Happy Mira

 I was joking with Mira's nurse that I'm up next! 

 What a great way for Mira to spend her morning. Her reclining chair makes it easy to get her into this position, and with the one-on-one care from her nurse, she can be there with no concern, because her nurse can easily suction or change position when Mira coughs or has other secretion issues. She's been dealing a lot lately with holding her urine, and then being really uncomfortable (her PT showed Matt a way we can hold her over our leg to put some pressure on her bladder to stimulate it to release, and it works most of the time), but she's also retaining a lot of fluid in her feet and lower legs, particularly on the left side.

 In the photo above, Mira's nurse is "milking" her feet and legs to help the reduce the pressure of the retained fluid. It works. Temporarily. But it's still better than nothing.

We're so grateful that we're able to have four mornings a week with this kind of attention for Mira!

(Still haven't touched her birthday post, but there's still a chance I'll get to it.)

Box surfing!

 

Krassi's here to show off his new sport (hard to get a clear photo because he doesn't hold still!) and to let you know that I started a nice post about Mira for her birthday last week, and maybe I'll finish it and post it someday! But today you just get Krassi. 

That boy - he's into triangles these days (he'll dig through our various sets of building blocks and pull out the triangles and drag them around the house with him all day) and boxes. Any time we get a box, I always give him a few days with it before it heads out to be recycled. Love that goofy, crooked grin!!

Made it to Fifteen!

Not counting Grandma G and Matt, we've reached the final birthday of the year as Mira turned 15 the day before Thanksgiving. In the spirit of giving thanks, we are so grateful for how generally healthy Mira has been over this past year. Especially this year with all of the limitations, it's been very nice to not have her spending weeks at a time in the hospital. Just two years ago was when she spent her birthday not only hospitalized, but in the PICU. (pediatric intensive care unit)

Oh, wait! Looking back at photos, it was three years ago that she was in the PICU on her birthday:

It was Bobbi who was in the hospital on Mira's birthday two years ago:

And since I'm reminiscing about late Novembers spent in the hospital, it was ten years ago that we had our first hospital stay with any of our kiddos when Reuben first got his diagnosis of epilepsy.

That diagnosis was one of two events in my life that break all of my experiences into "before" and "after." Reuben's diagnosis forever changed the direction that our lives would take, including being a major piece of what led us to the events (Krassi's, and then Bobbi and Mira's, adoption(s)) that led to the existence of this blog. Ten years.

[Deleted is the start of some other thoughts that were developing deeper, but I've got to just post this and move on - time is limited!]

ice cream Mondaes are back!

 We're not back on full lock-down here in MN like we were in the spring, but we are on "pause" where we can go shopping and all of that stuff, but no socializing of any sort with anyone outside of your own household is allowed for the next four weeks. 

For most of us, that's not a super huge deal, since we do all of our socializing with people who ARE part of our immediate household, but since it's also coupled with school reverting back to full distance learning, it means that we are all just really home most of the time, so it feels more like the spring lock down than anything else we've had in the months since. 

So, the kids very quickly thought we needed to bring back Ice Cream Mondaes. What's for supper? Ice cream, and anything you can think of that you want to put on it.

No ice cream (left) - she just wanted to share her smiling face!

Makes for easy meal planning! Tonight we had apples, mandarin oranges, pretzals, peanuts, pecans, frozen blueberries, mini chocolate chips, peanut butter, sprinkles, bacon, and graham cracker crumbs. No parsnips. :)

School at home

After the school year beginning with some of our kids (Owen, Krassi, Reuben, and Bobbi) in our public school district's hybrid model (two days of distance learning, one day at home with no formal stuff, and two days in class...though for Owen, his start date was the last to be phased in...) we are now in a fully distance learning scenario, which started the week that Owen was supposed to finally get to go to two days of classes in person! Poor guy. 

Our academic goals for this year are pretty simplistic:

1. learn something (by spring 2021 know *something* more than you did fall 2020)
2. do stuff you wouldn't normally get to do in a normal year.

For our physically capable kids, item number two has included some nice long bike rides, ranging from 6 miles (in which the younger girls did all of their own biking) to 29 miles (in which we left the younger two at home, put Ebby in the trailer, and Mom, Owen, Leah and Rinnah biked to Hudson, WI!)

One thing we all learned from that experience (so goal number one!) is that a 12 or 13 mile bike ride is really nothing, so we did that with Gloria and Evania along as well, though Owen rode Huckleberry so the little girls could swap back and forth between riding with Owen and riding their own little bike so their legs had a chance to keep up! After a few technical difficulties...

