Two weeks are gone.

Thank you for remembering us in your prayers during the past week. It was a wonderful week! Again! On Wednesday, we picked up Edgars’ chaperone Ineta and off we went to the baseball game. Although Edgars was cheering for the Braves greatly, they lost (greatly:); but that didn’t spoil our evening. Even Ineta said that she liked the game very much (though she couldn’t understand it well). We came home after midnight tired but happy.

Thursday morning I took Edgars to meet my sisters in Christ. They were so glad to meet him and asked him about his country, school, …., and then Mrs. Leslie invited us for lunch in the Country Club and she wanted James and Edgars go for a swim at the swimming pool (same place). Of course Edgars didn’t want to eat because he said he would drown if he eats much. We stayed there till 4pm. It was not very sunny, just perfect. We came home, had dinner, Ineta and I went to Wal-Mart, and the boys enjoyed an evening with TJ.

Friday. The boys woke up at 10 o’clock and we started to get everything ready for a picnic. Our wonderful friends Mama Dot and Mr. Jim took us to the park near to the West Point Dam. It is a beautiful place! We stayed there from 11 till 3. Edgars fed the squirrels and tried to catch a few. He realized that they are much faster then he is. We came home about 4 and Edgars wished for a swim. James stayed home, and Ineta, Edgars, and I went with Edgars for an hour. TJ came from work and we went to Franklin, GA to visit our dear friends Gabi, Jimmy, and their family. We had Papa Johns’ pizza for dinner and all kinds of vegetables. For Edgars there was a special order: mushroom pizza!!! “Finally!” he said. We played soccer, volleyball, rode bikes, and Edgars just loved to jump over a sprinkler. Came home tired but happy.

Saturday. We had a wonderful lunch (we named it “a special lunch for Ineta”), and shortly after that, we drove to Jennifer and Joel’s house for a cook out. It was so nice to see the kids sitting together and sharing their stories with each other. Also, it was so nice for all of us, hosted families, to share our stories with each other. We had a great time. Came home tired but happy.

Sunday. Lord’s Day! Edgars met many new people. The worship and sermon were wonderful! After church, we had lunch and watched a movie. After the movie, the boys wrestled with “The Big Daddy,” I enjoyed watching them. That was all for Sunday.

Monday was slow and quiet. We stayed home, didn’t do much.

And today is Tuesday! Two weeks as Edgars is with us!

Please continue to pray for Edgars and all of us.

Blessings, Lana.

It's a week today!

Thank you for praying for us, we had a wonderful weekend! We swam a lot; rode a go-car; went to see Jen’s horses and she let us ride one of them. It truly was a great family time. I enjoyed watching Edgars playing with the kids and tried to learn a little more about him. He truly is a bright child with shining personality. Everybody who meets him - loves him. I am going to take him to my Thursday Morning Prayer Meeting this coming Thursday because all of the ladies cannot wait to meet him. They are going to bake something and welcome him. They all are different ages (30-80ss), what I absolutely love. I know that Edgars is going to melt their hearts with his charming smile and his gentle spirit.
Yesterday it was Edgars’ turn for the foot massage before bedtime. He asked if I could do his back also. He was the first child in my career that wouldn’t move! Usually kids cannot stay still for one minute, but Edgars was just lying calmly with a slight smile on his face.
We are going to the Braves baseball game tomorrow. Edgars loves baseball. Please be praying for our safe trip to Atlanta and back. I am one of those people that pray even for the parking spot:). I simply want God in everything I do and everywhere I go:).
Blessings for today,Lana.

Day 3.

Yesterday I took Edgars to the dentist. Dr. Ferguson not only is the best dentist in our town, but is a wonderful Christian also. He agreed to see Edgars for free and fix whatever needs to be fixed in his mouth. They let all of us go back and be with Edgars (probably for the 1st visit only) while Dr. Ferguson was checking his teeth. The 1st guestion Edgars asked was if they have laughing gas there; to what Dr replied: “Of course! We have a full bucket of it!” which got James’ attention and he asked: “Mom, can we buy some?” to what I replied: “When you grow up and become a dentist, you will have a whole bucket of it:)” We all laughed. Dr Ferguson said that Edgars has a few cavities and his teeth need cleaning.
Also, we got everything straight with Edgars’ medicine. After being so confused, I called our wonderful friend (who knows everybody here) and he took us to the best pharmacist in town. Mr. Chuck spent over an hour calling different places and he got it right. As it appeared, here in America we don’t have dosage as in Latvia. It is different there. Though I was a nurse in Ukraine for 12 years, it was not even close what I thought it should be. I am very very grateful to Mr Chuck for his help. The Father God has provided us with everybody we needed: dentists, phatmacists…:) and I know it's not the end:). He is our Jehovah-jireh: "And my God shall supply all your needs according to His riches in glory in Christ Jesus." Philippians 4:19
In our prayer time, Edgars said that he had a very good day and together we thanked God for a very good day.

