Bittersweet...

So my title said the word bittersweet...what a great word to describe tonight.  Like I said earlier, we planned on going to the orphanage and having a party for the girls.  We were so excited for this.  We picked up the pizzas and headed to the girls group room.  The girls were excited and quickly got everything ready for the party.  So I have to decide whether to share the bitter with you first or the sweet, but seeing the word is "bittersweet" I will go in that order, I will start with the bitter...

A few minutes after we got the party started and the girls started making their plates, I walked out into the coat area off the girls group room because I heard someone come in and I was quickly greeted by a girl named, Alona.  I knew her and greeted her and asked if she would like to join us for the party, she said no and handed me a letter and a picture.  The picture was for Anslee that she drew for her, and she said the letter was for me.  She can speak english very well,  so I understood what she was saying.  I asked her again if she wanted to stay and she said no, and left.  I opened up the letter, which is written in english, and I started to read it, I get through the first 2 sentences and tears start to come.  Russie notices me and asks what is wrong, I tell him to read the letter and quickly he understand.  I will write for you some lines from her letter to Russie and I " Thank you for your kindness, we want to ask you to help me and my friend, Anya to find a family.  You don't understand how we miss the word "family" It is very wonderful the word "mom" we didn't say that  for 12 years. We have forgotten what a loving mom is.   We want a good family to take us and Love us.  When we saw you, we liked you.  We know it may be impossible to come to your family, but we hope you can give these photos to help us find a new family.  Our desire is that you will help our dreams to come true.  We Love you and will miss you, you are very good people"  With Love, Alona & Anya

Anya, me & Alona

These are the moments in life where the emotion is so strong and so real it is hard to continue on with what you are doing.  We went back to the party with a heaviness and burden.  Looking around the room there were many smiles and much celebrating, but in our hearts there was sorrow for Alona and her friend.  It was uncomfortable and hard for her to come to us with this, but she knew it was her best chance, and she new she had to take it.  They are both 15 and know their time is short.  Awhile later she did come back with her friend and Russie was able to go back out to the coat room and talk with her, he was going to use google translate, but she speaks english very well and understood his questions.  He told her that we would show their pictures to everyone we knew and post them on our blog and that we would do everything we could to find them a home in America.  We told them to pray to God everyday.  They understood what we are going to do for them and they were excited for that.  We gave them hugs, took a few pictures and they were on their way.  The people who have been here already and have had kids begging them to find them a home in America can relate to the emotions we are feeling, for those of you who have not been here, there are really no words that serve this story justice.  This is what being a christian is all about.  Where there is a need, we need to respond!!!  Russie and I will pray for these girls and do all we can to find them a good christian home.  We have seen the impossible happen time and time again through our process and we know it can happen again for these girls.  I ask for your prayers as well for these girls and if anyone you know may be interested in adoption, please show them these pictures.  I have never met Anya, until tonight.  I have met Alona a few times before.  We will check to see if there are siblings with either of them.  They did tell us that they have older siblings, but no younger ones, so in that case they would both just be single adoptions.  I am having trouble uploading pictures of these girls right now, I managed to upload that small one, but it is blurry.  I will upload some to my facebook page (They will be in my album entitled "My trip to Ukraine") for now and will try to upload them again on here tomorrow.

The "sweet" side of tonight was pretty sweet.  The most important thing for us, was that our girls looked so happy.  We enjoyed the party and the time with all the girls.  We laughed a lot and I got to know a few of the girls so much better and I am thankful for that.  The girls told us a bunch of funny stories that had happened at the orphanage and even though we don't understand everything they say, we understood them enough to have a great time with them.  For those of you at home that know me well, no that I sometimes have a hard time sitting down and it seems the same is true of my Anslee.  We had heard from other people that have adopted that Anslee always would get everything ready for the other girls parties, and I really wanted her to sit back and enjoy her party, but she couldn't.  She poured the drinks, told them where to sit, served the pizza.  I said to Russie, she is so much like me in this way.  We had been told by some of the other families, that it was okay to leave a departing gift for the group, so Anslee had asked us the last trip if we could get the group a sweeper as our gift to them.  They do not have one now, so cleaning the floor and carpet is hard.  We told them we would and today we went and bought them one.  We gave them their gift after we ate and they were very happy and appreciate.  They wanted to get it out and try it out so we did.  Not your normal response to a bunch of teenage girls getting a sweeper, but they sure were happy and so were we.  This is the girls last night in the orphanage and we will leave here at 8:30 tomorrow morning to go pick them up and bring them back here to the apartment for the day with us, and then leave on the train tomorrow night.  We are excited and so are they !!  I will try to upload the pics tomorrow.