Missing K

Some days it's harder to wait than others.

We left a little black beanie baby bear with K that my mom had picked out. He seemed to enjoy the toy over the week we were there. After returning home, we decided to see if we could find a second one for a decent price, thinking if he loses the one we left, we'd give the new one to him when we go pick him up to come home, and if he still has it, we would give the new one to has Baba as a way to remember him. We found a GREAT deal, so for less than $4, including shipping, we now have a second "cherno mache." (Not spelled right, but that's how you say "little black bear" in K's language, so that's what we called it all week.) Opening up the package and holding it in my hand was a fresh reminder of the little boy who likes to hold it in his hand.

Last week we found out that there was a closed trial to decide if the old director of K's orphanage will be reinstated. Because the trial was closed, the judges' decision has not yet been made public (at least, if it has, I have not been made aware of it yet.) It will be good when K is home. Even if the old director would get her job back, K would be out of there soon. But there are so many other children who do not have their way out yet. And even if the wonderful new director gets to stay, and continues to have success in implementing changes, it's still tough to think of children living day after day without belonging to anyone.

But this guy's got a family, and a little black bear waiting for him here at home.

another twist

This post is intentionally vague. ;)

A development occurred this morning in something that has been a potential for well over a year. Nothing is certain, by any means, including timing, but the implications of this could have ...interesting... implications on what is in front of our family this summer and fall. (No, I'm not pregnant! ;) Someone asked and I figured I'd better clarify that!)

I know some of you who read this blog are people who pray, and for those of you who do, now is a good time to ask God to help us to listen and to walk forward in the path that he desires for us. I emailed my dad this morning, ending with saying that "wait" has been my favorite word in the Psalms lately (maybe later I'll compile a list of some of the "wait"s that have been grabbing me over the last days).

Wait for the Lord; 
Be strong and let your heart take courage; 
Yes, wait for the Lord. 
(Psalm 27:14)

Good and upright is the Lord;
Therefore He instructs sinners in the way.
He leads the humble in justice,
And He teaches the humble His way.
All the paths of the Lord are lovingkindness and truth
To those who keep His covenant and His testimonies.

Who is the man who fears the Lord? 
He will instruct him in the way he should choose. 
(Psalm 25:8-10, 12) 

Perspective (by Matt)

Andrea already shared in a previous post about my worries about "missing" my sap flow for this year when we went to visit K.  However, she did not share this photo of what happened after making syrup all day Saturday.




I was bringing the syrup into the house and since all the kids were sleeping, I decided I would try to open the door on my own and not bother Andrea or wake the kids.  The result was that the pot slipped out of one of my hands and dumped a couple cups worth of syrup down my pants and onto the stoop.  My initial reaction and comment to Andrea when she came to the door, after I knocked before trying to open the door and spill the remaining contents of the pot, were "there is a couple of wasted hours." 

Or maybe not.

In our Friday night bible study we are working our way through Colossians and had been talking about the beginning of chapter 3 this past week.  "Since, then, you have been raised with Christ, set your hearts on things above, where Christ is seated at the right hand of God.  Set your minds on things above, not on earthly things..."  So here is the perspective.  My initial reaction (mind set on earthly things) was to think about the time wasted and the syrup lost because of my spilling the pot.  However, as we talked about at study, part of what it means to set your mind on things above is to think about the things that happen here from the perspective of where we ARE...seated with Christ in the heavenlies.  So, as I finished cleaning up and putting things away, my thinking about what happen shifted.  All day yesterday, from 7:30 in the morning until about 9 at night, I spent outside around the 'sugarin rig' and for many of those hours, I was able read my bible while I tended the fire and the sap pans.  I was able to read from 1 Corinthians all the way through Hebrews, something that I don't often have the time to do in one sitting.  So, in reality, nothing was wasted.  I spent all day soaking in the word and I also happened to get some syrup as a bonus!

What's for dinner?

We really enjoyed the English menu at the hotel in K's city. I'd like to share a sampling, and point out a few of the highlights. (I should also preface this by saying that we did not eat anything we did not really like while we were there. Part of that is only ordering things that look good, but even that isn't foolproof - sometimes we would order the same thing we thought we'd ordered the day before, and end up with something completely different. But still good!)

Filled Chicken steak with processed cheese, anyone? (midway down on the left) Also notice the reference to "yellow cheese" on the right hand side. Apparently cheese in K's country is either cheese or white cheese or yellow cheese or processed cheese. And I guess there's that French cheese at the bottom of the right hand face. We didn't order that. At first I thought something was lost in translation, but according to Filip, that's just what it is. One night at a different place we had some really good crusty thin bread with cheese and white cheese. Hm. But I think the best part of this particular spread of the menu is on the top of the right hand side. How about a Nervous (appetizing) meatball??? We asked Filip about this one. He looked in his menu, and after a thoughtful moment, told us that's just what it is - a nervous meatball! So we asked Jaclyn's translator on a different night (Jaclyn was the other mom who was there visiting her son with her father along - they were with a different agency, and had a different translator - a very sociable translator!) and her response was the same as Filip's. We were too nervous to try the meatball, no matter how appetizing it might have been!