...we were back on the road. There they are - six of my ten, clambering all over a little trickle of a stream running under an abandoned railroad trestle.

As much as I treasure these days together, they are not without a pang of longing for the ones I've left behind. And not that it's not *possible* to get more of them out with us - Krassimir can ride Huckleberry, and Reuben has a bike that can be converted to trail behind me or Owen, but it needs adjustments that didn't make it to the top of the list this summer, and some days it's just more work than I can get myself geared up for.

The accomplishment of this year's goals is still happening for the others, but it just looks different.

Here's Krassi doing some of his homework: self-feeding! For a guy for whom eating is still a hateful part of the day, having him participate is pretty fantastic. As you can see, he requires a lot of coaching, but he can do it! I'm particularly proud of the way he manages to finish each bite in such a way that he can get every last bit off the spoon - that's not easy to learn!

Tsvetomira's days are still just a back and forth between her cozy cushion corner and her chair, between contended sleeping, and the sometimes-agony of voiding and stooling. But she's been enjoying her once a week trip to PT, and Dad has learned a few tricks that every now and then he has time to put to use with her. Here she is doing some weight bearing on her elbows at the table.

Ebenezer continues to take great delight in Mira's nurse who comes in four mornings a week. "Hi, 'tine!" he says, "Check on Mira, check on Mira?" They have a daily routine of him helping her "chart" while Mira gets her "shake shake" (vest treatment for respiratory function).

Bobbi's obviously had an interesting year with starting her new job - it's already been two months that she's been working at Kwik Trip! Also new just last week is a Foods class she's taking at the local technical college through her post-high school transition program. Even though all of the students have been transitioned to full distance learning with the increasing cases of COVID in our state and county, the technical college students are still able to do some of their learning in person. Here she is making a pumpkin pie. She still needs a lot of help, but has also continued to develop her skills. My favorite thing lately is when she's helping to bake anything and we're practicing math by having her work with the quantities, she almost automatically doubles or triples everything...because that's just how we do it around here!! Multiplication skills, here we come.

And I realize that this has turned into a little update on almost everyone except Reuben, so in the interest of him not being left out, here's a recent shot of Reuben:

Twinning with Dad. :) Although we've seen a lot of good changes since the introduction of his new diet in Feb and March, he's still just got a lot of rough spots that he deals with. We'll have weeks (like this one) where vomiting is a daily (or more!) occurrance, and nights where his default-tooth-grinding is nearly non-stop...and he insists on sleeping in our bed...with his head resting on my skull...and we let him because sometimes you get more rest with a tooth-grinder on your skull than you do when he keeps climbing out of his own bed and needing to be put back in. It's also easier to monitor for seizures when he's on top of me. Hard to miss.

One of his new frequent words is, "river." We've taken as many chances as we can to get him to a variety of moving bodies of water over this unusual fall where winter keeps pretending to come and then fall returns. It's so good for him to have something to do that is active and doesn't involve his iPad.

So there's a little view into some of what's happening around here!

Not a real post

 Hello, readers! One of you sent me a contact this morning through the blog, and I just sat down to reply to it, and apparently the reply email address was entered incorrectly, because my reply bounced back to me! So, "L", if you want to try again, I'll send the reply that I wrote! 

(And I'm starting a simple little update with some photos and a video to hopefully be up tomorrow!)

Bobbi's birthday

 She's no longer a teenager! And we will never again have *five* teenagers in the house at one time. Bobbi is officially 20 years old.

Although we did not have the big party that's always meant so much to her in the past, we had just a nice pleasant day with a variety of little things that she appreciated fully, which in itself is a testament to some of the growing up that she'd done.

It's a day off school! (End of quarter)

She and Dad went out for dinner at the place they've gone for three birthdays in a row now.

She baked brownies to share with her physical therapist (whose birthday is the day after hers).

She helped bake a cake (chocolate-coffee layer cake with coffee buttercream frosting, bananas in between the layers, and Reese's peanut butter cups chopped on top) which we ate with ice cream after she and Dad got back from their supper.

She got not a lot of presents, but I don't think I've ever seen her as genuinely happy about the gifts she got than she has this year. In (roughly) her words, they're all things that she's going to use and they won't just sit on her shelf! 

Her favorite gift was a HUGE set of nice colored pencils from Grandma and Grandpa F. Now she has every color she could possible need.

Garbage night

 Just a small glimpse of everyday life around here:

This is the view into our garbage can before Owen makes the final rounds to take it down to the curb. Over the course of the week, this is pretty much a standard representation of the stratification of the garbage can: a thick layer of diapers (all the colored plastic bags are diapers), and one Target bag with our household trash.

That's a lot of diapers!

