How did this happen?

Our family is hosting a child from Ukraine for 4 weeks over Christmas.  Many of you are wondering how in the world we came to this decision!?!  So, let me begin....

This past summer, I helped with VBS at our church.  Two of the children in my group were from Latvia.  I learned that these children were orphans and they were spending part of the summer with a family in our area.  I thought this was really cool and tucked the idea away in the back of my little brain :)  In September, I dug a little bit and discovered New Horizons for Children.  I got the basic information and knew I was interested in pursuing this for the Christmas hosting.  Once I saw the pictures of these sweet children, I knew we had to do this!  So, here we are!

We initially picked a Ukranian boy named Sergey.  We talked with a past host family and were able to get lots of information on him.  Everyone raved about Sergey, so naturally we were really excited and felt like we already knew him.  But, we received news almost 2 weeks ago that his orphan director was not going to let any of her kids come to America over Christmas.  This was a decision she made, nothing that NHFC did.  Our family was very saddened by this news because we had already come to love Sergey, before even meeting him.

The good news is that there were a handful of kids left that needed a family to host them.  Mike was out of town on business, so the boys and I chose Yevgen.  He is a really cute kid and we are so excited to meet him!  This will be his second trip to America, but the first through NHFC.  So, we do not have as much information on him as we did Sergey.  

Our kids are so excited about Christmas, but even more excited about getting to share it with a child who has possibly never experienced Christmas, opening gifts, or the love of a family.  We will also get to celebrate his birthday while Yevgen is here.  Again, this is such a special opportunity as most orphans are not celebrated on their special day. 

So what do we do now that all of the paperwork, background checks, home visit, training, etc is done?  We wait until December 13th when we finally get to meet this special child!

How you can help....Pray for the safety of all children traveling to the US.  Pray for the language barrier to just work out!  Pray for the transition of adding another child to our family for a month.  Pray for Sergey to have a safe place to go for winter break (I'll give more info on that later).  

Until our next posting....