Our Quest to Adopt from Russia

My husband Josh and I went to Russia together in 1997 (before we were married).  While we were there we spent a couple days in Moscow before heading out to the town of Mystora.  In the town we worked closely with the orphanage. I helped run a daily camp for the kids while Josh helped build them a brand new infirmary.  We were each given a picture of an orphan who we were to meet when we got there.  My orphan was nowhere to be found.  But Josh's picture had scribbled on the back "Dima," and we found Dima.  He was going on 16, which in Russian translates roughly as, "Getting ready to be booted out of the orphanage and onto the street."  Hopefully we had a good influence on him those two weeks.  He was a wonderful kid, very chivalrous, and taught me some more Russian.  I had been to Russia in 1996, though I am still not sure where the camp I helped run was located- it was in the middle of the forest about a four hour drive from Moscow.  In 1996 I learned a lot of Russian, fell in love with the language, the culture, the people.  I yearned for more.  I missed the 12 year-old boy I had befriended in '96 named Zhenya.  The facilitator of the group we traveled with in 1997 made arrangements for me to be driven out to the orphanage where Zhenya was so I could see him again.  His orphanage is really, really in the middle of nowhere.  The kids there were all assumed to have a disability of some kind, though I couldn't tell you what Zhenya's might have been- other than him being insanely short for his age.  The Soviet Union had hidden these orphanages as though they were ashamed of the disabled children.  I was driven by a man in a small rusty car through forested dirt roads for hours to get to the orphanage.  We actually left the road and drove through trees on a couple of occasions when he deemed it necessary.  We were going very fast- 130 kilometers per hour at some points- through the woods up and down roller coaster-like hills.  I was terrified.  But I was hyper with joy at the thought of seeing "My Zhenya" again.  (There are many Zhenyas in Russian orphanages, and my teenage friends the year before had many Zhenyas of their own.)  We were reunited during the late afternoon.  I had my picture taken with him.  I recognized other kids from the camp the year before.  Another Zhenya.. "Zhenya Yegorochkin," he had told me over and over again until I pronounced it correctly.  A Ceryozha.  All were happy to see the American there.  I only could stay for about an hour.  Zhenya showed me his bed.  He kept two or three different Russian/English dictionaries in a small drawer there.  They were all gifts to him.  He had little of anything else, including clothing options and shoes.  Most orphanages in Russia have their own vegetable gardens to supplement the government's meager (and rare) checks.  This one was no different.  Understaffed, self sufficient.  The kids there did seem happy, but then I never saw them when an American wasn't around.  I cried saying goodbye to Zhenya.  He had just poured over his dictionary and finally looked up at me and said, "You, adopt, me?"  I can't, I'm a child myself!!   "Oh, Zhenya, I can't.  I'm so sorry.  I love you.  I will miss you."  I still pray for him to this day that he didn't become a statistic as is so common for the sixteen year-old orphans in Russia.  Well over 3/4 of them turn to prostitution and drugs.  Suicide is not uncommon for them.  There is no hope, no family, no skill sets, no job.  No roof, no clothes, no food.  Nothing.  Not to mention that they are a four hour (plus) drive from Moscow with no car, no bike, no horse, no goat.  Finding food and work in the city is even a problem but in the country where they hide these orphanages....  hopeless.  So I got back to Mystora and cried on Josh's shoulder.  We were dating then- had just graduated high school a month prior and been dating since Christmas.  He comforted me, and somewhere in the recesses of his brain he tucked away a little nugget; someday we will adopt together.   We spent more time with Dima, letting him lead us around town, he showed us where to get ice cream cones.  He was excited to tell us about the first bananas he had ever seen earlier that year.  He brought us to a little shop where I bought a couple children's books in Russian that he helped me read.  He taught us Russian words.  Motorcycle still chimes in my head; mat-a-syekel.  Water; Vada.  Vodka; Vadka.  Did you know that vodka is cheaper than bottled carbonated water in Russia?  I like telling this to people because I hardly believed it when someone told it to me but found myself at a little kiosk comparing the two in Moscow and found the information to be quite legitimate.  Walking back to our "hotel" every night in Mystora we would pass the main street with houses lining it and there would always be at least one or two houses that the occupants were out front, hammered, yelling slurred Russian at us.  The funny thing is, if we were to say hello and introduce ourselves, they would have insisted that we come in and have a bite to eat at their expense... their finest feast.  And their best vodka.  That's how the Russians are, and that's why I love them.  Dima grew to be our closest friend while we were there.  We both cried saying goodbye to him.  We got on a bus at the orphanage and waved as we drove away.  The bus stopped at our hotel (a fifteen minute walk away) so some of us could retrieve our baggage and a group of kids had run the whole way there, following our bus.  I had to get off and give one more hug to Dima.  I didn't want to let him go, and neither did Josh.   When we were living in Denver two years later we actually tried to start an adoption process to get Zhenya before he aged out of the system.  Some wise counsel (the director of the two trips, actually) advised us against adopting without some serious education on the matter.  We were also advised of the sheer amount of time and money it took to accomplish an adoption.  We were disheveled.  At least I was.  Josh was probably something more like disappointed.  