Tsvetomira's quilt

 It's finally done. :) I've been taking our movie nights as a chance to do hand sewing (which I do on the quilt binding), and then added a few little touches during the days after, so it's finally DONE!

Matt suggested we keep it in her to-the-hospital bag, which we thankfully have not been using very often lately, so that everyone who sees her with it will know that she is special to us.

She'll never get to see the quilt, or have any idea that it's any different from anything else we use to keep her warm, but we know that she doesn't have to be able to see and understand to still be worth investing time in! Every one of our kids has one that I've made just for them (well, not Eben yet. His is next!)

I tried something new on Mira's - "writing" with the sewing machine!

"Daughter"

"Sister"

"...Sammi."

 Last night, marking four years since we met the girls, we looked at a few of the pictures we had of that first day we met them, four years ago today (Sept 16, 2016). I don't know that Ebby has seen these photos, and he looked at this one with the wheels turning in his head (and, let me tell you, the wheels are ALWAYS turning in that little boy's head!) and after a pause he declared, "Sammi." Sam is a neighbor/second cousin once removed/regular feature around our house kind of person, and yes, there are some similarities between her and Bobbi, particularly the pre-hair cut Bobbi!

That was quite an intense day, meeting BOTH of these girls just a few short hours apart.

I remember both being kind of awed that Gloria didn't bat an eye about being on Bobbi's lap - she wasn't a super stranger-anxiety sort of kid, but at eight months old, really did prefer Mom, and then Dad, to anyone else. AND I remember being so glad that she napped through most of that first visit with Mira. I was grateful to not have any distractions as we wrestled through the many-layered difficulties of that visit.

Still a long way to go before our days together outweigh the years apart, but to have known Bobbi four years out of her nearly twenty puts us at 20%, which is a number that's starting to have a bit of weight to it!

First day of work

 I can't remember - did I mention that Bobbi got a job??!!! She's been working with a placement agency since the end of March (yes - what a great time to start looking for a job, huh?) and we've taken our time getting her resume together, meeting fairly infrequently (via Zoom), and finally a position that her coach had thought of at the very beginning as being a good fit for her opened up, and it's not TOO far from our house! A few steps later, and she's officially hired, and today was her first day of (paid) training.

She'll get an actual shirt with the company logo in the next few weeks, but for starters is just supposed to wear a white polo shirt. I had the brilliant idea of shopping in the kids' section, and managed to get two of these for $5 each at Target. Because she likes them big, I had to go for the XXL-Husky, which we've all gotten a big kick out of because Bobbi isn't extra large and isn't what you'd describe as "husky." But the price was right and the fit is good, and it's only for a few weeks anyway.

So, you may be wondering, what is she doing??? She's going to be a Food Product Demonstrator at Kwik Trip! We think it's going to be a great fit for her, both in catering to her strengths (she says she's shy, but she really does a great job of talking with people once she gets warmed up, she's interested in food), and stretching her (getting over the shyness, working a job that could be a "career" job for her, not just a short term position like last summer), and it meshes well with her physical limitations (the kitchen does all the prep - she just offers it to the guests and passes out coupons while she interacts with them, she doesn't have to be moving all over the store). She starts at 15 hours a week, which is going to be just right - not so much that it's crazy, but enough that it will take up some of her empty time. 

She's done SO well this spring and summer managing her time and finding ways to keep herself busy with a variety of activities, but adding work into the mix is going to be a really good thing. She's looking forward to having less time to waste on Facebook and YouTUBE, as she recognizes that she still fights with a tendency toward a screen addiction from years of that being her life back in BG. Nothing like having something useful to do to counter that!

This morning was her first day of training. Tomorrow is another day of computer based training, and then next week she'll begin some job-specific on-site training for two days and then will move up to four afternoons a week as her regular routine.

We're so proud of her!

Note from Lili

 Big caveat: Google translate can usually capture the general gist of something, but is NOT NOT NOT a very good translation tool! You've now been fairly warned. :)

With that warning, here's a message from Lili I received earlier today:

Words of gratitude I want to write for you and all the good people who extend your warm hand for the good you do for me and my life! I sincerely and heartily want to express my THANKS to you dear family and to all those who participated in raising the money I received. THANK YOU for your humanity and attitude towards me! I wish you health, professional success and constant motivation to continue to give meaning to life. BE HEALTHY AND BLESSED!