 There. Now that you're hungry let's check out some of the more filling dishes. Chicken "Surprise" anyone? Come on - this "chicken chest" dish has smoked cheese in it (add that to the above cheese list), and a garnish of mashed potatoes and ... celery. Or, if you're into that sort of thing, you could order the Chicken broken meat in folio. It's made with processed cheese, you know! (Okay, maybe as the daughter of a former WI dairy plant manager I'm making more of the cheese thing than is really necessary.) Not up for processed cheese? You can always try Broken (shaken) chicken meat. I'm not sure if it matters so much how they break that chicken, but apparently it's significant! And no processed cheese.

Or perhaps you're not that hungry, and would like to go with a simple salad instead? Those of you still hankering after processed cheese can go for the Four tastes salad, but the more adventurous may like to select the Salad amphibian instead. Mmmmm. Nothing like tunny fish to get your mouth watering!

Perhaps you're a little more reserved, and would prefer a safer option, such as the one on the top of this page which is made with "sterilized cucumbers." We weren't quite sure what they meant by that. Pickles? Seedless? Washed really well? Anyway, if you're interested, but don't really like to choose a dish with mayonnaise as the first ingredient, you can always choose the Mexican salad and have your sterilized cucumbers with "turkey's fillet." (And see, you can get cucumbers that are not sterilized, as in the Greek salad at the bottom!) Many choices. And if you like cucumbers and tomatoes, you're set at any meal, even breakfast.

After all this, I'm certain you're hungry for something sweet, so here's the dessert menu. I photographed this not primarily for the humor (though I sure do wonder about Omelette "Surprise" for dessert! Maybe it's good after Chicken "Surprise"?) but rather because Chocolate "Tato" is something I'm definitely going to try to figure out how to make back here at home. Yummmmmmm!!! For two people who were trying to not go nuts with spending over the week, we ate Chocolate "Tato" rather frequently. At just under US $4, thought, it wasn't too costly! (Especially since we split one.)

But, the fun aside, we really did enjoy the food - good variety, fresh and tasty, the french fries with white cheese are REALLY good, too, and be forewarned that if you order pizza, they will serve ketchup and mayonnaise on the side.

Travel photos

This is the post I thought I was going to write the Friday we were in K's country, but it was not happening. After being home for a while now, I'm more ready to do some of the more light-natured reflection on the week. Though even in this are bits of pieces of the flavor that permeated that week and my feelings about it after being home.

So, here is a random collection of things we saw during the five days we spent in the city where K lives.

First, our hotel. This hotel was perfectly adequate, but not as nice as the hotel in the capital was. (Also much less expensive!) We were on the ninth floor this time. Jon and Anna got their room number first, and were on the eleventh floor. I think that's part of why, when hearing that we were *only* on the ninth we decided to continue our "use the stairs and not the lifts because we can" trend that we had started when on the sixth floor of our first hotel. What's three more flights of stairs, right? ;) Besides, Matt's been talking about needing to start doing some more physical activity so he's ready when we start working on the house addition. He's hoping to put in four 10-hour days as our contractor's "crew" and then get all of his other work-work done in the rest of the week. Here's our hotel from the outside.

 

Looking up (up up up)

 

And the front door. Paving was a big deal to me over this trip. Here, notice that the paving is nice, smooth, very well maintained marble. Notice to the right of the picture the construction tape where they were working on replacing concrete pavers.)

This is what you see when you walk in the main doors. I asked Matt to take this photo on our last day because we went up these grand stairs many times over the course of that week! (They're not nearly as grand once you get up the first flight, but I thoroughly enjoyed this initial approach every time we started up. I also appreciated the way the bottom three stairs continue to the left all the way through the sitting area of the lobby and are the stairs up to the back stair that we took every day to the restaurant for breakfast. And the balance of those three extending far to the left, while to the right they fan out going up seven stairs? Very pleasing proportion. And probably very boring to read about for all of you who are not so interested in what those of us who have been through architecture school call "Arche-babble"!!)

The rooms themselves were not that interesting, with the exception of these two details. On the left is the "main switch." Notice what's sticking out of the top of the Main Switch? Yes. Our room key. Why? Well, because unless your key is stuck in there, there is no electricity in your room. Everything turns off. Even the heat. ;) Not an all bad idea, though, right? And on the right below is the bathroom - very efficient. No luxurious tub like our first hotel. With this one, it's a good idea to set your toothbrush outside of the bathroom while you shower unless you don't mind a few shampoo bubbles when you brush!

Matt and I did as much walking as we could while we were here. The hotel is located on a large pedestrian way lined with shops and other interesting sights, but we also got a few opportunities to walk home from K's orphanage. Being map nerds, Matt and I had already the first night tried to track on an aerial photo/map the route that we had taken in the car to and from the orphanage. By Tuesday we had it marked out and realized that it was only one mile - even less than we had estimated! (Probably because the blocks, a subconscious reference point, are smaller here than in our midwestern US cities.) So Wednesday afternoon when Filip was driving Jon and Anna and their little boy to a medical appointment, and thus didn't have room in his car for us (nor would there be any point in our sitting around somewhere while they had their appointment), we told him not to call the cab he offered to us and said we'd walk home. He was a little surprised. We asked if he thought it would be unsafe to do so, and he recovered and just told us with a smile to "look both ways before we crossed the street." ;)

You get SUCH a different understanding of a city when you walk it then when you're only in a vehicle.

We started by walking around behind the building where K lives. It is HUGE! There's a whole wing to the right that you can't see in this photo.