We had Lex in 2001 and named him Alexander Dmitri.  Dima's full name was Dmitri.  His legacy will live in our son.  Dmitri means "lover of nature," which is true both of Dima and Lex.  A beautiful sentiment that we will pass on to Lex as he gains in wisdom and inquires more about his namesake. It has been 12 years since Josh and I were together in Mystora.  We have been married 11 years.  We have wanted to adopt from Russia this whole time.  We have even had Russian adoption in our long-term goals for our entire marriage, always planning to put money into an account and save for it once the bills were under control.  We got those bills paid off about this time last year and realized that even with our extra money every month we wouldn't have international adoption-sized funds for at least a decade, if not longer.   Last summer God started talking to Josh and I about adopting.  We came together and were surprised to learn that we both had been given the same message separately, and were relieved to know that the other didn't find us crazy for thinking again about adoption.   But resources!  God we can't do it!!!  So last fall we finally threw our arms up and decided to pursue a local adoption through a foster agency.  Basically this means that we would get a child who needed foster care, and then cross our fingers (so to speak) that their parental rights would be terminated and that we would consequently have the chance to adopt them.  This is a painful and time-consuming process.  Even with a terminated-rights child the state of Colorado will not let perspective parents adopt until the child has lived with them for at least six months to verify a good working match.  During that time old Aunt Sue might turn up and get first dibs on giving that child a home.  Blood always comes first with the law.  Not that this is bad- it's certainly usually best for the child- just that I have always been hypersensitive to begin with.  Watching a child that I had grown to love get torn from my arms could plausibly change me into a new person.  A distraught, doubting, depressed person.  And my children need me to be strong.  Josh was horrified at the thought and having anxiety about it.  He knows me well enough to realize that if he has to protect me from the news previews between commercials, sad movies and heart racing sitcoms on weeknights, that I would hardly be able to withstand the emotional turmoil brought on by a foster adoption gone bad.  And he couldn't protect me from that.  He wanted to, but wouldn't be able to if we committed ourselves to this journey.  But we signed up, took 25 hours of classes, filled out forms, got fingerprinted, allowed background checks, and started to prepare our home for the home study specifications.  This took us about a year- in fact it was the first week of September 2009 that we got a call to schedule our home study.  Apparently our referrals all came back glowing, our background checks cleared, and our fingerprints were not linked to any heinous crimes.  But two weeks before this call to schedule our home study we had a different call. We were sitting in church, listening to our pastor's sermon on August 23rd.  The sermon was about having faith.  At one time he said, "Please, just jump."  He said how faith is so important to us and our belief system.  He said how without faith we wouldn't be able to accept God's provision for our eternal afterlife in Heaven.  But he also said that we have a hard time acting on faith.  That the root of the word faith in the Bible defines it as a verb in the present tense.  That faith doesn't just mean to believe in something without seeing it, it means to actively pursue something without necessarily having the immediate ability to do so.  Allowing God to have some wiggle room to prove Himself.  At least now that I am looking back at the sermon, that's what I heard.  And I remember Mike saying, "jump."  I thought, huh, that is really cool.  We needed to hear that since one week ago Josh had his hours cut back to 25 per week and we really need money to survive.  We need to put this in God's hands!  I can do it!  I will jump!   But a couple weeks before I had started praying for God to make me into a more submissive wife.  I wanted Josh to be the spiritual leader in our relationship.  I always seemed to be in close communication with God, and felt that I was somehow more sensitive to His voice than Josh was sometimes.  I had been specifically praying for God to bring His plans to me through Josh, so that I could trust and follow Josh as he had trusted and followed God when receiving the direction himself.  And that Sunday after church I was surprised at how quickly my prayer was answered.  After every sermon we compare our thoughts and talk about it.  This Sunday I was excited, as I thought I had a real revelation about how we needed to move forward in faith about Josh's job situation.  I turned to Josh and asked what he thought about the service.  He was quiet for a moment and then verified that he had a revelation too.  I asked what it was.  He told me, "I think we need to adopt.  From Russia."  My body went cold with a big traveling shiver that ended in a pit-of-the-stomach feeling.  Not the kind you get from bad news; the kind where you just feel queasy because of the magnitude of something.  It only took a second for me to realize that God was comforting me in the moment telling me it was okay to get excited about it again, the time had come, He was in control this time.  Josh and I talked the whole way home about the many ways we had been preparing ourselves this whole time for foster-adoption with no clue what God was really leading us toward.  Yes, we wanted to adopt.  But God didn't want us to settle for less than our hearts' deepest desire.  And that was to adopt a Russian child.  God had educated us through our foster-adoption classes and given us contacts that would prove to be invaluable later.  Our instruction was clear; Adopt from Russia.  Now.  Start the process.  The money will come.  (Sound like a famous movie line?  Our neighbors may initially think we're crazy too.)