Two more days

In two more days I'll be sending Lili her monthly rent money, along with what you have helped us raise to help pay off her debt. When she first approached us, she had three different loans over her - two to different banks and one to an individual. Matt and I were able to give her enough to pay off the smallest one (a bank loan) and to give a token amount to the man to whom she's indebted. We are getting surprisingly close through what you are contributing to having enough to send to her to finish paying him back, meaning that she will have just one bank loan left. What a gift! She will not yet be free of all of her debt, but there will be great freedom for her to not have this man continually on her for the money she owes him - what a joy to be able to do this for her!

Here's where we are today, with one gift as small as $10 and one as large as $4000, and seriously everything in between, all together...

Happy Krassi

 Ebenezer is watching me put these photos up, and he's saying, "Up the hill!" "Klassi strong." "Klassi happy, happy!" That pretty much sums it up! (Rose took these one day after she and Krassi had dropped Bobbi off for physical therapy and were waiting for Krassi's speech therapy session to start. What a great time for a little bit of practice sitting up and wheeling himself - doesn't get many chances to do that these days when he's not in school!)

Excess and Comfort

I'm trying to clean the house up a bit (a lot?) before school starts next month. Partly that's because I always like to have things more in order before school, partly it's because I'm really going to need things in order before school starts because I'm guaranteed to have a lot more going on this fall than I'm used to during the school year and that leads into the last part which is that since we don't know what our public school district is going to be doing in five weeks when they start (later than usual start date), I don't quite know how to plan what my home schooled kids' schedules are going to be like! But that's all kind of beside the point. The point is, I'm cleaning.

See?

Oh. That doesn't look clean to you? (Hi, Mira!) Well, I'm only half-way there - give me another week. It looked worse last week! Let's try the kitchen island. Matt and I worked together and got that done over the weekend:

Wait. That doesn't look clean to you, either? Well, let's just say it does to me! Because I only see things that are EASY to put away or that will be gone by the end of the day (fresh sour dough bread doesn't last long around here!)

And while I was cleaning, I found a birthday card from my grandparents with my birthday check still inside of it.

Once again, the incredible degree of abundance that so many of us live with struck me. Here's a check for $100 and we're so provided for that I can forget it's there!! Sitting there in my hand was a piece of paper worth more than a month's worth of living expenses for at least one-fourth of the population of the world, and its temporary absence in our household wasn't even noticed!! That's coming from a large family that lives only a moderate percentage above what is considered "poverty" in the United States (as per the federal guidelines.) We try regularly to talk with our children about the incredible abundance that we have, and that God has not given us this abundance to make ourselves comfortable.

Someday we will all have to stand before God and give an account for what we have done with what we had during our lifetime. I think often of his injunction to us to love him with all of our heart and all of our mind and all of our soul and all of our strength. Bobbi and I in particular will regularly talk about how we could put the emphasis in a different place as well. We are to love him with all of our strength, with all of our heart. I'm not to love with your strength or your mind, and you are not to love with my heart or my soul. We are only accountable for what we do with what we do have.

So today I just want to encourage you to look at what you DO have and think about how you are using it. Part of the reason that I have so much house-cleaning/sorting/tidying to do is because of the abundance of possessions that we have in our family. Really - look at all of the food sitting just on that island counter!

We have a command from Jesus - a simple command, really:

Give to everyone who begs from you, and from one who takes away your goods do not demand them back. (Luke 6:30, and again in Matthew 5)

Lili has asked all of us for help, and we (Matt and I) are being her voice through the venue of this blog because on her own, she has no way to ask you. And we are so grateful to those of you who have already shared (and I know there are still some of you who have told me that you will be mailing a check, so I know that number on the right is not done going up - but it does include something that showed up in the mail today as well as my birthday present!), but I also want to recognize that the needs in this world are so immense that helping Lili is just a drop in the bucket. SO many needs. A family that our church helps to support as they have given up everything they had here to invest in unreached people in India was back in town a few weeks ago because they, as "tourists" instead of "missionaries" were not allowed to stay when everything closed down. They gathered with some of us for Sunday lunch (outside!) to share about what they'd been seeing and doing, and one thing they mentioned has been chillingly in my head ever since. A few weeks after they left, they received an email from a man they'd been working closely with during their time there, and he included a picture that he'd taken of the street where day laborers were hanging outside their homes after committing suicide because they were faced with the choice of that or starvation. If you're a day laborer and you're told to "Shelter at Home," every day that you do that is a day you (and your family) don't eat. The current crisis in this world is so incredibly huge that not a single one of us can be more than just a drop in the bucket. In some ways, that's freeing, though, isn't it? Because (in line with his command to love him with all of our strength and not all of someone else's), Jesus' command in Luke is not "solve the problem of world hunger" or "eliminate poverty" (both of which are impossible for any of us - worthy goals, yes, but possible for me to do? No) but rather "give to everyone who asks of you." Not one of us can, even if we're trying, hear all of them, but the ones that we CAN hear, those are the ones we're responsible for what we choose to do.