Then came the fun of walking past some smaller residential streets. We didn't take too many photos, but I thought the gate and fence outside of this house's garden was too pretty to pass up. Despite so many buildings and streets literally falling apart, there are also places that are very tidily maintained, even if they are more of an exception. There were a few gardens where I could see the spring flowers just starting to peek through - tulips, hyacinth, daffodils - and I would LOVE to see what those places look like in mid-May!

Around a corner were these "lovely" Communist-era apartment buildings. Nothing inspiring here. There were many places like this around the city. It's exactly what you hear about the Communist government coming in and tearing up anything that has any character or history, and replacing it with something concrete and depressing.

Getting closer to the downtown area we saw this neat side of a building. The photo doesn't capture how neat the textures and patterns were, so you'll have to take my word for it. Notice also the lines running above all the streets - the public transportation (primarily buses here) run on these.

  

One of the first things that you see when you enter the pedestrian way from this end is this large war memorial from the early 20th century. It has quite a presence, particularly because it is surrounded by pedestrian ways and not crowded by other buildings. Really neat metal work and LOTS of old cannons around this place!

  

Behind us as we looked at this impressive monument was this:

 This building has obviously seen better days. I took a picture of it because it is representative of many other buildings that we saw while walking through the city and is in stark contrast to the stateliness still maintained in the monument.

But then we walked a little further and saw this:

 

A very striking building with lovely flowers just planted in the foreground, and a small coin-operated carousel on the right. I would be interested to see what this area is like when the weather is warmer and children are around. But very likely our trip back to pick K up will not allow for sight-seeing in his city.

We thought this was an ingenious idea for a bus stop! Make it part of the sidewalk! It takes up no room, and hardly disrupts the flow of sidewalk traffic, yet is a very satisfying little "place" to wait.

 

This is very much the kind of building that Matt likes. ;) I found it a satisfying example of a more modern approach, too. The scale and color of the earthy tiles on the side of the building was a beautiful complement to the large expanses of glass. The building sits on a "plinth" of dark stone which houses an (empty, like many) storefront.

The last photos I'll share are of the place where we ate lunch every day. For the equivalent of about $.75 each, we could get a large slice of pizza. Tuesdays and Thursdays were Buy One Get One Half off days. That coupled with an orange from the little market made a perfect lunch, and let us eat at a more "proper" restaurant at supper while still keeping costs down. I'll have to devote a whole post to some photos of one of the menus!

 We  liked being here, walking around, getting  a feel for this place inside of us as best as we could in a few days. Though it's funny trying to make a connection with a place that K has no connection to. He's lived his whole life in this city, and until last summer when they started taking the children outside in strollers for walks, was never outside the walls of his orphanage. I still am not sure how much beyond the orphanage grounds they go, if at all, but enough that his Baba said he used to be afraid of trams and cars, but isn't any more. This IS his culture, and it isn't at the same time. Much like he doesn't (well, didn't!) belong to anyone, there really isn't a place that belongs to him. It wasn't until our last day in the capital when we spent more than five hours walking around and realized that in our whole week in K's country, we had seen only three people with visible handicaps. Only THREE! K's country is not set up to accommodate people like him as part of regular, everyday life. All three of the people we saw (two in wheelchairs, and one who appeared to be blind with a cane) were accompanied by other people who were a necessary part of their getting around. Scroll up and take another look at the photo of the stairs inside our hotel. How is someone in a wheelchair going to get to the restaurant? I *think* there was a lift for the back stairway, but to get to that, one would have to go outside. But wait. Look at the entrance to the hotel itself. It's up three steps. No one in a wheelchair is going to ever be in that lobby without someone else to carry them in. And what would be the point? A wheelchair will not fit into the lifts to take people up to their rooms, nor would it fit through the doors into the individual hotel rooms.

I thought I was maybe being a little too picky about this until emailing a bit last week with someone we know who is from K's country, though now lives in the US. She confirmed what I had felt - the culture is biased against disability to such a degree that K will never belong in his own culture. Even if it changes such that some day attitudes are different there, it will be too late for K. As Matt and I both wrestled the week we were with him with the immense difficulty it will be for K to leave everything he's ever known here (particularly his language), it was a good counter to realize that he is an orphan, not only in terms of having no family, but also having no place to belong.

He will be able to belong here with us - not only because he WILL belong to us as part of our family, but because the infrastructure here is set up to make it work for someone with physical limitations. I know there are many arguments for and against international adoption, and I don't spend a lot of time investigating all of them. What I do know is that right now, for this little boy, we can offer him life and love that he will not have where he is right now. And that is enough for us.

Mini update on the house

Last Saturday brought news - the contractor that we've been talking with since last fall about working with Matt on the bulk of the framing of the addition finally got back to us, and part of the reason it took him a while to do that was because he and his wife were working through some options before them, and made the decision (and Matt and I are in full agreement with him on his reasons for the decision he made) to NOT take our project, but instead take a few that he's been asked to do that are closer to home (Which is 3+ hours from where we are.)

