so they exchanged for me.

We love being here in Petropavlovsk. The weather is really strange as it will be hot, then cold, then sunny and then rainy all within an hour! I am very excited because right now they are installing a little hot water heater for our shower!!!! I guess they got tired of us always complaining about taking cold showers. They told us the hot water would not be turned on again in our apartment until August 1st! They are good to appease us spoiled Americans.

I will post some more pictures this weekend. It takes so long and it is cheaper on the weekend. We have been getting some great pictures, I wish I could show them all to you!!!!!

Thanks to All Of You

First of all, I want to thank all of you for the support and prayers you have given to us and our family. We are just in awe how supportive and wonderful all of you are! Thank you for your comments, we love them, and thank you for everything!!!!! Sometimes you never know what you have until something like this, and this has made us feel so wonderful to have so many friends and family interested in our journey.

We have been getting to visit the girls, we went today and brought them some new clothes. They were so excited!!! We also brought some hair bows that Bryanna Slade and I bought before we came, and Bryanna, they loved them. Maria told me that she wants to grow her hair long like mine. Both of their hair is wavy and thick, it is beautiful. We bought them some jeans and jean jackets to match. They were very cute. The weather has changed drastically here, from very hot to very cold. So it hard to know what to buy. Masha (our translator, I just found out it is Masha, not Marsha, that is short for Maria!) told us it may be hot again next week. I also found some adorable jean skirts, it was so much fun to shop for girls!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Maria was looking through our pictures on our camera of us shopping the day before for them. She saw a picture of me holding up a very frilly yellow dress and got so excited, so started kissing and hugging me. I think she thought I had bought it for her, so I had Masha tell her that I will buy her a pretty dress, but I hadn't bought that one! It was so cute.

Today we had the girls draw pictures of our family. Maria was so excited because she drew all of us and then wrote all of our names. It was really cute. I have no idea what Nastya drew because our translator wasn't with us at the time. But the amazing thing is these kids don't care that we don't understand them, they keep talking like we know everything they are saying to us. It is so cute, especially Nastya. Maria is now excited to learn English, she wants to learn Gymnastics and is constantly doing the splits for us, and backbends. Both of them are very loving and give lots of hugs and kisses.

We brought snacks for them, and brought them in a little cooler to keep them cold. We brought them juice boxes and yogurt with candies on top. The girls didn't eat their yogurt so I kept asking Masha if they liked it or not. Finally Maria told us that it was too cold! They don't eat things cold here, and I had to laugh. I have two little boys who will not eat anything hot, and now I have two little girls who will not eat anything cold!

One thing that did touch my heart was when we were leaving Maria started tearing up a little. She said that she cried yesterday because we didn't come see her. She is so precious and I can tell she will be very sensitive. I really admire her faith and willingness to come with us and be part of our family. I am also amazed at how willing they are to accept us. I know that God has definately worked on their hearts to soften them towards us. I did ask Maria about her mother before, but she didn't want to talk about it. She said that when she did she cried. I could sense I would need to be very careful about this subject and let her tell me when she is ready.

We took the girls to their group and talked to her teacher for a little bit. The children are really cute there and it breaks my heart to know there are so many there. I don't know why they are not available for adoption, but there are so many. I want to bring all of them toys, and I am sure they feel bad when these girls come back with all their clothes and toys. I wish I could buy these things for all of them!!!

Many of you have been asking what you can buy for the girls, what sizes they wear, and what we need. They will only come with the clothes we buy here, so we will need everything. There has also been emails about many of you wanting to do "showers" or something. We appreciate that so much, but I think we only need one, so maybe you all in Gilbert can coordinate something together. It is hard to know their sizes, but judging from boy's sizes, which I hope are the same as girl's sizes, Maria is a little smaller than Caleb, she probably wears a size 7, but maybe could go up to an 8. Nastya, we will probably call her Anastacia when we get to America, was wearing pants that said size 6, so she is probably 6 going on 7. Maria's foot is 20 centimeters long (I don't think I will ever learn the metric system here), and Nastya had on shoes that were size 2, I am hoping that was an American size, but her foot is just a little smaller than Maria's. They are almost the same size!

Another sidenote, after the visits we came home, ate lunch, and then Masha took us to get the boy's hair cut. It only cost about $4, and they do such a great job. They take the time, shampoo it, blow dry it, and really take their time! It was a fun experience. While we were walking home we got caught in a huge downpour thunderstorm. We were soaked all the way though! As I said before, the weather here changes fast and you never know what to expect!

We Are Family!!!!

Today (I had a problem with downloading our pictures, so now it was actually yesterday, Monday) we got our first normal visit with the girls without any complications. I was looking forward to today all weekend. I really hoped it went well and that we would feel validated in our decision to adopt these little girls. Not only did we feel validated, but we can’t imagine our lives without them! Today was WONDERFUL!!!!!

They came in very excited and gave us each a hug and kiss. Maria went over to Marsha and held her hand and I was worried once again that she would not bond with us. But I showed her the new backpack and Barbie doll we bought and she was very excited with it, even more so than the first one we gave her. Maybe because she didn’t realize the first one was actually hers to keep. Anyway, she opened it up and brushed its hair and put on its shoes. It was cute to watch. Nastya started roughhousing with the boys right away and ever once in awhile stopped and made comments like I haven’t opened mine, or mine is still in the box. I think she is our tomboy and Maria is our little princess.

We brought some molding clay that my friend Bev had bought for us. It was such a great idea! It really helped us interact together. We all made different things and it was a lot of fun. The girls really started opening up to us. Well Maria started opening up; Nastya was open from the beginning! We were really having a lot of fun together. We gave them some Bath & Body works lotion and spray and that was a big hit as well. We really enjoyed our time together and we really bonded. I told them that their Babuskas (grandmothers) wanted lots of pictures so we started taking pictures. They loved the camera and kept grabbing it and taking pictures of their own. It was fun for them to see the immediate result! The cute thing was they didn’t know how to aim and most pictures were diagonal or with our heads cut off, or of our feet, and so on and so on.

By the end, both the girls were hugging and kissing us and couldn’t stop being by us. Maria realized that Marsha did not come with us to America and asked how she was going to communicate with us. Marsha told her she would have to learn English and I would need to learn Russian. They kept jabbering to me in Russian as if I understood, and even though I didn’t, I was just excited that they were talking and looking at me! It was great! I know they have definitely accepted us as their parents and are excited to go to America. I wish we could take them right now. I know they do too. Maria asked a couple of times when she got to come with us and not stay in the orphanage anymore. That was a good sign to me as well. She wants to be with us.

This has been such a great experience! I know it started off horrible, but today was so wonderful. I guess that is why we endure such pain and misery at times, because without it we couldn’t have days like this! We have to know the bitter in order to taste the sweet!

Today we will be shopping for clothes and shoes for the girls. I found out that when we get them they only come with the clothes on their backs and they would prefer us to buy them those clothes, so the orphanage can keep all the clothes and shoes they can. So we are going to need everything! Socks, underwear, shoes, pants, shirts, and because it is cold this week, sweaters, the list goes on and on!

For those of you who know my family and are following our blog, you may want to check out my sister Tammy's comment about her car accident in the comments under "Thoughts on Petropavlovsk". We are so grateful that she is OK, but we are sorry about her truck!

Also, for those of you following our blog and are wondering where we get our strength and faith from, you can read my sister Kimberly's comments regarding our beliefs and church. It is also under comments at "Thoughts on Petropalovsk". I am so grateful for my membership in this church, it is my strength, you can also check out www.lds.org for more information.

And finally I end with my children. As I was trying to take the perfect picture one of them would make a silly face, finally I said, OK, take a silly picture. This one is their favorite. So here are my children!!!!!

Thoughts On Petropavlovsk

Friday we reunited Maria and Nastya. We received permission to have Maria brought to Poludino. We thought it would be a big joyful reunion, which I am sure they were, but they didn't even hug! But it was fun to see them play together. We only had about 20 minutes with both of them because at noon the children eat lunch and take naps. We are not allowed to visit during that time. We are looking forward to Monday where we can really spend some quality time.

On the way home there was a sense of relief, that finally all the pieces are in order and it can start working normal, like it was suppose to from the beginning. Of course when things settle down you start pondering more and I have to admit the feeling of "what am I doing??? Am I sure these are the right girls??" came to my mind. The "what if" questions and a little discouragement. I recognize that as a sign of the adversary trying to get me to back out. How grateful I am for my scriptures and my faith to help carry me through these times. My family also emailed me some comforting thoughts that helped as well. This weekend we just enjoyed the sights of Petropavlovsk and I thought I would share that with you all.

THE TOWN

Petropavlovsk was founded about 250 years ago. It was named after the apostles Peter and Paul. When we got here it was hot, not so much temperature wise, but it is very humid, between 75-95%. There is no A/C anywhere, except in a store called the Iceberg, which we like going to! Most everyone lives in apartments. They all look the same, and do not look very inviting from the outside but inside they are nice. When I first drove up to ours I died! There was no way I was going to stay here but now I am so grateful we are here. There is a park behind us that other apartments share and the kids love going down there and playing. We have more room here than we would of at the hotel, and now that we have the Internet it is great. Sometimes we walk down to the hotel to eat because their menu is in English, but we have learned to cook some good dinners here. Larry even commented that he could actually live here, it reminds of a little of his mission to Japan. I thought I could too, I like it! There are houses here but we were told that they don't have bathrooms, so that is why most live in the apartments. The houses are very old looking and look like little shacks. Kinda like driving through the town of Guadalupe in the Phoenix area. This is a picture of a typical apartment right ourside our front window.

My favorite part is the shopping! The bottom floor of all these apartments are little stores. There is no Walmart type store here! Each store has its own speciality and you wouldn't know they were stores from the outside. From the picture, the two doors that have stairs leading to it are the stores in that building. That is why we didn't know where anything was when we first got here. You walk into one and it will be children's shoes, or one will be computer equipment, or soaps, shampoos. Most of these stores are just about the size of our bedroom. Some stores have just dairy products, it is fascinating. I love just going into them to see what they have. There are also a lot of people just selling things on the side of the road. Right now watermelon, raspberries, mushrooms, and potatoes are the popular ones.

They have almost everything you would buy in America. All the toys I brought are here. I wished I knew that and I could have saved on luggage and we could have fit on that little plane better! The prices are comparable as well. I bought a new barbie and barbie backpack because Maria left hers at the orphanage. The barbie was 1200 Tenga (which is roughly a little less than $12) and the backpack 2800 tenga ($28). I am glad it is so easy to convert to dollars. The rate is like $1 to 116 tenga, so it is usually a less.

THE PEOPLE

The people here are very nice. Everyone tries so hard to help and they don't get frustrated at you when you have no idea what you are doing. They are very patient. Like for instance at the product store, you check your bag in before you enter, and then you have to exit by the cashier register. There are three registers, but usually just one working. While Larry was in line, I stepped over the closed register just to go around and get my bag. You don't do that!!! Even if you are not buying anything you wait in line. But no one said anything to me, I just had the security guy follow me the next time I was there! Maria told me later.

They teach English in the University and those that speak are very anxious to speak to anyone that knows English. One day while we were out, we walked by one of Maria's friends. She knew English and ended up following us the entire day talking to us. I don't know if she had something better to do, but she was kind and nice. The same thing happened the first day we were here. Kostya was so excited to speak English with us he spent the whole day too and would not accept any money for it! He has already emailed us and I know he wants to keep up his friendship with the Americans.

THE FOOD

We are getting along much better in the food deparment. I learned how to make Pelimy (SP???), Caleb likes it, Nathanael doesn't. But we also make many salads and found a form of Ranch dressing. They don't have lettuce here but they cut up tomatoes, cheese, sausage, carrots and cucumbers and it taste quite good. Their salad dressing is usually mayonaise, so that is why I was excited to find the ranch!!

They eat a lot of meat here and everything is mostly hot meals. They even eat horse here and have horse farms like we have feedlots. That seems strange to me!!! We are eating much better and doing well. They have many pastas, and mashed potatoes is a favorite here.

There are some who would have a hard time here because there is no Diet Pepsi, actually there are no diet drinks at all that we can find. They have Pepsi, Coke, Sprite and all the Fanta products.

Things are different. We ate this wonderful melon that is kinda like mushmelon but much, much better. The milk is very different. Kostya said it is because it is natural. But the boys won't drink it! An American lady we met in the product store showed us some milk that taste more like America. The eggs are even different. We buy them on the street, however many we want. The shells are thinner and break easier, the yokes are not as yellow and they haven't been washed! We are so spoiled in America!!!! And the the cheese is different. Most of it is very mild here, they don't have cheddar, but we have found colby jack.

My favorite food we have found here is the Russian chocolate. It is soooooo good! For a few days my diet consisted of Pepsi and Russian chocolate!

ENTERTAINMENT

It seems that the people here are just the same everywhere else. They go to movies, they have a bowling alley, we have even been told they have a pizza restuarant that has toys, their version of Chuck E. Cheese. We will be checking it out this week.

There is park in the center of town that has tons of little carnival rides. We have been there a couple of times and the boys love it. It is 70 tenga (70 cents) to ride one ride. Much cheaper than in America. It also has a nightclub and several "hang outs" that most of the older kids go to. It is quite nice and beautiful. The one scary thing is that their safety measure aren't quite the same as in America. The first ride the boys rode was a flying wheel. I didn't realize they didn't have seatbelts until they were going. I was scared to death they were going to go flying out!!!

There is a strong emphasis on the cultural arts that I love here. Many love to sing and dance. They are always performing for one another. I like that and wished there was more of that in America. Marsha is a professional dancer and she performs at the nightclubs, at weddings, all sorts of different places. Our little Maria loves to sing and dance and when I showed her a picture of our piano she was very excited to know that she could learn to play it!

THE LIVING CONDITIONS

Our apartment is very nice. The picture is of Larry and Caleb in front of our entrance to our apartment. We are on the 4th floor. But there are differences from America. Right now we have no hot water. When it was hot that was not a problem because we wanted cold water to cool off. But this weekend it cooled off and I want some hot water!!! Also we wash our clothes in a small washer and then we hang them up to drive. We have our clothesline in our bedroom because we don't have a backyard!! The fridge is very small (smaller than the one at the green cabin). People don't buy their food all for one week, they go every day!

We do have a TV and DVD player so the boys are watching plenty of movies. Tom and Jerry is the favorite around here. We bought a couple of movies that are in English and Russian. The boys are memorized by the Russian cartoons and I think Nathanael will just start talking Russian one of these days because he watches it so intently as if he understands.

The beds are low to the ground and kinda hard. And the other thing that is interesting is the light switches are way up high on the wall.


SUNDAYS

Since our church (The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints) is not in Kazakhstan, Larry received permission to have our own Sacrament meeting here. It has been great. Today Nathanael will be our youth speaker and Larry will talk, next week it will be Caleb and me!! Last week we all bore our testimonies. We even had primary.

There are some beautiful churches here as well. We visited the Orthodox church and it was beautiful, very ornate. It was the first church here. There was a great feeling there, and they had two large paintings of Peter and Paul. They say they have concerts there sometimes which I would love to go to. Unfortunatley they wouldn't let us take pictures on the inside of the church. They also have a Catholic church here, and Muslin. I'm sure there are more, but that is all I have seen. Maria and Kostya says one of the things they love about this town is that everyone gets along together very peacably despite their religious and ethnic differences. I sense that as well. It is something the rest of the world could learn from.

I thought these things might be interested to all of you, and for those thinking of coming here as well. Although we got off to a rocky start and things didn't go as plan, God has watched over us and has led us to where we need to be. He has also taught us much about enjoying the moment, and enjoying being here while we are here. We feel very blessed to have met these two beautiful girls. We can't wait to go and spend lots of time with them this next week. Thank you for all your comments. We love them!!! It is fun to hear your thoughts as you read our blog.

Meet The Girls

MEET THE NEWEST MEMBERS OF THE KETTENRING FAMILY!

Anastasia - Age 7

Anastasia was born on March 24, 1999. She is a very playful girl and played so hard with the boys that they were all sweaty by the time we took the picture. As you can see she has beautiful thick dark wavy hair and blue crystal eyes. It was hard to get her to sit down and talk because she was so excited to play. She would only sit for about 30 seconds at a time! But her favorite color is yellow and her favorite thing to do is DRAW!!

She will be in the 1st grade when we get to America but will need some catching up to do. She wasn't enrolled in school before entering the orphanage so she has just barely learned the alphabet. She did it for us and was very proud of herself.

We will keep her name and add a middle name from our family. They pronouce it differently here is Kazakhstan than we do in America but I am sure she will get use to it!!!

Maria - Age 9

Maria was born on September 16, 1996. She has been in the orphanage since January and says she can't remember anything about her life before but she did say she got her freckles from her dad and her red hair from her uncle. She has thick wavy red hair and blue eyes. Her favorite color is yellow, her favorite television show is Tom & Jerry, and her favorite animal is a rabbit.

She loves to sing and dance and wants to learn gymnastics. She is a "B" average student according to her teacher. She is good at everything except Math we were told, but she told us she loved Math! She loves to write and tell stories. She says she makes up stories and poems all the time. She even rehearsed one to us while we were visiting. She is very imaginative! She also has creative and imaginative dreams. Her favorite thing to do is....DRAW!!!

She is very shy but once you get to know her we are told she is very social. She is small for her age (just a little taller than Nathanael!). She will be in the 4th grade in America but it may take awhile to get her caught up because she in the orphanage they had her in 2nd grade.

We will keep her name as well and add a middle name. Maria is the name of Larry's grandmother so that excited us! Nathanael still is stuck to the name "Chloe" and asked that we use that for her second name. We are thinking about it.

All Is Well

What a time we have had here in Kazakhstan. Despite the bad luck, and all the frustrating things that have happened to us we are really like this little town and its people. It is fascinating! I would have never picked to come somewhere like this for a vacation, but this has been a great place to visit. The people are so nice here, our translator, Maria, is wonderful!! And everyone is very helpful (as far as we know, they may be laughing at us behind our back). For instance we forgot our connection from our camera to our computer to download our pictures. We went to the computer store and they didn't have one, but the young boy said give him an hour and he'll be back with one! And on top of that it would be no charge. I think he has a crush on our translater, but we benefitted!

After posting our last post we found out that the reason we couldn't find Marena's sister was because she was living with her grandparents. They closed an orphanage down here called the Ark and all the children have been farmed out to other orphanages. It happened recently so it is hard for them to track where all the siblings have gone. Because her sister was living with her grandparents they had to get their OK for us to adopt her, but we wouldn't have to adopt the sister. We said yes, but we found out the next day that the grandparents would not give their permission.

We got permission to visit the Baby House on Tuesday and they did show us three little boys. One was 2 1/2 but was crying the whole time because they got him out of the little play pool for us to meet him. He didn't want to be there. He had a cute little pout. Another boy was 4, but he had developmental problems, and the third boy was 4 and very shy and quiet. I gave him one of Nathanael's toys to draw him out and it did just the trick. He was so cute. We hope to adopt him but there are some complications I will explain later.

While at the Baby House, Maria (our translater) received a call that there was another little girl at Poludino, age 4, named Sophia. They didn't show us to her the day before because she had two brothers, ages 10 & 16. The 16 year old really turned me off. They said because the older boy was 16 we didn't have to adopt him, so did we want to see the little girl? They also said they had a little 7 year old girl names Anastasia who had a 9 year old sister. They didn't show us her because the paperwork said they were not available because they hadn't been in the orphanage long enough and the director didn't want to get into trouble. They made some calls and received permission to adopt them out because the waiting time period was up this week. So off we went back to Poludino. Our driver' car broke down the night before so we Maria's father drove us. That was very kind of him. (Sad thing is, his car broke down after he dropped us off that night! We felt bad for him! We told Maria to watch out, it was us!)

