A red letter day for the Pierce Family

Today is the day! We picked up both John and Sarah! 

 

The church by John's orphanage. There's a stork on top!

 

Whilst waiting for paperwork to be filled out, Michael shared his phone with John. There is a speed racing game on it. 

 

Some friends of John's. the little boy on the left is available for adoption. His name is Rusko and he has some mental delay. He is the sweetest little guy. 11 years old and just adorable! During our first trip, John reserved some cookies especially for Rusko. If anyone is interested in learning more about Rusko, let me know. 

 

 

Staff from the orphanage. 

 

 

Our Bulgarian boys! John was thrilled to leave with us today. In fact, he didn't sleep all night in anticipation. His bag was all packed and he was ready to go. He was waiting for us in the courtyard. We passed out all of the fidget spinners and the children were so excited. 

 

Driving to Lesichovo. 

 

 

 

 

 

We were greeted by the children from the orphanage who had bread and honey waiting for us, whilst wearing traditional Bulgarian clothing. 

 

 

 

The children loved the fidget spinners! 

 

 

Our Bulgarian kids, together with us at last!!

 

Tradition to throw water in front of your car before you leave. So neat!

As we predicted, Sarah broke down crying on the drive to Sofia. She has lived in her orphanage for 11 years. She is very attached to her village and the staff and the other children there. We had some time to cry together later on this evening. I think a good night of rest will help a lot. 

 

I see many flowers hanging in windows all over Bulgaria. 

 

Playing Quirkle. 

 

Look at that smile!

 

❤️❤️❤️

Follow-up from trip #1

Before we left Bulgaria, we learned that Sarah had accidentally erased all of the music on her MP3 player. We were able to find a thumb drive in Bulgaria and we loaded the music onto it. We mailed the thumb drive plus 10 LV to Sarah. One of the things that we had purchased for her when we were visiting with her was a jar of strawberry jam - as strawberries are her favorite fruit. Since she and the other kids had consumed the entire jar of jam in 4 days (!), we sent 10 LV to her so she could buy some more. We received the following news from her orphanage director:

The director also shared that they bought 4 jars of strawberry jam with the money the Pierce family sent and Temenuzhka has been sharing her strawberry jam with the other kids.

We were able to Skype with Sarah for the first time yesterday morning! We have a schedule to Skype with Sarah every two weeks. She was able to see us and to hear us, but we couldn't hear her at all and the quality was very blurry for us to see her. But she seemed to enjoy seeing all of us, as we sang to her, did sign language, and we read from google translate! We are excited to Skype with her again soon!

Update on John from our agency: While discussing another case with the director of his orphanage, we used the opportunity to ask how John was doing and the director was excited to share that John is always eagerly awaiting the arrival of the English tutor, he is working hard to learn as much English as possible and be able to communicate with his family and he is greatly motivated about that. 

We are excited to Skype with John on Friday for the first time! He is allowed to have weekly Skype visits. 

Update on Michael from our agency: We heard from Rozalina (Michael's social worker from the local social services, who was present during the family's meetings with him). She was excited to share her joy in relation with the following - When the Pierce family left Dobrich, Michael read the letters they left with him, he got very emotional and started crying, he said "I love them and I miss them already". She finds there is a huge positive change in him following the Pierce family's visits and he is excited about learning some English so as to be able to talk with them himself. 

This is both sad and wonderful news! Michael didn't really show us very much emotion during our trip. I wish that I could have been there to comfort him when he was crying. We are still in the process of setting up English lessons and his Skype sessions. 

We have been home for a couple of days now and seem to be struggling much more with jet lag than we did when we arrived in Bulgaria. On the docket today is to get some fingerprints taken so we can do the FBI Fingerprints (again) and the I800 is already sent off. We also need to get new physicals done. Hopefully everything will progress quickly and smoothly. 

I am eager to do some major nesting in preparation to bringing home our three precious children. I have quilts to make and bedrooms to organize and clothing to get - it will be interesting to outfit three teenagers! Can't wait to bring them home!

Meet Sarah!

Our application has been approved to move forward in adopting Sarah from Eastern Europe! We are so excited!

Sarah is 13 years old and her records indicate that she struggles academically. Other than that, she seems to be typical in every other way. Her interests include art.

She has blue eyes and brown hair. Anna is thrilled at the prospect of having a sister near her age.

It will take about a year to bring her home, if she is willing to be adopted. I hope to travel to Bulgaria before the summer is over.

Her face is covered up for her protection.

Adoption button

So, I've been working on this adoption button for my blog! What do you think?

I am hoping to get it fully operational with a code and everything and put it on this blog so that anyone can post it on their website and help us get the word out about bringing our boys home. A typical topic that comes along with international adoption is fundraising. I don't know anyone who just LOVES to raise money, no matter how just the cause is. It can be frustrating, because you want to bring home these special children, yet you don't have $40,000 just hanging out in your bank account. If you do, well, I'm happy for you and if can spare some, please donate towards our adoption! So please, if you can, look for the adoption button that I'll be posting on the sidebar, and help us spread the word. We really need to get these boys home. They need to meet with pediatric cardiologists as soon as possible to get them on the correct treatment, medicine (if applicable), and surgery(ies) that they need. Thanks in advance!

Tyler & Keith are doing well back at home. Apparently, a group of black/brown widows decided that they wanted to infest our front yard. Lucky us. So, Tyler spent all day Saturday looking and destroying all that he could find. My hero! Tyler is also trying to potty train Keithy. Calvin is already potty trained, so it would be nice to just have Silas in diapers when we bring the boys home. Pray for Keith - he's learning how to hold his bladder, but not initiating the need to go to the potty.

Keith is happy to be back at school. His teacher, Ms S, asked him where he was. Keith replied, "Russia." Ms S asked Keithy where Iryna was, and he replied, "With Mama." He's really understands more than I think he does. What a smart boy! Speaking of school, I recently came across this website: The Writing Faculty. Has anyone else heard of it? Looks like a great resource. :)

Sarah is out with Sveta right now. Her back looks like it is healing, although causing her a lot of pain. Please keep her in your prayers. She's such a good friend of mine and has come all this way to help me - I feel bad that she's hurting. My yeast infection is still here. I'm on day 3 of the cream. I hope it is completely better by day 5!!! The next 3 days we are able to visit Silas, but not today because Russia is celebrating their Labor Day (May 1st). The girls and I have been playing wii, yahtzee, and just being together. I sure do love my two daughters. It's strange to think that soon I will have more sons than daughters. I'm excited to have more children to love and care for and to help with their medical needs. I feel so blessed to live in the US and to have such incredible military insurance - how can I not share my blessings with these two sweet boys? I can and I will and it makes my heart sing to do so. Thank you, God, for helping me to help these children. I am grateful to be your servant.