So that's where I want to leave you (and me!) Are you (am I?) using the resources that you (I!) do have to obey Jesus for the people that you (we) can hear asking for help. Because that's all that we're asked to do.

[Two links I want to include here: first is for a short article about the verse above that I really appreciate. Second is a link for an organization that our friends who were in India recommended as an organization that is able to effectively get funds into India to be used to buy food for families who are struggling to an even greater degree than normal. Because I know Lili is only one of many, many people who are begging for help right now. *You* know where God is telling you to give. Go ahead and do it!]

Thank you!

It has been so encouraging to us to see those of you sharing with Lili! We had no idea what to expect when we started this. So far we've had six people with a whole range of dollar amounts, totaling up to the $4565.56 that you see in the side bar! (Side comment from a number nerd - what a fun number to type! All those repeating digits...)

As I was talking a bit about Lili tonight with Evania (6) and Gloria (4.5) before going to sleep, Evania commented that it reminded her of Jesus' commentary on the widow and the rich man giving in the temple. I agreed with her. The dollar amount isn't so much what matters as the heart behind the giving. As we prayed, Gloria asked God to give Lili the money she needs so she can have a place to live. (So some of the details are missing, but explaining debt is complicated, so that's what she pulled out of it!) Then she asked me where God gets his money! I love talking about this stuff with them. I told her that one way he moves his money around is by talking to his people - when we love him, we love and care about the things/people that he loves and cares about, and because we love him more than our money, we are happy to give where he wants us to give.

The amount that Lili needs to be completely debt free is significant. I don't know that we're going to get there, even with what has been given so far, but that again is God's deal. As any of you are praying over this, would you please pray with us and for us that we would be able to communicate clearly with Lili about what is going on here. Yes, we want her to have her needs met here by the closest thing she may have to a family surrounding her, but as I was thinking today, there are so many places where Paul especially talks about our relationship with God as one of adoption. It is too late for Lili to be adopted by an earthly family, but there is a Father for whom it is NOT too late for her to be adopted. Your giving is giving us a very practical opportunity through which to share with Lili the hope that is offered, not only for this life, but for eternity.

Have to brag a bit about my kids

First is Krassi's turn. He's been having physical therapy twice a week again for a while now, and for the last few months, it's been a teletherapy session. (Yes. Figure that out. It means the therapist tells us what to do and either me or Rose does the actual work!) But this week's first session was by far the best I've seen him do! He was fast and strong and accurate at all of things we tried: getting up onto hands and knees, sitting unsupported while pulling suction cups off the mirror, and then pulling up to standing using the ballet barre. (Yes, we have ballet barres in our basement!)

Look how tall and straight his back is, and how high he's holding up his head! He's even doing a great job using his eyes and not just the sense of touch to see where the suction cups are.

And Bobbi has big news - she had not really an interview, but a "meet and greet" sort of thing at Kwik Trip where she's got a lead on a job as a Food Product Demonstrator! She's been working with someone at a job placement agency, and this looks like it could turn into a great part-time job for her! The job hasn't actually been posted yet, but our person at the agency has some connections, so knew they were thinking about expanding this part of the services they offer, and thought Bobbi would be a good fit for the job because of her interest in food and her great smile and ability to share her opinion freely and frankly and engage with people!

I was so proud of Bobbi and the way she conducted herself. She was much more confident than she was at her "interview" for the position she had last summer. She took the initiative to do the talking instead of waiting for me, and she did a great job of sharing what she knew without sounding like she was talking herself up, all while self-advocating for her needs. This happened mostly with some of the questions she was asking about food-safety things as they relate to her disability (how will I keep my hands clean, because if I wash them in the bathroom at the sink, then I have to touch my wheels to get back where I'm working, and I don't want to give customers food with dirty hands?) When they discussed gloves, she agreed that it was a good idea, but told the store leader that she does need help putting gloves on. She did great - she was friendly, and professional, and herself all at the same time.

Even better, last night I told her I needed to take a few minutes to tell her how very proud I was of her (which is something she's very resistant to), and she let me do so! I think I'm even more proud of her being willing to accept my specific and glowing praise as I was about the thing I was praising her for in the first place! We're excited, and think this could be a great job for her for potentially even the next few years. Fifteen flexible hours a week is enough to be worth it, and yet still gives her enough time for the other things that currently fill her days (therapies, school again, eventually, and her reading and coloring).

