In 1999, after much prayer, God made it possible for my husband and I to fly to Ukraine in search of our forever child! The process was long, overwhelming, expensive and emotionally exhausting! Back then; you were not assigned a child ahead of time. You had to physically travel to the orphanage and go through a selection process. My husband and I were not prepared for the emotional roller coaster that we were about to go on!
We arrived to the orphanage and sat in the director’s office and in came a parade of beautiful children! There must have been almost a dozen children ranging in age from 2 to 6 years old…that alone was enough to secretly make me want to go back home! They were all so precious and sweet and all deserved to know the love of a family. We could not stop crying and at one point we wanted to take them all home! I kept asking God to please reveal to us “our child’ and sure enough it did not take long for our hearts to melt and fall in love with Alec. He was a 21-month-old adorable little boy with very blonde hair and big blue eyes.
We immediately knew that he was the child that we had been praying for and shared with the director our choice. She was concerned because at almost 2 years old he had never spoken a word plus he showed signs of being developmentally delayed. But then again, so did most of them. So, we did the only thing that we knew how to do, pray…pray…pray!!!
Within ours of God revealing to us that Alec was the one, we quickly started our paperwork to make the adoption final. We were in Ukraine for almost a month and by the time we left Alec was vocalizing words like: hi, bye, mama and papa! It was very clear that he had never spoken because no one had ever taken the time to teach him. Oh, and right before we left we accidentally found out that Alec had a 10 month old baby brother in the orphanage that was extremely developmentally delayed, as well!
We arrived back home excited to start doing life with our son. We immediately plugged him into all the therapies available to him. Between speech, physical and occupational, the proper nutrition and tons of love Alec was able to catch up and thrive in no time!!! He left Ukraine weighing 18 pounds and gained 10 pounds his first month home. It was incredible the progress that he made in such a short time. Within a year we were back in Ukraine adopting his younger brother, Nicky!
Nicky seemed to be worst off physically. He was the same age that Alec was when we adopted him, 21 months. However, he only weighed 12 pounds and did not walk nor showed any signs of walking any time soon. He had minimal movement of the legs and was diagnosed with retardation of the muscles…whatever that means! By then, we were ready to take on the challenge and knew he would do great with the right therapies and physical activities. Sure enough, we plugged him into all the therapies as well and he was walking within a month and discharged from ALL therapies 3 months later! Nicky has always been an active boy, loves to run and is a starter for the Florida Christian Varsity Football Team!!!
I would be misleading you if I told you that it has always been easy. We have faced many challenges, especially with Alec. He has had a hard time attaching emotionally and it has not been easy for him or any of us but we have done the most important thing there is, teach him who God is!!! I thank God every day for the privilege to parent both our sons and they are not in our family by chance but by HIS choosing.
We arrived to the orphanage and sat in the director’s office and in came a parade of beautiful children! There must have been almost a dozen children ranging in age from 2 to 6 years old…that alone was enough to secretly make me want to go back home! They were all so precious and sweet and all deserved to know the love of a family. We could not stop crying and at one point we wanted to take them all home! I kept asking God to please reveal to us “our child’ and sure enough it did not take long for our hearts to melt and fall in love with Alec. He was a 21-month-old adorable little boy with very blonde hair and big blue eyes.
We immediately knew that he was the child that we had been praying for and shared with the director our choice. She was concerned because at almost 2 years old he had never spoken a word plus he showed signs of being developmentally delayed. But then again, so did most of them. So, we did the only thing that we knew how to do, pray…pray…pray!!!
Within ours of God revealing to us that Alec was the one, we quickly started our paperwork to make the adoption final. We were in Ukraine for almost a month and by the time we left Alec was vocalizing words like: hi, bye, mama and papa! It was very clear that he had never spoken because no one had ever taken the time to teach him. Oh, and right before we left we accidentally found out that Alec had a 10 month old baby brother in the orphanage that was extremely developmentally delayed, as well!
We arrived back home excited to start doing life with our son. We immediately plugged him into all the therapies available to him. Between speech, physical and occupational, the proper nutrition and tons of love Alec was able to catch up and thrive in no time!!! He left Ukraine weighing 18 pounds and gained 10 pounds his first month home. It was incredible the progress that he made in such a short time. Within a year we were back in Ukraine adopting his younger brother, Nicky!
Nicky seemed to be worst off physically. He was the same age that Alec was when we adopted him, 21 months. However, he only weighed 12 pounds and did not walk nor showed any signs of walking any time soon. He had minimal movement of the legs and was diagnosed with retardation of the muscles…whatever that means! By then, we were ready to take on the challenge and knew he would do great with the right therapies and physical activities. Sure enough, we plugged him into all the therapies as well and he was walking within a month and discharged from ALL therapies 3 months later! Nicky has always been an active boy, loves to run and is a starter for the Florida Christian Varsity Football Team!!!
I would be misleading you if I told you that it has always been easy. We have faced many challenges, especially with Alec. He has had a hard time attaching emotionally and it has not been easy for him or any of us but we have done the most important thing there is, teach him who God is!!! I thank God every day for the privilege to parent both our sons and they are not in our family by chance but by HIS choosing.
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