He also said that he's excited about *why* we're doing what we're doing, and is hoping to be able to make the trip down for a long weekend or two to volunteer his time on the project. So, although we lost the experienced guide we were hoping to have (Matt and I have both framed up small residential scale buildings before, but simpler than ours, and not nearly as many times as someone who does this for a living has, and we were hoping to be grunt work and let someone else be the brains of "what order do we do this" and "when do which materials need to be on the site" kind of stuff), we have gained some well-qualified man-hours of labor at no charge! So in an odd way, this disappointment has turned into one more way that God is providing what we need to get this done.

Matt also asked him to shoot a rough number at the project for cost, and we were pleasantly surprised to find that his gut reaction is the same range that ours is. Nice to know we're not WAY underestimating the cost.

So, this past week has been filled with talking with another framer that we know who may be interested in working with Matt to get things framed up and windows in, and a lot of looking into getting all the permits we need to begin work. We're both feeling both like we're further behind on some of these things than we should be, while also realizing that we haven't been sitting here twiddling our thumbs in past weeks, either. ;) And that God can orchestrate the timing of things just the way he wants them to be.

Side note: when we got our travel dates for our visit to K, Matt was hesitant for a moment for three reasons 1) we'd be gone for Leah's birthday and birthday party 2) we'd be gone for the Good Friday service at church which Matt was supposed to play his cello for and 3) it was supposed to be a great week for maple sap flow, and was the week Matt was eyeing up for his first boiling off day (we've put in about 25 taps in our yard and our neighbors' yards over the last 3 or 4 years, and it's something of which we all enjoy both the process and the results!) He decided none of those was worth pushing off the time when K could come home, so we went. Turns out it was NOT a good week for sap flow, and it wasn't until we returned that it really started to take off this year. Matt has just now come in from what will be his fourth and last day of boiling off for this year.

earlier today...

the 55 gallon drum we use to hold the sap until it's a good day to boil it off (for those of you who are unfamiliar with the process, if you have 40 gallons of sap, you need to boil off 39 gallons of water to end up with 1 gallon of syrup. This is why this is an outdoor job. We don't need that many gallons of water vapor in our house!

Reuben and Leah in the hole in the snow that was left after Daddy lifted out the barrel to dump the last drops into the boiling pan.

Which means that the next nice days we have will be days for starting to work on taking down the four trees (one dying, two not-really-where-we'd-want-them, and one beautiful-huge-we're-going-to-miss-but-its-in-the-middle-of-the-new-living-room)! And once things thaw out a little more, I've got the big job of digging up all the perennials that are in the path of where big trucks will be coming through and moving them to a temporary location in the vegetable garden.

Owen and Leah's academic 2nd grade and kindergarten school year is going to end a month earlier than usual this year. Come May 1st we're all going to be outside working!! And I know many of you reading this are people who are already making plans to join us for a few hours, a few days, and we've heard there are some people from my parents' church in WI that are planning on spending up to a week up here helping with the work! Starting next month, I'm going to have lots of photos to put up here.

K's orphanage

I have commented many times about the less-than-ideal care that K has received for most of his life. I've been planning for a while to share some more about that, and with some news I heard this week, thought this might be the right time.

Two days ago there was a closed court case in K's country that matters personally to me. On April 18, 2013 a judge decided if the old director of K's orphanage will be re-instated in her position, or if the case will be pushed on to a higher court.