Lifetime orphan

When we adopted Bobbi, she was at the very end of the window of eligibility for adoption. Every country's limits are different. Some make the cut-off as early as 14 years. Some, like Bulgaria, allow the commitment documents that begin the adoption process to be submitted up until the day they are sixteen years old. When we first met Bobbi a few months before she turned sixteen one of the things we told her is that our adopting her meant that she would be our daughter for life - "family" isn't just something she would have until she was a legal adult at age eighteen. We told her that she would be provided for and cared for, and that for any child that was born to us, we intended to spend at least eighteen years ensuring they had a safe place to live, food to eat, clothes to wear, and that she was no exception.

Hard to believe this was almost four years ago!

Being adopted means that you are not just no longer a child with no parents, you are no longer a person with no family. Because, for better or for worse, a family is something that you have for life! And children don't stop needing their parents just because they're 18 (or 30 or 40!) and parents don't stop caring for their kids when their children reach legal adulthood.

On the flip side, though, NOT being adopted means that you are not only a child with no parents, but are destined to be a person without a family...for life. Once these kids hit fourteen or sixteen, or whatever the cut off is, they are, for the rest of their lives, orphans. Orphans aren't just cute (or not-so-cute!) little kids. Orphans come in all shapes and sizes and ages and races.

I remember having a phone call with Toni, our adoption lawyer, a few months after Bobbi came home. There were a couple things we wanted to chat about, but one thing that was heavy on my mind was the other young adults living in Bobbi's home. I knew that in the past at age 18 they were either sent off to make their own way in the world, or, in the case of a more significant handicap (either mental or physical), they would be transferred to an adult mental institution. We learned from her that with some of the reforms happening in the system that included the new smaller scale group homes that Bobbi had been living in, some of the children would have the ability to stay there for a few more years of transition into young-adulthood. But the reality of the statistics was sobering: of the young women who "graduated" from state care, 70% end up living a life of prostitution. Of the young men, a slightly higher percentage end up in jail. It's not a pretty picture.

And really, how could it be? For those of you who have kids or have parents who cared at all for you, think about how much time and effort parents put into preparing their kids for life? They encourage them in their education, they help them think about and plan for the future, they help them get their first jobs, learn how to manage money and manage a household. Your family is where you first learn to trust and what it is to love and be loved. Yes, some parents/families do a better job than others, but as a general rule, this is a big part of what parents do. And after you move out at eighteen (or later!) your parents are still there for you.

Born six months after we brought Krassimir home, every interaction we had with Evania carried with it a depth of importance that I hadn't really thought about with my other birth-kids. There's serious life-preparation going on here! (Besides that photo being a serious old-timer! I think Owen's only nine years old there!)

To put it bluntly, the post-communist type orphanage system is NOT one that excels at raising kids in a way that prepares them for adulthood, and there's nothing like putting an unprepared eighteen year old kid out on the streets with a small chunk of cash to make a recipe for hopelessness!!! Suddenly they're out there, with no experience, no support system, no one to turn to if things are rough. If you add to that the additional complications of attachment disorders, institutional delays, institutional behaviors, it's pretty much guaranteed to be a disaster.

We have a friend named Lili who I introduced briefly a few days ago. She is roughly my age. She was abandoned by her parents to a Bulgarian institution at birth. She has limb differences (she wears a prosthetic leg and has abnormal digits on her hands), but is able to get around independently despite her odd gait. She always has a smile on her face. She loves animals - dogs, pigeons, cats - you name it! She is Roma, which, if you know anything about Bulgarian culture, is in itself a tremendous disadvantage. (Here's a current article outlining a bit of the discrimination the Roma people experience - you can find many more if you're interested.) She was, and still is, and always will be, an orphan.

After growing up in the same orphanage that Bobbi spent most of her years in, Lili hit that magic age of eighteen, but by some stroke of luck was allowed to stay as one of the staff at the orphanage helping to care for the younger children. Bobbi has quite early memories of Lili working with her and the other kids. Lili is the one that Bobbi credits with teaching her how to read.

At some point along the way, Lili's time at the orphanage came to an end, and she made her way to Sofia where she found a job working as a preschool teacher for Roma children. However, she also found "friends" who got her into situations where she made foolish mistakes that ended her up in a huge pile of debt. They used her, and then they left her. So now she's alone, friendless, and with substantial debt looming over her that she doesn't know how she will ever escape. She's got so many counts against her, and nobody to turn to!