We met the girls and decided to pursue Anastacia and her sister. I will post her picture in my next posting when we get our camera fixed. When you see her you will know why she is the one. I wasn't too thrilled about their ages, but she definately was the one. If one didn't know better they would say she was Nathanael's sister. She looks just like him. We all noticed the resemblance, even the orphanage worker who came in to watch them play made the comment. She asked Natacia if she thought Nathanael looked like her and she said no because he had freckles. When I asked Nathanael if he thought Natacia looked like him, he said pointing to his face, no, she doesn't have these!!! Is that amazing or what!!!! They can't communicate but they are on the same wave thoughts.

The next hurdle was to find her sister, Maria, and visit her. Because she is to turn 10 in September we had to get her permission to adopt her. We found out that she lived in an orphanage 4 hours away!!!! Of course, this can't be easy for us. It hasn't been so far so why should it start now. We had to pay $400 to drive 5 adults, and 2 children in a small Nissan car 4 hours in this heat. It was miserable, but worth the drive. The five adults consisted of Larry, me, Maria and two drivers because it was so far. They are not use to driving far distances here. One their cars can't make, and second the roads are really bad. Maria said that was the farthest she has ever driven.

At first Maria (the little girl, not our translater) did not want to come with us, but who would. This orphanage didn't have many people coming to it, so they didn't quite know what to do. It was only their second adoption. They brought her in and asked her right away, she had no time to get to know us or anything. So I asked if we could take some time. I brought some photos of home with our family and dog. I brought her a barbie backpack and a barbie doll, and pretty soon she started warming up and agreed to come with us. Talk about a leap of faith. I thought this whole trip was requiring a lot of faith from me, but this little girl has more faith than me. Here she is agreeing to come with us, people from a foreign land, she can't communicate with, take her away to who knows what!!! That is faith.

We are now waiting to see if they will grant special permission to have her moved to the orphanage in Poludino so we don't have to travel so far to see her. The director is coming to Petro on Friday so we hope they say yes.

Our boys are doing great. It was a long day traveling and they are very tired. I think Nathanael is getting homesick. He also is having a hard time because he wanted to adopt someone smaller than him. We would like to also adopt this little boy in the Baby house but because they are not siblings they say we cannot. We are still asking and they will let us know.

Today we could finally relax and see the town. Because we haven't had anyone show us anything we have just kept put. Maria showed us everything, the town square, main street...It is so much fun, everything is within walking distance. I wish we knew this when we first got here. There is a beautiful park with rides for the kids and things to do, it is great. We also found out we can swim and eat at the Skiff hotel for a small fee so we can go there whenever we want. And we finally got internet connection to our apartment and can communicate with all of you whenever we want!!! Things are brighter. Thank you so much for all your prayers. We know they helped in finding these girls, in feeling more comfortable, and dealing with this whole process.

This has been a great learning experience for us, one that we couldn't get any other way. This may sound crazy but I am really grateful for what we have experienced here because we have learned so much. I love this little town, it is beautiful. The building are old, it seems very dirty and slummy but there is a quaintness here that I like. Everything we need is right under our noses, within walking distance, and we didn't even know it! I wish I could speak Russian. God is truly watching over us. Even though these girls are older than what I originally intended, they are our's, they are the ones for our family. We know just hope this little boy can be ours too.

You won't belive this!

Well we have been here for 3 days now. We are getting use to it and we were extremely grateful for our friend on Saturday who showed us around for a few hours. But after he left we realized we were alone. It was kinda scary but we felt very at peace, we knew everything would be OK.

But on Sunday night we still had not heard from anyone, the only number we had was our driver's phone number, and he didn't speak English and was not at home, and we were worried. Finally about 10:00 pm our translator, Maria, called and told us to be ready at 8:30 am. So we were. We went to the Ministry of Education and everything went great there. We were so excited. The boys were perfect gentlemen! Then we headed out to visit the orphanage and everything seemed to go downhill.