This director had held her position at K's orphanage for 23 years. As we spoke with our adoption lawyer, Toni, over supper on our second to last night in K's country, she expressed her amazement that this woman had managed to retain her position not only through the fall of Communism, but also through a number of major political shifts since the fall of Communism. Apparently, her position, like so many other governmental positions, is one that a new ruling power would replace with one of "their" people. Somehow she managed to weather through this, apparently to great personal benefit to herself. Toni had a significant role in this director's removal from her position a little over a year ago. The conditions in K's orphanage and the situation with the director made national headlines. (I mention this specifically because it is evidence to the fact that, although these conditions may not be as scarce as we want them to be, they are NOT the accepted norm in K's country.) Following are excerpts from a translation of the articles that came out at the time this went public.

~~~

 Excerpts from [the first article]

(on the photo at the left bottom, unidentified child from the sixth floor; on the photo at the top right, Veronica now; on the photo at the bottom right, Veronica before)

18 children died over a year and a half
Babies and young children are being left hungry for days, lie in urine without having their diapers changed for twenty-four hours, due to which most of them are severely ill.  Over a year and a half, 18 children have died, as evidenced by a Report of the CPA. This provoked an inspection by the Minister of Health Dessislava Atanassova.  Yesterday she commented that she left there crying.
At the moment, 154 children live in the institution. After the inspection, Ms. Atanassova found out that, obviously, the personnel had known about her visit, as the children were all dressed up nicely, the sheets were changed and the toys were new.  The stench of urine, however, made a huge impression.
“While I walked through the rooms and watched the children, I cried. After that, I got mad and was greatly upset that they were doing wrong things,” the health minister said. She made a hint that probably serious financial misuses had been done in the institution, as any accountability was lacking.
VERONICA AFTER LEAVING THE ORPHANAGE
4 kilograms and 850 grams. That’s how much the 9 year old Veronica weighed on November 14, 2011. That was her last day in Home For Medical and Social Care for Children in Pleven which terrified the health minister and CPA. She couldn’t pull up to a sitting or standing position and only was lying down. Today, 5 months later, in the USA, in Pennsylvania, she is already weighing 12 kilograms and has a chance for life.
This can clearly be seen from two photographs. The first was taken in the home for medical and social care last year, and the second is in the home of her new American family....
The Chance
The chance for a new life for Veronica came last November. ... Veronica was taken to Tokuda Hospital to be stabilized for two days…they took off by a plane to the USA…from the airport…she was placed in the Children’s [Hospital] in Philadelphia.
Thorough tests were done and they established that the child was with severe anemia due to the malnutrition, as well as advanced osteoporosis, and bones that had been broken in the past, together with lack of Vitamin D.  All this together with severe mental and physical lagging behind.
After only 4 months Veronica is already different.
So that you can imagine the difference, I will tell you that in [the orphanage] she couldn’t sit up [properly]. She didn’t talk, only cried or, more correctly, was moaning. Now you can see her at the picture that she sits up. Soon she will be up besides a walker. She is still with a feeding tube but she eats normal food and very recently she said her first word “mamma.” All this after only 4 months, ...
Treatment
After the admittance of Veronica in Tokuda, from the hospital they were so shocked that they decided to visit the orphanage in Pleven. The specialists chose another 8 children to be admitted in the hospital.
“We found out that the children need attention and decided that we would go and see them. We coordinated the idea with the CPA and went,” Prof. Marusia Lilova, Chief of the Pediatric Clinic at Tokuda Hospital, said for the Telegraph. Then several children were taken for treatment to Tokuda. To a question whether it was established that the children were malnourished, Prof. Lilova stated that she didn’t want to comment.
The rest
154 children totally are being raised in the orphanage in Pleven. 98 of them are with severe disabilities and most of them don’t move from their cribs...

Excerpts from [an article the following day]

(Photos: Top: at 11 years old Vesselina looks like a 3 month old baby; the teenager Plamenka looks like an infant
Bottom:  Veronica 6 months ago and now as Katie Musser)
“Holocaust”  That is how the chief of Dreams Foundation, Antonia Vladimirova, summarizes the care for the abandoned sick children ... And “Auschwitz” is the name she has given to the Home for Medical and Social Care for Children (HMSCC) in Pleven. On Friday, the institution entered the media with a label “Mogilino-2″ after the health minister Dessisslava Atanassova visited it suddenly and 16 year old children weighing 9 kilograms and eating from bottles met her.
Boriss Veltchev starts dealing with the child skeletons in Pleven
Prosecutors in Mogilino-2
Malnutrition, osteoporosis and broken bones shock the Tokuda doctors
For Antonia Vladimirova, the Pleven Auschwitz turned into her cause on August 15, 2011. Then the head of the Dreams Foundation went into the orphanage as a lawful representative of the Americans Joseph and Susanna Musser, who wanted to adopt the 9 year old Veronica. The little girl was on the 6^th floor, where actually the severest cases are placed. From the very door, the stench that hit us was unbearable, Vladimirova recalls.
Stink of faeces, urine, acetone and pus
In the rooms of the children, the windows are not opened. The little ones [cribs] are stuffed 8 in a [room] 4 meters by 3 meters. They are not showered, the diapers are soaked and they lie in their vomit. The children are prisoners in their cribs. They move only when their diapers are changed once each 24 hours, Antonia adds. From the orphanage they explained to her that this happens once a day as the diapers are expensive and they can’t afford to change the children more often. They pick up the child under the armpit, lift him/her in the air, and throw him/her on the board for change of the diapers. Several lightning, rough movements follow, without any cleaning or treatment of the rashes and the wounds from the soaked diapers. The child again is lifted in the same way and thrown in the crib, Antonia continues her terrifying story.
Antonia, however, is shocked with something else–the feeding of the children. The little ones receive
a beer bottle with a nipple on the top,
with an opening of 1 cm.  And as they are in lying position, without being set upright at least a little, they receive the nipple and start choking and the liquid pours down, explains Vladimirova. The children who can feed themselves, receive a mess-tin of soup with crumbled bread mixed with a spoon of [broth?] without meat.  The children are fed [in a matter of seconds] and then everything is taken away, goes on Antonia.
Thanks to the Musser family, Veronica is saved from Auschwitz. Today she lives in Pennsylvania and her name is Katerina Hope Musser. After being picked up from the orphanage, the 9 year old miss went to the capital hospital Tokuda, and the doctors there slipped into a shock at the little one’s weight of 4,850 kg.  5 months later Veronica, already Katerina Hope, is 12 kg.
From August till now, 18 more children from the ill-famous orphanage in Pleven are at different stages of adoption procedure by families from the USA. Two of them are the 11 year old Vesselina (weight at the moment 5,650 kg and height 76 cm), and almost 16 year old Plamenka (weight 8,600 kg and height 88 cm) who eats from a bottle. Both of them, as well as 6 other children from the orphanage, were treated in Tokuda. In all eight children, besides malnutrition and osteoporosis, old, already healed broken bones, were established. Vesselina even has displacements of vertebrae, recalls Antonia. And continues on to say that after only 10 days in the hospital the little patients gained 2 kilograms each.
The doors are closed for new little ones
174 people take care of 165 children; sanctions are at hand
The Agency for Social Support stops the placement of children from the whole country in the orphanage ...  The personnel are 174 people, but only 1/3 of them remain on each shift. All of the children should be no older than 3 years of age. However, for a long time, no one has taken measures for the older children to be moved to other specialized institutions.  Among them are children with disabilities who have not been requested for adoption or foster care.
External specialists in nutrition and intensive interaction shall be appointed in the orphanage. For each child a specific plan shall be developed, according to his/her own needs, explained Kalin Kamenov. They will train the personnel how to take care of the children. Experts will work with the children with disabilities in the orphanage, so that they receive individual care and medical help.
For the end of April, a competition for appointment of a new director of the orphanage has been planned. Four months ago, the long-standing director Irzhina Kostova was fired after the signal of CPA.  By this moment, the orphanage has been under a temporarily appointed director. Most probably there will be more disciplinary sanctions, stipulates Kamenov. We hope that the new management shall implement quality reorganization in the operation of the orphanage, he declared.
Yesterday, for the Standard, the health minister Dessislava Atanassova revealed that, since documents for donations and reports for food products are lacking, the investigators had sealed the storage premises.
~~~