She is one of the caregivers that Bobbi connected with on facebook after coming home, and about a year and a half ago, she kind of poured out her heart and her troubles to Bobbi (which I would agree, yes, is not the appropriate channel to do so, but what were her options?) and through an interesting turn of events, we arranged to start sending her a small chunk of money each month so she could rent a tiny apartment. She had been homeless for some time, living at the school where she'd been teaching, and living in constant fear that she would be found out and kicked out. Because she's got these loans against her, the bank skims off most of what she gets from her small paycheck, leaving her in a truly hopeless situation.

When this first came to our attention, we weren't sure what to do. It sounded like a classic take-advantage-of-the-rich-Americans kind of scheme, and yet...the plight of orphans is one that has long captured our attention - a calling that God has put on our lives because HE is a God who cares about widows and orphans, and he is also the one who has told us to give to those who ask (Matthew 5:24). She told us roughly how much she thought she would need for rent each month; we told her we would find a way to get that to her each month. She did some more looking, and guess what - rent was actually going to be about a third again as much as she'd originally told us AND she needed a chunk extra for a signing fee. And, oh yes, a bit more for a hot water heater for the bathroom. Boy did we feel like we were just maybe being taken! But you know what, we decided that was God's deal, and we were going to continue moving forward with it. Would you believe that very week we got a letter from our health insurance company telling us that our premiums for the upcoming year were going to be about the amount Lili needed less than the current year? Have you EVER heard of such a thing from an insurance company??? Nope. Me neither. And so onward we went, knowing that the next year's premiums would probably more than make up for this decrease, but not missing the timing of these two events right now.

Last summer when we made our trip to Bulgaria, Lili offered to let us stay in her apartment for the days that we were in Sofia. We agreed to do so for some of our stay, knowing that she would want us to, and also enjoying the experience of NOT being in a hotel. (We've had a few travel opportunities when we've gotten to do that in the past - a classmate's uncle let six of us crash at his house during a three-day field trip to Chicago when we were in graduate school, or a visit to my sister's when she and her husband lived in Amsterdam.) We enjoyed our time with Lili so much. She was so proud to show us around her tiny apartment, and she made a point of showing us the hot water unit in the bathroom!

She joined us on some of our exploring excursions, showing us some of her favorite places to spend her days and just chatting happily with Bobbi (because her English is about as limited as our Bulgarian!) She wouldn't let us do *anything* for her - not even treat her to a snacky breakfast sandwich at the little outdoor vendor across the street. (A sausage/bread concoction was the equivalent of about $0.75. She wouldn't take it. But she DID happily take Bobbi's leftovers later to feed to the local pigeons in her favorite park area!) We told her we wanted to have her join us for dinner on our last night, and had a time and place all set...and then she messaged Bobbi a few hours before and told her that she wasn't feeling well with an upset stomach and had to cancel. I'm sure it was just too hard for her to accept anything else from us, and that she had no concept of how little it would cost to treat her to something special.

I love this dear woman. I admire her so much. The way she toughs through her disability with a constant smile on her face, the gentleness and concern she shows for the animals living in her city, the delight with which she talks about the children she works with. But she is heavily burdened by the weight of the debt she's under, and even though through us she's provided with the basic necessity of a place to live, she longs to live free. A few weeks ago she unburdened her worries onto Bobbi again and asked her to ask us if we knew of any way to help her. I've been messaging directly with her via facebook (and the infamous google translate) and gotten details on her loans - she's got three different loans against her, two to two different banks, and one to an individual. Our hope was that we could perhaps use the money we've been saving up for the garage next summer to help her get back to ground zero and push our project out another year, but honestly, what we have saved is not enough. In some ways I'm glad, because it means that we, too, are left leaning on God to solve this problem, if he so chooses.

So I'm going to do something on this blog that we have not been comfortable doing for ourselves. I'm going to ask you who are reading if helping this woman is something God would have you do. I really don't think I've currently got enough readers that even with your help we're going to erase her debt entirely, but wouldn't it be amazing if she could get a small sense of what it is to be part of a family and know what it is to have a group of people rally around her to help her out?

She shared something with me this morning [well, the morning I started this post!] that I'm going to (via the aforementioned infamous google translate, so bear with some of the awkwardness) share with you:

"Hello, dear dear family! I want to THANK you again for everything you do for me and for my existence in the big city of Sofia. I grew up in an institution without parents since I was a child and I had not prepared myself for the real reality of life, despite my advanced age and long years of loneliness and only loneliness. I made mistakes in my life that I want to correct and be filled again with a smile on my face...I haven't received a clean salary for a very long time because I have a loan...I want to be independent and not have any loans and credits. To pay rent and everything - electricity, water, food..."