Tomorrow we are going to see TJ’s sister, her husband, and their four children. It’s about 4 hours drive so, please pray for our safe trip and for wonderful family time.
Blessings,Lana.

Day 2.

Edgars and James both took part in the finale of the BibleSchool program last night, which held over 200 children. Edgar had a blast! They had snow cones that turned their mouths blue which was a big plus, got wet, and the highlight I think was Edgar sprayed me down good with water. He is already just melting into us as a family. We got new sandals and a pair of Crocs yesterday for him. Today he has a dentist appointment with the best dentist in town. During one of the break times at the KidFest, he came up and had to lean on my leg and put my arm around him. When we went to the store he wanted to go with me rather than stay with Lana and had to hold my hand most of the time in the parking lot and in the store itself. I was very pleased about this as Lana is the one that talked to him most of the time on the phone and I have really been with him so little, up to this point. With my work, his Bible School, sleeping and me having to drive it really has limited to this point the large amount of prime time I have had with him. But of course this is not even 2 days into the visit yet. James has had his moments yesterday when you could tell there were some opportunities to meld a little better with dealing with another sibling, but it was all very minor stuff and there wasn't any tension between them at all. They still played computer together and Edgars slept in the spare bed in James' room once more last night and they were sleeping soundly this morning when I left for work.

HE IS HERE!!!

We are thanking our God for watching over the children and for the safe trip , and special praise to Him from our family for EDGARS!

The boys were playing hide-and-seek till almost midnight! I had to calm them down before our bedtime prayer. I asked boys if they were having any praises or prayer requests; James had both: praise for Edgars is with us, and request for all hosted kids.

The boys are still sleeping.

Again, I thanking our loving Father for yesterday, and asking His blessings for today and every day.

The days and weeks rolled by and our thoughts occasionally tuned to Edgars and wondered how things were going for him and his new family. Lana and I would sometime talk about what if’s, and felt that even though James had a severe reticence about adoption he has such a big heart that once a new child would join our family everything would work out. We both agreed maybe it was for the best, we such a wonderful family and the relationships between the 3 of us were just right. An additional child might mess that up and I don’t want to do anything that would cost me my relationship with my son.
February 1st came and went, and we normally purchase our plane tickets to Ukraine for James’ 2-month summer vacation and Lana’s mission work in Ukraine. In the last 2 years, I had been unable to go visit and this year I was going to be able to get the time off work and go also. Lana’s Grandmother was getting up there and had had a tough winter and we desperately wanted to see her again. She was such a special person and who knows how many years she was going to have left. But in spite of all this we just never got around to purchasing our plane tickets.
Then it happened. On a peaceful Saturday morning, I received an email from Jennifer about Edgars that ROCKED my world. I happened to be talking to a friend right after I received the email and in hopes of any ideas on how to break this to my wife. It took me until Sunday afternoon to tell her. She was laying out in the yard reading on a blanket when I just went over to her and told her about the email.
She took the news much better than I had hoped. She immediately was open to moving forward again but in a much different manner. The first time there was a fire, a desire to have this boy, almost like a possession; this time there was a much different drive in her. This time it is about a little boy who needed a mom, a child that needed a family, and a mom who needed another child to smother with love. Me being the know-it-all that I am had to tell Lana, I told you so, if God intended us to have this boy in our family we would. :) Lana was much more reserved about moving forward this time. She said we need to meet with three Spirit-filled people we trust. We met with two of the couples and got a great deal of guidance and advice and Lana needed to speak with one of her spiritual mentors. Again, I felt completely at peace with the path we were on. Generally, I see things very clearly, and once I make a decision, I move forward with confidence but rarely do I feel the peace and inexorable pull I have felt with Edgars’ situation. It will not be easy, and there are many challenges I am not sure how we will overcome but we are moving in the right direction. Lana began to pray many times each day looking for a sign, but there wasn’t any. Finally, she prayed one big prayer and was waiting for the Word or sign from the Lord.