(I've copied this from a blog of a family who has and is adopting from K's orphanage, and has also become a friend of mine over the years as I finally publish this post in 2017 - http://theblessingofverity.com/2012/04/going-public-in-bulgaria/.)

K is one of the children with a "severe disability" who has lived his life on the sixth floor. He still lives on the sixth floor, but my one visit up there was NOT like what was described above. One of the first changes that the new director made was the installation of cameras. She has also been working at systematically firing old staff who ought not to be working with these children, and hiring replacements who are really caring for the children as children. But from our conversation with the director during our week there, it is an uphill battle.

The case against the old director that resulted in her removal from her position at the end of 2011 was essentially a technicality, and significantly misses the nature of the neglect and abuse these children have suffered under her care. As follows:

“The former director was dismissed by the now-former minister of health in December 2011. The stated motives for her dismissal were to a large degree formal – and only the tip of the iceberg! – 1. That she had not appointed a general practitioner to each child in the institution; 2. That the children had not undergone annual dental check ups; and 3. That the children did not have individualized activity plans for their development and treatment. From the three stated violations, the court upheld only the second one and acknowledged that the institution did indeed not have a dentist appointed on its staff.
The position which a local non-governmental organization,..., sent to the minister of healthcare, the chair of the State Child Protection Agency and the media stated the non-governmental organization’s concern that the motives for which the former director was dismissed in December 2011 were “inadequate,” and reiterated the findings of the state agencies that had established a large number of deaths, gross neglect, and undernourishment. It stressed that that the situation of the children was not due to their ‘disabilities’, as we have been told too many times, but due to lack of proper care, and the growth spurts that the children experienced during the first months after finding their families is proof of that.
The statement further reiterated the findings of the non-governmental organization and Toni Vladimirova’s signal to the authorities from January 2012 with findings of feeding the children with beer bottles with huge openings leading to frequent chokings, the bad quality food they received, the feeding in the cribs, lack of rehabilitation, etc. etc. It also reiterated the findings of the child protection agency that gave the first push for the director’s dismissal back in December 2011.  Finally, the statement appeals to the authorities that should the director be reinstated, they should reconsider the possibility for her to continue to hold her position, as her return would constitute a serious risk for the health and life of the children placed there."

(http://theblessingofverity.com/2012/12/more-to-the-story/)

I look at these photos of the boy who, even though not legally our son (yet!) is still our son in our hearts already, and am struck by how utterly voiceless he is. Not just because he himself can not talk (because part of learning to talk is being spoken to!!!) but because since he was surrendered to the care of this institution, there has been NO ONE who cares how he is treated.

And I see the changes that have come in K since the new director has made changes. He went from an eight year old boy weighing 22 pounds...

...to an 8.5  year old boy weighing 27 pounds. (Knowing what we know about him now, we're guessing from that smile that his Baba is in the room with him as this picture was taken!)

 

He looked SO MUCH better when we got these updated photos in January. But those 4T pajamas are deceiving. Even with a five-pounds-in-six-months gain in weight (that's almost a 25% gain!) he's still a VERY small fellow. If he's dressed for that photo anything like the way they dressed him the week we saw him, there are two or more layers of clothes underneath those footie pajamas. That's not "boy" you're seeing there - it's mostly added bulk.

But as I re-read that last sentence, I also have to say that there's plenty of "boy" in there. Somehow he has survived through some pretty severe obstacles, and we are SO excited to see who is he once he's got time to invest in something other than living through another hour.

I dreamed last night that he was home. I don't remember any details, but it is the first time that I remember dreaming about him. And I remember that it was good to have him home. Looking forward to having him home!

Addendum to Matt's thoughts

[Continued from Matt's thoughts at the end of our trip to meet K]

 I [Matt] realized in talking with some friends after we returned from our trip that I left out one very important piece of the bit I shared about Psalm 139.  The whole reason I was thinking about Psalm 139 was NOT because I knew what it said and so I went to look at that passage or think about it.  Rather, it was the passage the I read on the plane to K's country because it just happened to be where I was on my "read through the bible in a year" bookmark.  So essentially, as we were on our way to meet K, God was telling me that he had this whole timed out before K or I were ever born.

There have been a handful of times, like this, when I feel that God has very specifically spoken to me through his word.  There are always times when there are promises of God that are applicable to all believers that I can take hold of, but there are times when God has spoken to me through his word in direct response to my crying out to him.

Probably the most significant example of this came when Reuben was in the hospital for his first VEEG, the visit when he was diagnosed with epilepsy.  When we knew that we would be in the hospital with Reuben for 2 to 3 days, we packed a lot of books and toys to help Reuben occupy his time while hooked up to all his wires and monitors.  I also packed my bible to be able to read.  As I was there waiting to see if anything was going to show up on the VEEG, I couldn't help asking WHY.  Why was this happening, why was it happening to Reuben, etc.  At 16 months old, I figured it was pretty unlikely that Reuben had "done" something to deserve this.  I on the other hand had experienced in my own life the judgement and discipline of God for my own shortcomings and began to wonder if there was something that I had "done" that had brought about this turn of events with Reuben.  So I was wrestling with God as I was trying to make sense of the situation in which we found ourselves.

That first night at the hospital as I was trying to sleep, I pleaded with God that he would either end this period of testing/monitoring of Reuben by having nothing show up and never having to deal with this again, or having there being something very clear so that we knew what we were dealing with.  I must admit that I was hoping for the option where nothing would show up on the test and Reuben would be back to his normal and we would not have to deal with this anymore.  That however was not God's plan and God clearly answered the next day when Reuben had not one, but two classic grand mal seizures. Up until this point, the seizures that he had been having had been very mild in their manifestation and not as easy to recognize as seizures. These were recognizable.  The first one he had while in my arms as I was holding him for his nap.  On the one hand, this was a really difficult time...and yet not.  Difficult in the sense that Reuben was now officially diagnosed with epilepsy.  But yet not because God had been preparing both Andrea and I individually, and later together, to lose Reuben.  In fact, from the time we called the ambulance after his morning nap on Saturday, until the following Tuesday afternoon when he got in for testing, I was certain that he was going to die the next time we laid him down for a nap or for bed.  I even took this picture on Monday before his afternoon nap, figuring it might be the last picture I would have of him alive.

Even though Reuben was diagnosed on Wednesday, it was Friday before we were sent home as they wanted to do some brain imaging for Reuben, but since Thursday was Thanksgiving, we had to wait until Friday and they decided they wanted to continue the VEEG until then.  Friday we returned home, unpacked and tried to get back to our normal life.  Even though I had my bible with me in the hospital I did not actually get it out of the bag until the day we got home and I just picked up reading where my bookmark was from the day before we went into the hospital...John 9.  And these are the first words I read when I started reading... "As He passed by, He saw a man blind from birth.  And His disciples asked Him, “Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he would be born blind?”  Jesus answered, “It was neither that this man sinned, nor his parents; but it was so that the works of God might be displayed in him."

I could hardly believe what I was reading.  This was the exact answer to the question that I had been struggling with.  God was telling me that it was NOT Reuben's sin and it was NOT my sin that caused Reuben to have epilepsy (which later we would learn was actually just one symptom of the larger Ring 20 Chromosome Syndrome that Reuben has).  In fact, tying back to Psalm 139, God knew that every cell of Reuben's body was going to have Ring 20 before he was even in the womb, before he ever had the chance to sin.  The point of this was not to try to figure out who sinned.  The purpose of this was "so that the works of God might be displayed in him."  I have clung to this revelation and continue to cling to it.
If Reuben had come through that first stay in the hospital and would have just gone back to "normal," I am pretty sure that we would not be where we are in the adoption process with K.  We may not even be adopting at all. 

On a lighter note

Preparing to bring a new child into your home brings with it all sorts of large and small tasks. For our family, one of those pieces is that each child has to have a Christmas stocking. Back when I was in high school (and had lots of spare time because although I worked about 20 hours a week, I was home schooled, so I learned to budget my time to give me time to pursue other interests) I cross-stitched a stocking for myself. (My mom did one for herself, Dad, and my sister). Of course, when I met Matt, and we began wedding plans, part of that was stitching one for him. As a mother of only one child, it was no trouble to make one more from the series for Owen, and then I managed to get one done for Leah, too, though not for her first Christmas! Thankfully, by the time Reuben came along, my mom had taken up knitting, and was not using her cross stitched stockings anymore because she had knit new ones, so I was able to pick my dad's name out of his and stitch "Reuben" into it. And then, because Rinnah was a girl, I could do the same with my mom's stocking. There. Done.

And then, when she was a few months old, I decided I'd better be a little more proactive. My life no longer had room for leisure activities like cross stitching on a regular basis, so I made the practical move of starting a stocking that I kept only in the van. I could work on it while I was waiting at the drive through at the bank, or when Matt was driving. The challenge was how to know which gender pattern to choose? 50/50 chance - I went for a girl. ;) Over the course of a year, stitching only in the van, or on rare occasions when we were visiting my parents and I didn't have work to do in the evenings, I managed to get the stocking about 85% done. And then we committed to K! Back to square one!

I've been working on K's stocking since December, 2012, hoping to get it done before he arrived home. I knew I'd have a lot of time on my first visit to him, both with the plane time, layovers, and down time at our hotel. So with that intro, here are before traveling and after traveling shots. ;)

After

Before

Still plenty to go, but I felt I made good use of the week. ;) A family reunion coming up at the end of this month should also give it a boost.

Clear as a bell

I've written about how God DOES give us more than we can handle and that's very much the life that we've chosen to follow him into. But yesterday was also a beautiful reminder of how he is also a kind Father who knows that we are frail.

