1000 Words

We’ve waited so long to post pictures of our girl, that we’re going to take advantage of it in this post, just because we can.

If you know us well, you probably know that the Christmas season is our absolute favorite time of year.  My wife starts decorating for Christmas sometime around Labor Day.  Christmas music begins by October 15^th.  Every week is filled with family traditions and activities.  So we knew leaving the country during this time would be particularly difficult.

We could have adopted anybody from anywhere at any time of the year.  In fact, we were going to adopt a baby domestically.  From the beginning of “our” plan to adopt, though, God clearly had some other purposes neatly built in.  Liza was placed in our lives as surely as a baby in your arms at the hospital.  We could just feel it, the hole being filled with just the right piece.   If you’ve been following our journey on Facebook you’ve may have an idea of how many people are praying for us, family, dear friends, acquaintances, people we barely know and many people we don’t know at all. Through our initial crisis, He’s united His body in prayer for a family adopting an orphan.  This in turn has drawn attention to the needs of all orphans – namely that of a family.  He’s changing the hearts of people with respect to how they think of orphans.  Perhaps, instead of “yes, but not me”, for some it has become “maybe me”? 

I wish I was spiritual enough to say that I wanted to adopt Liza just because I have a heart for orphans, but when I saw her last summer, I didn’t see an orphan.  I just saw my daughter. And I knew she was all alone halfway across the world. I wanted to go get her as quickly as possible and at whatever expense.  Any parent would do this for their child.  Reagan remembers watching an episode of Extreme Home Makeover some years ago in which they restored the home of a family who adopted several teenagers.  One of their young men talked about how grateful he was to his parents because everybody just wants babies.  She wished then that she was the kind of person who would do that.

Sweet 16 and never been claimed...til now

Just when it seems like things will go our way, though, God throws something in there to make us realize that it’s only going to happen by His will.  The most critical meeting of this entire journey is court.  The day before our hearing our facilitator told us of a family she’d worked with recently who were turned away by the judge.  They left here empty handed.  I just can’t imagine such a result.  We didn’t want Liza to worry at all about court, but she was nervous, like us.  She’s smart enough to know that there are still plenty of things that could go wrong.  

Liza's 16th B-Day Party

So when court was postponed from Friday, November 30^th to Tuesday, December 4^th, we started to feel like those 4 days were too much.  Like something must be wrong.  The SDA in Kiev had 10 business days before they would sign our papers.  They had our papers for 13 days, though.  The 13^th day was on Sunday, December 2^nd.  Of course, we had court scheduled for the 4^th and needed to have the signed papers in hand to attend our court date.  By 3PM on Monday the 3^rd, the papers were still not signed and it seemed like court would be delayed again.  Our facilitator told us:  “Americans know how to pray.  So please, guys, call your friends to pray for you.” So we put out the word on FB for friends to pray – and they prayed!  So many people prayed.

Her gift - a scarf from the market in town.

The phone rang. Good news!  Papers have been signed!  Bad news…  Blizzard in Kiev and flights to our region are either grounded or delayed.  Our facilitator in Kiev drove the 30 kilometers to the airport through the snow and ice for 2 hours. They found an ordinary person boarding the plane and explained what the documents were and what they were for.  That person was so moved by the desire for a 16 year old orphan to be adopted into a family, that they clutched the papers to their chest got on the plane and prayed the entire way!  When they got off the plane in region, they called our local facilitator who met them at the airport at 12:30 AM on the 4^th.  Court was on!

She LOVED it!

Our hearing was in the judge’s office with Liza represented by the orphanage social worker, two jurors, the judge and the prosecutor.  The session itself was filled with formalities; reading the same details of the case over and over again.  The judge asked us what the content of our case was: I answered formally, (paraphrased) to adopt Liza as our legal daughter, to change her name to the name she requested “Elizabeth Reagan Mountain” and to bring her home with us to the US.  The social worker told the court that she believed it was in Liza’s best interest for us to adopt her.  After a few questions from the judge and jury about how we would handle her education and social interactions, we were dismissed for a 30 minute reprieve while they deliberated.  FIVE minutes later we were called back in and sat down while the judge read the decision (in Russian of course).  One of our jurors, a stone-faced 50 year old woman in a miniskirt and thigh high boots, sat across the room smiling at us and Liza.  We knew it was good.  The judge declared our petition approved and that serious room burst into smiles all around.  

The next two hours were spent in celebration with our new daughter.  So much joy!  I toasted the table at lunch, "Today, a new daughter has been born into our family.  All children are born into families through difficult labor.  But afterward our great joy causes us to forget the pain.  None of our children earned a place in this family, but were placed here by God.  The same is true with this daughter."  Her social worker gave a toast  and we gathered for a quick photo in the cold before she had to return for the orphanage for 10 more days.  We were told ten days until the court decree becomes official.  It's turned out not to be exactly the case. 

As with everything in being here, there have been two sides to every coin.  Our joy in having a new daughter turned to sadness as she was taken away from us.  But when we went to visit her again today, things were somehow different.  We were visiting Elizabeth, not Елизавета.  We were visiting our daughter, not our soon-to-be-daughter.  And she was so happy and talkative.  We spent some time teaching each other more Russian and English - laughing at each other's attempts to pronounce difficult words or understand each language's word order.

Moments before rushing to the defense of her siblings (Read "Big Sister")

Liza may only be a child for two more years, but she needs a family for the rest of her life.  She is still so young.  I pray that some of your are reading this and being called to adopt a teenager.  Reagan calls her, "baby" and she loves it.  Even older children need to be somebody's baby.  We can't imagine life without her now.

New Sisters!

Welcoming Babushka and Dedushka to Crimea

Choosing her name - Elizabeth Reagan Mountain