Halloween

Cat Woman and Captian Hook on the loose!

Happy Birthday Anastasia!

Our sweet Anastasia is 17 years old! We've now celebrated all three of our children's October birthdays. Nastia's having some friends from school come over on Friday for a bigger party, but last night we had our family celebration.

Nastia sees the world through the eyes of an artist. