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.