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"?