Another Day Nearer

It has been hard sleeping past 5:00 am lately. Once I wake I am fully awake. So I usually just lie in bed praying for the family before I finally get up to read my Bible and organize the kitchen for breakfast.

So many wonderful, loving children and spouses.... and our precious little granddaughter, whom I miss so much. I have two archived messages on our phone with her tiny voice saying,"I wuv you, Gammy". Here we are acquiring more sons, just as our girls are beginning to think about having babies. I trust that God will stretch my time to give each what he/she deserves. Two of my heroines are Lela in Ukraine and Lydia Prince in Israel, whose very lives are/were orphans, orphans, orphans.... Lela and Lydia.

We are looking at Rob's bedroom as the place to start for sleeping arangements. The new light pine bunkbeds arrived and look beautiful. We made up the bed (it is tricky on a top bunk!) with the new sheets and bedspread, and he slept up top last night. Imagine having a boys' "sleepover" every night of the week!! What fun.

I also need to purchase another locker-type cupboard for storage in the roomy bathroom. Each boy can have one with a basket inside for his dirty laundry. Keep it separate, and each wash his own, on his day of the week. OK, let's try that. I don't feel inclined to prepare another room, so we will just have to see how many kids we end up with.

On Thursday, when I telephoned Bob at work with my Big Question, I was amazed how calm he was. It must be that his moment-by-moment crises in the office have immunized him against anxiety about issues of magnitude in my world. That is nice.

Between emails and phone conversations with travel agents about whether to fly through Detroit, Frankfurt, London or wherever, I announced to the future father that the airlines wanted exact names of the one-way-home passengers we were about to add to our tickets! Bob simply replied, "Well, pick some names." "But, Love, you don't understand. They are asking me, not only to risk saying that we are getting these particular boys, but that we know What English Names Are Going To Appear On Their Passports! Tickets and passports must match!

So, calmly, right then and there on the phone we picked names for the boys, just first and last names, English eqivalents as best we could. Later we can discuss their preferences and juggle and add names we may actually call them. I cannot see them, at their ages, wanting to change all that much, but maybe. At any rate their passports will have the English equivalents.

Complicating all this has been the increasingly strong sense that one of the boys we had originally thought we'd be bringing home might not be part of our future. With the sadness, there is also the peace that God knows this young man, and He will be the Father to him in His own way and suited to his needs.

The children's dear, praying, Babushka leaves any day now for US. So her house is open to us. Oh, how comfortable that would be, unlike another family's experience of sleeping on "concrete beds" in the same city! The children will miss her, but we will be coming, God willing, in a very short while. And her translator and driver will continue to go in to visit them.

Yesterday a little letter arrived from the translator for me,

Miss Sylvia,

hello! How are you?? I am doing good. Do you know that BAhbushka is going to America soon? Are you going to see her there? I would like for you to come to Ukraine very much. I am doing good at school, much better than before. MIss Sylvia, when is your Birthday?

I love you,

(signed by one of the boys.)

Sigh... what can I say?

The email arrived just as we were heading out the door to meet our new friends, the English teacher and her soccer coach husband. So I tucked it in my purse to share with them over, of all things on the menu that night, Chicken Kiev and Steak Odessa.

Yesterday I ran in to the school to see our wonderful new headmistress about the possibility of our boys entering school after some home schooling. Her eyes filled with tears at the prospect. She asked, "What can we do? What can the school do for you?" What a wonderful woman. She took my hands and prayed a blessing on us all and the days ahead.

When I got home on top of the mail was a letter from a ministry to orphans. The sweet Russian girl featured has the same name as one of "our" boys. Another coincidence?

After a visit with a dear friend who expressed reservations about our adventure, I prayed, and, seeking to brush aside the concerns raised, I went to check my emails. Among them was one from another tentatively supportive friend. It read as follows:

CONGRATULATIONS!!!!!!

THE LORD IS WITH YOU. I HEARD BENNY HINN SAY ON TBN LAST WEEK--IN A WORD OF KNOWLEDGE--THAT SYLVIA WAS GOING TO HAVE CHILDREN - AND TO GET READY.

IT MUST BE GOD. HOW ELSE COULD YOU HAVE THIS DESIRE, AND BE ABLE TO FOLLOW THROUGH WITH ALL YOU HAVE HAD TO DO!