Pure and genuine religion in the sight of God the Father means caring for orphans and widows in their distress and refusing to let the world corrupt you. James 1:27

Monday, October 6, 2014

HELP!!!!!

We are frantically trying to raise funds and complete the necessary documents to adopt Zhenya and Ruslan before they are kicked out of their orphanage. Their orphanage has been reclassified by the government as a rehab facility and they will have to be moved from there soon. Our biggest fear is they will be placed with their 20yo brother who can hardly take care of himself, must less be a father to a 14 & 7yo. Our facilitator is calling in favors trying to keep them in the orphanage until we can get there. We've also been in contact with the family that hosted the boys over the summer and they are putting in to host the boys again this Christmas (this will help keep the boys in the system, the more sponsors they have). Please keep our family in your prayers as we endeavor to bring these boys home.



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Wednesday, May 14, 2014

I love technology!

Got a chance to Skype with the boys today thanks to their orphanage director, Viktoria! It was so good to see those smiling faces! It still amazes me that we can call someone half way around the world, speak to them, & SEE them!


They received the package we sent for Ruslan's birthday & he LOVES his remote control Batman car. Viktoria says she has one of the workers keep it put up when he's not playing with it so it doesn't accidentally get broken by one of the other kids. Zhenya likes his new earphones too. They aren't Beats, but we told him that if he takes good care of these, we'll get him Beats for his birthday in August.

Daniel was able to show Viktoria his progress report from school & she was very proud that he's making good grades. I think she was really happy to see him & she couldn't believe how much he's grown. She wanted to make sure he will be traveling with us when we come to Ukraine. We're hoping to Skype with her again Saturday when Daniel's friend Andre is here. He's from the same orphanage & I know she'd love to see him too.

Happy Mama here!

Wednesday, April 23, 2014

And the paper work & waiting begins!

We have completed our home study update! We're just waiting for a couple more pieces of info to get to our social worker & she'll be able to write it up. WhooHoo! The home study is not just important to begin our adoption process, but also to begin applying for grants. The next step will be applying for the I-600 (immigration request). It cost around $900, so the the fundraising has begun as well. It just feels so overwhelming, the financial costs of adoption, but we know God will provide. We had no idea how we'd raise this much money last time, but He made it happen and Daniel is home with us. The human part of you just panics sometimes!

We have new photos of the boys! It is great talking with them each week, but it's awesome to see their faces!


Happy 7th Bday Ruslan!

Zhenya in his Bama shirt!






Our current fundraisers

Shoe collection: Please donate your used shoes! Any shoes you don't wear anymore can be donated to help those in need around the world. You will be recycling and helping people. We can come pick them up from you or you can drop them off. Call me @ 334-799-6765. We earn $100/bag of shoes collected to go towards our adoption expenses!

T-shirt sales: Youth S-XL $15 and Adult S-3XL $20











Tax-deductible donations: You can mail tax-deductible donations to Manifold Mercies, Attn: Holliday Family, P.O. Box 237, Kellyton, AL 35089. (*Per IRS guidelines, our name can not be on the check you send, only the envelope.)

We are hard at work on our dossier (set of documents we send to Ukraine). It's close to complete, but we can't send it until we receive our I-600 approval. So, the waiting game begins! Fill out documents, try to raise funds, and pray without ceasing.

Thank you, all our friends & family for all you have done & are currently doing to help us bring our sons home! We could never do this without your continued support & prayer.

Tuesday, October 1, 2013

They Stole Our Hearts!


When Bill & I traveled to Ukraine this past Christmas to visit Daniel, we met the cutest 5yo boy named Ruslan. He took up with us right away, so we spent a lot of time with him. When we returned in March for Daniel's adoption, we were able to meet Ruslan's older brother, Zhenya, 12yo. He had been away while we were there for Christmas. Daniel is very close to Ruslan & Zhenya, he calls them his brothers. They are the only two kids he's ever really talked about missing since leaving Ukraine.

Over the summer Daniel would call his friends at the orphanage about once a week. We would talk to Zhenya whenever we could & we found ourselves missing him & Ruslan as well. On one of our weekly calls, Zhenya asked Daniel if we could adopt him and his brother. I'd be lying if I said we hadn't already been considering it. We knew Zhenya would be coming to camp in Alabama in August, so we told Daniel to tell him we'd like to spend time while he was in the US getting to know him better. We also told him we wanted him to meet many families while here in Alabama because there may be another family God had planned for him. We spent time with him while he was here, but not so much that he didn't get to spend a lot of time with other families as well. After nearly a month here at camp, it was clear that Zhenya wanted us to be his family and we had fallen totally in love with him too.