She continued, sharing her dreams of someday being a wife and mother, and living a responsible life. But she feels trapped by the despair of the weight of this debt that is over her and she has no way of paying it back. On her meager salary (and I don't believe she's able to be working at all now with the pandemic, which I'm guessing is why this is coming to a head again with her), her debt is slowly growing as she just does not have the means to pay it back, so she sees no way out. So much in her note from this morning grabs me. First of all, her "I had not prepared myself for the real reality of life." I read that and I think, first of all, I admire the way she takes full responsibility for where she's at. She's not blaming those who took advantage of her. And second of all I think, we humans weren't designed to have to prepare ourselves for the reality of life - we were designed to have families to help us with that! And communist-era Eastern European institutions have never been known for their great skills in preparing handicapped, ethnically persecuted children with the tools they need to be successful in life! And the loneliness - I have blogged only tangentially and superficially about the ugliness of what abandonment and neglect does to a baby, toddler, young child, teenager because I don't want to dump all of Bobbi's junk out on the internet for everyone to see, but let me tell you it is UGLY what it does to a human being to grow up without someone to love them!!! It damages so many fundamental things about what it is to relate to those around you - who to trust and how to trust and even the ability to trust, and then, as in Lili's case, she tried to trust - wanted to trust, wanted to love, but with no skills whatsoever, got burned, and everything nasty that you've ever believed about your own unworthiness and unloveableness gets thrown back in your face. Lili amazes me with her ability to keep on, to NOT be afraid to dream, and that's why I'm going to use this connection that I have with those of you who read this blog to ask: would you be willing to share some of what you have been given to make a difference in the life of this orphan for whom it's too late to have a "real" family, but to whom we have been given the opportunity to be a family to her?

Matt and Bobbi with Lili last summer as we were leaving Lili's apartment for the last time. Yes, this is the apartment on the seventh floor with the elevator that sometimes works...and sometimes doesn't. YOU try walking up seven flights of stairs with a prosthetic leg! Lili is amazing.

Walking through Lili's favorite Dog Park by the European Union building.

As we've mulled this over for the last few weeks, we've decided to not go with a formal fund-raising platform. In the spirit of being family I'd rather go about it in a more personal way and through that avoid the fees associated with using internet fund raisers. Please see her, and ask if this is something you are supposed to be doing. If you want to help her out and have our address, you can send a check, or drop something off at our house. You can use paypal (glewwes at gmail dot com). If you don't have our address, but would prefer that method, send me an email. Matt and I were able to send enough extra with our last transfer to her to pay off the smallest of the three loans and part of what she owes the individual. Whatever we collect between now and the end of August I will send to her at that point when we send her rent.

The pain and loneliness of being an orphan doesn't stop when you turn eighteen. We have a chance to do something about it for this one! Will you help us be Lili's "family"?

Twins

Got home from church today and noticed that Krassimir and I were twins! Here's a not-so-great selfie as proof. 😊

Sitting on the stairs is really hard work for Krassi! Trying to do it while Mom's asking him to look at the camera is even tougher!

So here's a smilier one where I've got him on my lap so he's better supported. Holding that head up and smiling at the same time isn't as hard to do, then!

Meet Lili...

...well, you may remember "meeting" her a year ago when we were in Bulgaria. I'll have more to say in a few days. In the meantime, I wanted to share her smiling face...and this cute little hedgehog she found!

(From last year: Bulgaria trip part 1 and part 2)

Completion

...I always pray with joy...being confident of this: that he who began a good work in you will carry it on to completion at the day of Christ Jesus. Philippians 1:4,6

How many times am I reminded of this in my own life, or is an encouragement that I share with others - there's this tension of the "already/not yet" sort of living day by day as a follower of Jesus. The author of Hebrews says it well, too: For by one sacrifice he has made perfect forever those who are being made holy. (10:14) The verb tenses used there are significant: "has made" is past perfect tense - something that has been done and completed in the past. "Being made" is a very present tense verb - this is what's happening RIGHT NOW. We are in the process of being made holy, and Paul gives us above the time frame for when that's going to be finished.

Guess what Matt and I did a few weeks ago - we finished putting up the last of the siding (the horizontal wood boards) on his office of the west addition!

We began that project over seven years ago. And through all of those seven years, when we looked at that office, that is what Matt and I saw, even though everyone else just saw this:

from 2015

It's pretty neat to finally have what we've been able to see all along be visible to the rest of the world! And, like so many other things in life, our little lives here give us little glimpses into the truth of the bigger picture of what God's up to, what he is like. He, too, has a design for the lives of his people, and even though we can't always see it, either in ourselves or in others, that doesn't mean he can't see it, and it doesn't mean that there won't be a day when everyone will see it.

Oh, to see with eyes that can see what he sees. Come, Lord Jesus!!!