This week after the trip was not what I expected. I was surprised by how jarringly different the realities that were last week are from the realities of being back at home. Both Matt and I noticed how the first day back we were blown away by how very advanced Reuben was. Our framework for reference for a week had been K in comparison to the other two little boys we were with, and K was the biggest, the strongest, the most socially adept. I will post at some point about some reflections about being with him and being in his country, but I'm still sorting out the words for that.

But with that as a background, I was hit with a wave of uncertainty about all of the plans for this summer - particularly building the house addition. As we came home and reshuffled cash around after the expenses of the trip, I realized afresh that while I had felt like we were "done" paying for adoption related expenses (the home study is all paid for, our final primary agency's fees and the in-country fees were sent the week before we left, we paid for plane tickets, hotels, food, the visa fee, as well as all the related governmental and other incidentals that are needed for dossier prep. And shipping.) and being back here realized that we have to travel again. We have to do a bit more paper-chasing (and notarizing and apostilling) again. And that we are not done. AND, that so far as we know, in seven or eight weeks we're going to start digging a big hole, and once that starts, there's quite a bit that we need before THAT is complete. Yikes!

Thursday night I was brought to a point where I had to pour it all out before God, and ask him to show us if this is indeed where he wants us to be going, reminding him that we are following him here, and expecting that he is going to bring what is needed to finish the work.

It is foolish that I can come to this point, after all of the ways, small and BIG that he has repeatedly over the last 6 months shown us that we are walking in a path that he has chosen and has shown us that he can provide and orchestrate amazing things that we would never come up with on our own. But that's where I was. So I laid it all out for him, and waited for his response.

Loud. And. Clear. That's how he answered. Starting before 9am the next morning, when I picked up the phone, and it was a friend of ours who we haven't seen (besides at Matt's dad's funeral) in just over a year, so BEFORE Easter last year. She and her husband are a couple with a few more years experience in life than we have, and a couple that we greatly respect for their passion for the things of God. Godly role models are not as prevalent as we wish they were, but this couple fits that description. Matt and I had been talking in our last day in K's country about wanting to get together with this couple. We first and foremost just wanted to talk, to share with them where God has been leading us over this last year, and to be encouraged by them as we walk forward on this crazy adventure of trusting God with really big stuff. Secondarily, though, they own a landscaping business, and Matt's been thinking of seeing if they would let us borrow a skid-loader for some of the construction work this summer. But our reason for thinking of them Saturday was not at all connected to the practicalities of the skid loader, but just needing the godly encouragement. So when she called, I even asked her if Matt had tried calling them already this week! Like I thought, he hadn't, but it was incredible to me to be getting a call from HER! So not only did we have 20 minutes to quickly update each other on life and make tentative plans to get together at the end of the month, but also now the awkwardness of asking about the skid loader is greatly reduced since they initiated the contact. Wow. That caught my attention - is God giving me an answer about whether or not to keep working toward building?

After hanging up with her, I had time to finish our I800 application ("Petition to Classify Convention Adoptee as an Immediate Relative") which the kids and I dropped off at the post office after Reuben's therapy session. We need the approval on this to include with our second-stage dossier which is required before the government in K's country can initiate the court proceedings to finalize the adoption. After coming home, an email came in. It was from someone we have gotten to know a bit through email over the last months. She is a native of K's country, but living here with her husband and teaches at a university. She was drawn to K before we even committed to him, but was not able to pursue adopting him, but has a special place in her heart for K. She was emailing to ask if we would accept some of their tax refund as a contribution toward completing the adoption. Wow!! This would be answer number 2 - "Yes, Andrea, you are going in the right direction. Yes, I am more than capable of providing what you will need to do what I have set before you."

Then the [snail] mail came. Two things of significance were in the mail, only one of which I will mention here. Remember how at another point when I was wondering how all this was going to come together, I posted about how sweet friends of ours had offered a small monthly contribution toward adoption costs? In the mail was the second check they've sent us. Again, this is not an amount that is going to pay for plane tickets or anything, but it is enough to cover some of the paperwork side of things. A little here, a little there, all adds up. And God's answer #3 was "I can take care of those little things."

And, if three was not enough, we got a little bit of icing on the cake at supper time when our Bible study friends starting showing up for our Friday night gathering. One of the guys makes bi-weekly runs to a farmer for good eggs from happy hens. He takes everyone's orders and picks up however many everybody will need. We had told him earlier in the week that we didn't need any this time, partly because my brain was too full to think about eggs. But God's not too busy to think about eggs. Chad came into the house with two dozen eggs for us. He had gotten more than he needed. I think he was a little surprised by my reaction.

But look at this. The God who puts us in situations beyond our strength is the same God who was pleased to give me not one, not two, not three, but FOUR clear as a bell answers within 24 hours of asking him.

1a) I can surround you with people who will speak my truth to you, and
1b) I can take care of the THINGS you need to do this.
2) I can take care of the bigger costs associated with this. (We don't know yet the amount of this gift, but it's likely more than the amount of the #3 item on this list)
3) I can take care of the smaller costs associated with all of this.
4) I can even take care of the simple things, like the food you need to eat every day.

Matt and I ended the day more than satisfied that we had heard the answer to the question we had been asking.

I can't help but marvel at the tender mercy our God shows to frail creatures such as us.