So, here we go again! We have chosen to get back on this crazy roller coaster called adoption again! We have been so happy bringing Daniel into our family and we're looking forward to maybe twice as much joy the second time around.

Ruslan     

Zhenya

All American Past Time!

Who would have guessed it, but Daniel loves baseball. He 1st went to the batting cages with his cousin, Chase this summer. Once he got the hang of it, he really liked it and thought he'd like to try playing. We enrolled him in a batting camp at Faulkner in July and after that he was hooked. It was very obvious from the first time he picked up a bat that he was a natural. Our nephew, Chase plays travel ball with a team from Prattville. We asked the coach if Daniel could just start coming to practices so he could begin learning the game. After 4 or 5 practices, Daniel played with the travel team at a weekend tournament. Following the tournament, he led the team in doubles and RBI's! There is still a lot he has to learn, but it is amazing how well he's doing not to have ever played baseball before in his life.

Daniel started trying for the high school team a week ago and today he goes for the batting part. I'm hoping we'll find out this week if he makes the team or not. The coach seemed impressed with him at the fielding tryouts. Batting is what he does the best, so if the coach already likes him, he'll really like him after batting practice today. Good Luck Today Daniel!














Wednesday, May 29, 2013

Finally Home!

After almost nine weeks in Ukraine, five of which were without Bill and the girls, Daniel and I are finally home! After delays in documents and our court date, more delays in documents, and multiple holidays we finally completed everything we needed to come home. Daniel is officially a Holliday and a United States citizen.







                   Finally on the plane going home!













                            

                                A long way to go!












 We flew out of Kiev at 6:40am on May 10th and arrived in Birmingham, Alabama at 6:15pm. Doesn't sound long until you add back in the 8 hour time difference. Our arrival went perfectly. First we were met by Bill, Hayden, Meme, Nana, Aunt Brooke, and cousins Chase & Kynlee. Hope was at her 1st Prom, so she wasn't at the airport. Of course she had my full blessing on that. After visiting with family for a while, our friends, The Carr's, Katya, & Stirling came. We visited with them and were getting ready to head to the car when our friends, The Jennifer's came in. Everything went so smoothly and Daniel was happy and not overwhelmed at all. We couldn't have asked for better.







   Meeting their grandson in person for the 1st time!











              Meeting his Aunt and cousins.










  After spending so long in Ukraine, I was aching for
  some Southern food! Daniel's 1st dinner in               Alabama - Jim n Nick's!













      We arrived home at the same time as
      Hope and Cade returning from the Prom!







                             Beautiful couple!







                  Daniel immediately made himself at home!













 Got to have Mother's Day with all three of my kids!







Things are really going well. It's like Daniel has always been here. His English is coming along amazingly, even though he doesn't think so. Of course there have been a few times he's mentioned missing friends, but overall he has been very happy. I can't express how happy we are to finally have him here, sleeping in the room that had been referred to as "Daniel's Room" for nearly a year before he arrived. He loves his new pet family too! He wasn't allowed pets at the orphanage and he's a real animal lover. He and our dog, Scout, have really become best buds. She slept with him in his bed a few nights, but she was keeping him from sleeping well so she's had to return to her crate. Now they just spend their waking hours together! lol

We're sure there will be challenges along the way, but so far it's been awesome!

Thursday, May 9, 2013

Honeymooning, Newborns, & Time to Start Real Life

I am very excited to bring Daniel home & to rejoin the rest of our family, but I'm a little sad too. These last 4 weeks have been great, just the two of us, but I also ache to be with my husband and daughters. I can't wait for our family members to finally meet Daniel in person. They've all spoke with him via Skype, but this will be the first time they will be able to hug him & welcome him into our big, crazy family.

The last 4 weeks have been very much like a honeymoon. We already loved one another, but we've never spent this amount of time together. We're in an exotic location & sharing new experiences together. More new experiences for me than him, since he lives here, but for the 1st time he has been able to see what he wants, rather than being told where & what to do. We've got to know each other better and have become more comfortable being together.

I know his birth mother will always be his 1st love. No matter what circumstances cause the loss of maternal rights, you just can't help but love your birth mother. She brought you into this world & no matter what she's done, you will always prefer to have remained with your birth family. I hope this time with him, one on one, has given him a chance to "fall in love" with me. Just as I think daughters should look to their fathers as an example of their future husbands, I equally believe young men should look to their mothers as examples of their future wives. I pray that I am able to model unconditional love, God's love to Daniel. It's hard to understand God's unconditional love for you if you've never experienced it before. Our parent's are supposed to love us & be that example of God's love in our lives. When they fail to do that, when you are abandoned by the two people who are supposed to love you, how can you truly know what God's love feels like?

