Well there is no doubt that this Christmas will be one to remember. John and I are hosting an orphan, Alexey, from Russia for 5 weeks. We will be providing his Christmas, teaching him about Jesus, giving him the only opportunity in his life to be a part of a family, and basically spoiling the kid rotten. We are beyond excited about this experience, and although everyone says Alexey is going to be so blessed by this, we're pretty sure we will be the ones receiving the biggest blessing out of it. We have very little information on Alexey- he speaks minimal English, but is eager to learn; loves cats and dogs (It's a good thing!), hates snakes, like to sing and dance, and is 13 years old. We were told he didn't take a very good picture, but when I look at him I see the most adorable little boy! Its hard to explain, but I feel as if I love this little boy even though I know very little about him and have never met him. There's no doubting this experience holds the power to change our lives forever. We are not ruling out adoption, we are seeking God's guidance in this and pray He gives us our answer. God's hand was definitely involved with getting him linked to us and working out the application issues. We are seeing God reveal His plans for us more and more each day- and this is VERY exciting.
This blog was created as a way to journal our lives while we prepare for Alexey's arrival, have him safe here with us, and once we have to let go and send him back to his orphanage (which will be the most heart-wrenching thing we'll ever have to do). We figured this would be the easiest way to let all our family, friends, and prayer partners know how the experience is going. We hope you'll stop in every once in a while to see how we're doing as we form a little "temporary" family. We expect lots of emotions, tears, laughter, communication and translation errors, blessing, meltdowns, tests, curiosity, and ridiculously hyper dogs.
All we ask is that you keep us in prayer. Like we mentioned earlier, we know God is revealing Himself to us daily and we feel as though we are on the brink of a Christmas miracle. Pray for all of us, especially Alexey.
Love to all!!!
John and Kara