First of all, we were not approved to adopt from the Baby House, I am not sure why. But we could visit the orphanage in Poludino (about 1 hour away), so we drove out there. The children there are ages 4-8 roughly. As we drove we started realizing, or at least were told, that there are not as many children available for adoption as we were lead to believe. In fact when we got there we were only shown 4 children (3 boys and 1 girl), two of the boys had older brothers (around 11 or 12), one boy was an only child and the girl had an older sister that was 12. All of these children were 6 years old (they had no others!) I asked if there were any younger children, or any more girls and we were told no. This was extremly discouraging to me. For all of you who know me all I wanted was a little girl. On top of that the older sister to this one girl cannot be found. They will be checking on it, but we cannot adopt a child unless we adopt all siblings. They think she is in an orphange that is about 6 hours away!

I know they could sense our disappointment. They are trying to get us approved to go to the Baby house but that hasn't come, hopefully tomorrow. But even at that there are only 2 boys available for adoption there, a 2 1/2 year old and a 4 year old. I keep thinking to myself, where are all the children? We could have adopted an older child in America!

I thought for sure that when I saw the children I would know which one was mine. Out of the four shown I did not get that feeling at all. We are not sure what to do. I am trying to keep the faith, I know God has a plan for us, but we are not sure and have not been directed to what it is as of yet.

They are going to try to get Internet connection to our apartment. We only pay $65/night there while the Skiff Hotel is $150/night. Although we would really, really, really like to stay at the Hotel the cost is keeping us at the apartment. It is very nice, and will be better if they can get the internet. But I would love to be at the Hotel with other Americans, a pool, and they provide breakfast and dinner, and they do your laundry. Going to the market was a joke. I have no idea what half the food is there and no idea what to buy to even cook for dinner. We have had watermelon and beef jerkey we brought from America. I don't know what we will do when we run out of that. We did make spaghetti and cheese sandwiches, and french toast. I'm sure we will survive.

Pray that something else develops for us or we will be coming home without any children. I just have the feeling to wait and let the Lord reveal to us what to do. Of course the longer it takes to find our children the longer we will be here. Our countdown doesn't start until we identify the children we want, then we wait the 14 days, then the week long adoption.

The Plane Has Landed

Well we are finally here in Kazakhstan. It is quite unbelievable and almost feels like a dream. It is very different here and we are going through culture shock. Especially with the food, I think me and Caleb are going to starve while Larry and Nathanael have seemed to like everything.

Our flight was actually enjoyable, as far as flights can be. The boys were great!!!! The worse part was from our home to the airport with Mom. They were so good on the airplane I was actually giddy! From Minneapolis to Amsterdam I didn't get much sleep and Caleb was too excited to sleep, but we laid Nathanael on the floor underneath our feet and he slept the whole way. Caleb finally fell asleep and got about 3 hours worth, Larry slept OK, but I got maybe 10 minutes. I was very worried for our 8 hour layover in Amsterdam and what we would do but we decided to take a tour into town and had a great time!!!

In Amsterdam we toured a wooden shoe factory, saw a couple of windmills, visited Museum Park, Dam Square, saw the Anne Frank home and the Rembrandt home. Saw many museums and took an hour long canal tour around the town. It was beautiful! We loved it and feel so lucky that we got to see this city. Our tour guide was great. The whole time there we were thinking of our brother in law Emile and his family. One thing I have to say about Amsterdam, there are very beautiful people there. We even got to see some flowers! Yellow Irises. Tulip season is over but we saw the fields!

