T-Shirts for sale!

Front

Back

White shirt

Thanks to Toni Doss and her mom, Kaye Porter, who have allowed us to use their logo on t-shirts for fundraising. 

Toni has taken a couple of the white ones to tie-dye. I'll post pictures of those when she finishes. Shirts are 50/50 blend so they shouldn't shrink. The white shirts are $15, the black $20, & the tie-dyed will be $25.We can get youth sizes and adult sizes up to 3X. 

Long overdue post!

Sorry its been so long without an update. It has been a wild and wonderful holiday season! We were blessed to be the 1st set of house parents for the group of 9 orphans visiting Bridgestone this month. They flew into Atlanta Airport around 8pm Tuesday, December 20. They didn't make it to Bridgestone til about 1:30am. When we arrived at the Millbrook YMCA at 6pm on Wednesday, December 21 to meet them, one was already totally asleep and the others were extremely tired. It was quite different from our 1st experience as house parents, very sedate. And this group has girls and boys! I didn't realize how much difference that would make. The kids range from 8-15 yo.
After bible study at the Y we returned to Bridgestone. It was probably around 8pm. The little boy who was sleeping when we 1st arrived continued sleeping through dinner, bible study, & the ride back to the house. We put him to bed, went and set up our room, & when we returned to the main room there were NO kids! Everyone of them had gone straight to bed! So here we are, all excited to hang out with these kids and they're all asleep in bed! Well, there's always things to be cleaned or readied, so we did some busy work before heading to bed.
Our little man who slept the whole previous evening and through the night woke up, wide open at 6am Thursday morning. Bill got up with him 1st and started the coffee. Zhenya is the cutest 9yo boy and he has no comprehension that we do not speak Russian. He and Bill had about an hour "conversation" before I got up and they really bonded. Soon we were all up, the Wii was up and going, and an amazing gentleman named Chuck came in to cook breakfast. He drove all the way from Virginia to volunteer at Bridgestone. He made from scratch pancakes and they were amazing!

Zhenya

Yulya

Ruslan

Katya

Karina

Hope & Tanya

Hope & Vova

Hayden & Nastya

Danil

Group arriving in Atlanta.

Spending this time at Bridgestone again has only solidified for Bill and I that this is what God is calling us to do. We know He has plans for us in the mission field, working with orphans, but not sure what that will look like. It may just be to continue volunteering at Bridgestone, it may be committing to something more permanent than that, or even going over seas and into the mission field. Please pray that whenever God says "Who will I send?" that Me, Bill, and the girls are ready to answer "Send us Lord!"  

Faith

I'm steeling this verse from some friends of ours, but they are going through the same journey as us so I don't think they'll mind.

Faith is the confidence that what we hope

for will happen; it gives us assurance

about the things we cannot see.

Hebrews 11:1

We spent Saturday evening at BridgeStone. We met an awesome couple, the Grekos. They went to Ukraine in August and adopted their son, Sasha. He is 13 and he is adjusting so well. He is speaking a good bit of English, he calls them mom & dad, and he really seems to love his new brother & sisters. We got a lot of good information from them about what its like over in Ukraine. Sounds like we'll have a little bit of culture shock. There won't be the same kind of conveniences there that we're used to having. No matter, after talking with them and getting to spend time with Sasha, we're more excited than ever. It really made us miss the boys. It took the Grekos about 7 months to go through the adoption process and that's about what we're looking at. It just FEELS like FOREVER! That's why I stole that verse. I'm going to look at it everyday. This journey has an end, we just have to keep the faith that God will see us through. 

Sorry so long without a post!

The yard sale went great! Thanks to everyone who donated and helped out in any way!

The new group of orphans will be arriving next week! They will fly in to Atlanta @ 8pm December 20. We will be their 1st house parents the 21st-23rd. Please pray for strength and energy for us! We've heard that being there @ the beginning is a little different. There will be 5 boys and 5 girls this time. We are excited to see how different the dynamics will be this time, since it was all boys in the last group.

If you're interested in volunteering, please let us know & we'll give you the info to contact BridgeStone. 

Yard Sale Saturday, December 3rd!

Make a donation online!

We have gone high tech - we can now take donations online!

I was reading "Adopt Without Debt" and one of the things it said is that people are reluctant to make a donation because they think what they can give is too little. What we don't realize is that its better to have many small donations than waiting for one big donation. For example, if we have 100 family or friends to donate just $10 each, we'd have $1000 toward our adoption! Please consider making a donation of any amount, it will be greatly appreciated. Please help us bring our children home!

Thank you everyone for your continued prayer and support!

Finding Salvation

We received an email tonight from Tom Benz, the founder of Bridges of Faith. A mission group of about 10 people from BridgeStone have been in Ukraine since mid-October. I want to share with you part of that email actually quoted from Eric Carr, BridgeStone Director.

 “The trip to see the boys who visited BridgeStone in August has been great.  The last night amazed me as we finished talking about the outreach’s theme, faith, hope and love.  Earlier we discussed what it means to trust God.  We discussed hope and the only source of true hope – Jesus!  Obviously, hope and faith are in short supply in an orphan’s daily life.  Through the week, this message stirred interest in their little hearts and minds.   “Early in the week, we passed out Russian Bibles.  One child, Artem, spent the entire day reading Matthew!  He asked me several questions about what he was reading.  On the last night, as we explained Gods unshakeable love for them and how that love brought us to see them, everyone could sense God’s presence enveloping us.  Everyone began weeping . . . we knew He was touching us.  Several of the children – at arm’s length most of the week – began to sob.  God’s grace softened hard hearts and amazed us all!.  “As I invited the children to trust Christ, Artem stood up sobbing!  He looked straight in my eyes and declared, "I want to be different."  Several other children also confessed Christ that night.  (Eric Carr)

You can imagine how happy we are that our Artem has accepted Christ as his Lord and Savior. We take Christianity for granted here because we've been taught about it most of our lives, but these kids are just now hearing about Christ. We are so thankful to the group from BridgeStone and for all they have done in the past few weeks to witness to these children.

Sign outside of orphanage.

This is Oleg & Artem. They had been in a play.

Mission team with kids sight seeing.

Mission team with kids sight seeing.

Artem is on statue saluting & Oleg is off on right side with his arm up.

Orthodox Church in Ukraine

Looks like they have had a wonderful time in Ukraine. It looks like there will be lots of beautiful sites to see when we go. We are so excited and can hardly wait!