In the orphanage, when boys reach a certain age, they are denied physical touch from their female caregivers. This is understandable, because many of the caretakers are single, young women (usually in their 30's) and they don't want even the appearance of inappropriate physical contact.(I know this does happen though) Plus, these young men are starving for love and they don't want to lead them into forming romantic feelings toward their caretakers. It's unfortunate though, we all need appropriate physical touch in our lives to feel loved; hugs, kisses on the cheek, a hand to hold, & a shoulder to cry on. It was difficult at 1st when it was just Daniel & I. I would do normal things, things I do without thought with my daughters, like touch his hair as he falls asleep, touch his hand, etc...and these actions would cause him such distress. This in return caused me much distress. Is he reacting this way because he hasn't had touch in so long or has someone touched him in ways that weren't appropriate?

I felt rejected & I felt angry at the though that someone may have hurt him in this way in the past. But slowly he has initiated more and more touch and I feel so blessed to have his trust. As I woke him up this morning (which is no easy feat!), I sat beside him on his bed and he held my hand. Right now, as I type this, he is lying on the bed next to me playing on his cell phone. It has taken a while, but he is beginning to feel comfortable with me touching him appropriately. It is awesome to look back on how much things have changed, even though it wasn't that awesome actually going through it. Who knew that hugs, holding hands, and mom just touching your hair could be such a big deal? But if you've never had that or it's been a very long time since you've had that, I guess that makes it a really big deal. One thing that has helped us is watching movies. We have watched several movies where loving families are portrayed; The Blind Side, Courageous, We Bought a Zoo, etc... One thing that he pointed out to me, something I didn't really notice I guess because it's so normal to me, is how many times in these movies it showed a mom or dad touching their child's hair as they slept. It gave me a concrete example to use with him. THIS IS AN APPROPRIATE WAY THAT PARENTS EXPRESS LOVE TO THEIR CHILDREN! He got it! It all started to make sense to him. One afternoon last week, he was extremely tired & fell asleep early, around 7:30. Of course, as I went to bed around 12:00, I had to go in & make sure he was still breathing. The next morning he told me he heard me come in & he felt me touch his hair. The difference was, that this time he seemed to take much pleasure in the fact that I had done it. He was happy to know that I had checked on him before I went to bed & he liked that I had touched his head. He felt loved.  

I have shared these experiences with my husband. I've talked to him when I was struggling with my own emotions. He has helped me stay focused on Daniel's feelings rather than on my own. I had a wonderful family growing up. My parents were great examples of love in my life. They are about to celebrate 44 years of marriage in June. Daniel hasn't had that. I needed to stop thinking about how everything makes me feel and start thinking only of how Daniel must feel. Thank you Bill, for helping me remain focused on the important work I'm doing here. I'm setting the groundwork for our family in the time I'm spending here, one-on-one with our son. I've began thinking of it as those first few weeks home with a new baby. You're getting to know each other, you're forming those emotional bonds, and even though it's fun & exciting, having a new baby is work. Daniel is by no means a baby, not if you look at him physically, but in an emotional sense, in the sense of family dynamics, he's a newborn. After 10 years in an orphanage, he is having to go back through those steps of development and learn what it means to be part of a family. And not just part of a family, but an American family. Our customs, the way we interact, & the ways we show love for one another are very different than what it's like here in Ukraine.

We leave for the US in the morning. It's time to end this chapter in our new family & start the next- real life. There will now be bedtimes, chores to do, & learning how to live together as a new family of five (plus our sweet Viktor). He will have fights with his sisters about using all the hot water or him leaving the toilet seat up. He will have disagreements with his dad & I about house rules or time limits on playing xBox. I will struggle trying figure out how to cook meals large enough to feed all of us. Two teen aged boys eat A LOT! Bill will worry about meeting our new financial needs for clothing & groceries. But through all that, we will be a family. We will love each other more & more each day. We may not "like" each other everyday, but the love will only grown bigger & bigger.

It's surreal. Tomorrow night, Daniel will sleep in his own bed, in his new home for the 1st time. I feel excited & nervous about starting this new phase in our life. Over the next few days & weeks he will meet his extended family, he will begin to make new friends, attend church with us, learn more English, & I hope, feel more loved than he ever has in his life. It won't always be easy or fun, but it will always be worth it.





                        Daniel & I taking in the sites.



                                                                 Officially Daniel Ray Holliday!









               
              I get to see my girls tomorrow