The flight from Amsterdam to Almaty was great too. This time Caleb fell asleep very quickly and laid on the floor, and I got a whole middle section to myself so I got a few hours of sleep as well. Anxiety started to set in when we arrived in Almaty though. No one spoke English! We were met by FOC people (our adoption agency) and they informed us that there no were flights to Petropavlovsk so we had to take a flight to a town closer and then a car would meet us and drive us 4 hours to our intended destination. They were very nice, we got some breakfast (and I accidently ordered perrier water instead of regular bottled water which cost us $10 per bottle!!! and Caleb hated it!!!) and then we boarded our plane to this small town. It was interesting to check in our luggage, go through security and then be taken to a plane that was rusted and old and very small. All our luggage sat there by the plane and we had to load it ourself! Of course we had a ton of luggage and we felt like these rich horrible Americans that brought too much. And we probably did! We were the last on the plane and didn't know that it was like Southwest flights were our seats were not assigned. We all had to sit in different places, Nathanael started crying so a nice lady moved so he could be across the isle from me. It was extremely small and interesting flight. The airport we landed in was even more interesting. It was small and seemed abandon. The toilets were holes in the ground and the roads really bad. I don't know what we would have done if our ride was not there! Lucikly he was!!! But he came in a small nissan and not all of our stuff would fit. So we had to hire a taxi to take our stuff and we drove (all 4 of us) in the back seat of this small car, 4 hours to our town! But it was OK, we survived. Many times I thought how this was a piece of cake compared to the Mormon pioneers. Luckily I also brought Elder John Groberg's book "The Other Side of Heaven" to read, and that was a huge blessing. Reading of his journey made mine seem pale in comparison.

We were not able to meet with the orphanage people on Friday and were informed that we would not do anything until Monday. This was just as we feared and felt we would waste 2 days here, but what can you do. We also were taken to an apartment instead of the hotel we requested to stay in. They would not take us to the hotel and no one spoke English. We were left in this apartment and told to just stay put until Sunday night when our translator would come. Needless to say we were frightened, scared, mad, upset and several other feelings. I cried myself to sleep wondering what in the world I was doing here. I read some more of Elder Groberg's book and something hit me very profound. He said that when he wanted to go home, felt very alone, didn't understand the language and everything I felt he prayed. He realized that he could run away and go home, but then his selfishness would go with him, or he could stay and try to rid himself of his selfishness. It may not mean anything to you, but it meant a lot to me and really helped.

Today is a brighter day. A wonderful young man came to our apartment with our driver from yesterday and he speaks English. He is very nice and brought us to this internet cafe to communicate with your all! They are going to show us around, I think the driver felt very sorry for us.

Kazakhstan is very different, it is very much how I would imagine a Soviet Union country to be. Everything is old and worn out. The computers are extemely slow so we may not be posting very many pictures. But it is unique and we are determined to make this a great experience. Hopefully we will get booked into the Skiff Hotel Sunday night and we hope and pray that we can still visit the Baby house were we wanted to adopt from. (The reason we came early was to get there before the director went on vacation, but we were informed that she postponed her vacation and would be there Monday, we pray she is!)

Another Setback

This process has been one setback after another, and just as we thought we were on our way we received one more bit of bad news. The children that we have been planning on adopting were adopted out already and are no longer available.

We feel like a dagger has been placed in our heart. We have been praying for these children for 9 months! We have their pictures in our home, we have clothes for them, we have named them, we have set up rooms for them, and we have bought toys for them. Now they are no more. It definately leads us to ask "Why?" I thought of the many other failed adoptions that have happened in our lives. We definately have had our share. The young girl in Texas, our little Gretchen who was killed before placed into our home, and countless others. One looking from the outside would probably tell us that someone is trying to tell us something - It is not going to happen, be happy with what you have! And we are happy with our two little boys, they are such a blessing in our lives.

But, sometimes there is a voice deep inside of you that you know is not your own, telling you to press forward. Don't listen to the world, trust in me. We have been blessed with a great comforting feeling from God that this is part of the plan and that we must proceed forward with faith, "not knowing beforehand the things which we should do." We are still leaving tomorrow. We have no idea what will happen, we have no idea who we will be bringing home. But we are learning many lessons, I suppose we are being refined, although I don't feel it. But I am sure it is one of those things that we will look back on in many years in the future and say we learned a lot!

We Have A Date!

We finally have a firm date of when we will be traveling, well we actually have two firm dates but they are close enough together that either one will do. We will be leaving either this Tuesday (7/11) or Wednesday (7/12), probably Wednesday, putting us in Kazakhstan on Friday (7/14). We are a little nervous because we don't want to get there and everything be closed for the weekend, but we have been assured that it is all taken care of. We are so excited!!!!! Our next post will be from Kaz!