Then Thursday came. (I cannot remember if I have mentioned, Edgars wants to sound more American in his name, so he calls himself Eddie). Thursday morning’s Lana goes to a woman’s Bible study and on this particular day, they had a guest who is one of our closest friends. He works with a ministry called Sav-A-Life and travels all over the country and world with the founder Wales Goebels. Wales and he just returned from Africa where they had spent a great deal of time ministering and exploring mission needs. They had taken clothes and other items to give out to the needy there and of course they took many pictures. Well on this Thursday, our friend came to share with the Women what they had seen and done. He passed around many pictures and as Lana looked through them, she was thunderstruck! On one particular photo there were many people gathered under a tree in the shade. The picture was truly way too dark; you couldn’t make out the details at all. Some of the faces were barely visible but you really had to look closely. There was a small part of this photo that stood out. One of the people held a white plastic bag like you get from the upscale retail stores with their name printed on it. Now, I have traveled quite a bit, but I have never heard of a store by the name printed on that bag that showed up so bright and clear. The name on that bag was ”Edgars”, and the name of the man who brought those pictures was Eddie. This was the sign Lana needed in God’s perfect timing. She had her sign, it felt right, we were at peace with the feeling this was the direction God was leading us. So, we moved forward.
The next step was to meet with Jennifer and Joel to get to know them and them to get to know us. We wanted all of the information we could before we officially moved forward with hosting. The meeting was both momentous and anti-climactic. Lana and I felt at ease with Joel and Jennifer, we covered all of the issues surrounding any child that would be coming to visit. There were no big problems we felt would be too difficult to overcome and we started to get so excited. The 2 largest problems we faced were this mission was totally out of the blue for us and we were not prepared financially and Lana’s Grandmother was ill and this would be our last summer to go see her. Through the generous help of Friends and people who were touched by Edgars' story we were able to come up with the support we needed to be able to host him. Lana’s Grandmother passed away followed very quickly by her Grandfather. We were all devastated by this but God was taking them home and removed all of the obstacles and guilt we might have felt.
The days and weeks have gone by, James' heart has been changing towards Edgars specifically and hosting in general. Lana and I are moving forward knowing we don’t know anything for sure except we are supposed to host this little boy. Only God knows what the future truly holds.
Please tune in for further updates on our journey.

Seven days and a wakeup!

Late Sunday afternoon we received the call we were waiting for, or so we thought. The family Edgars had met with felt it was a good fit for their family, and Edgars seemed to like them. Jennifer felt and I completely agreed it would not do for us to meet him as it would just confuse him and there was no purpose to do so. Our son James was relieved; a brother was not high on his list of things to acquire. James desperately wanted a daddy for years and once he got one he was not sure he wanted to share one. He was an only child and like that just fine. I was deflated to say the least, I mean c’mon, here was a last minute plea for someone to adopt a boy out of the blue and we were ready to step up and someone else beat us to the punch. Getting kicked in the stomach felt nicer than what I was feeling. Even so, I totally understood. Lana was crushed, totally and completely. My wife is one of the mentally toughest people I know, and this reduced her to a crying wreck that didn’t want to even get out of bed for about two weeks. She did, but she sure didn’t want to; she cried all the time and kept saying we needed to meet him. I continued to tell her that if it was God’s will for us to adopt this little boy it would happen. This did little to placate this grieving mother and she said this was a good family and there would be no Edgars for us. Once I made the mistake of asking her if she wanted to look at any of the other children to possibly adopt in either Latvia or her home country of Ukraine. BIG mistake! :) She only wanted Edgars.
Finally, I asked her if there was someone she could talk to help her through this because my efforts were totally ineffective and I was at wits end what to do next. I listed all of her friends, my family, her family, church members, pastors, everyone. She said there was only one person who could help her, a person she had never met or even talked to, that person was Krista. Lana felt that Krista was the only one who knew what she was feeling. Because of that I was not so sure Krista would want to talk to anyone about what she was feeling because Lana was a wreck and had never met this little boy and Krista had established a relationship with him and now could not adopt him. It felt like I was going to jump from the frying pan into the fire. So, I wrote a letter to Jennifer to sound out the waters with Krista. Krista agreed to talk with Lana, PRAISE THE LORD! Krista and Lana had a wonderful call and I never got all of the details of what they chatted about, but after the phone call ended Lana felt so much better. We talked and agreed that if God wanted us to have this boy - we would have him, and if He didn’t - it would not be a good thing for us to adopt him. In our conversation we agreed to possibly look at adoption in the future once we were prepared to pursue this further and specifically ready financially. When we got the first email we had no idea of the cost of this kind of adoption; we just said this little boy needs a family. Our son James is a lot like his mom, and handles change better if he has a chance to think about it first. So, as we wrapped our conversation up, we brought James in and wanted to inform him his thoughts were important to us, but if we ever chose to adopt a child it would be Lana and my decision not his. I asked him if in the future we pursued adopting another child could I count on his support. He calmly replied, “Probably not, that’s not what I want.” The reply he gave was serious, and one that I will never forget. That was ok as we still felt a loss here, but we were moving on with our lives with optimism and joy. God had another plan for Edgars and we had to be content with that.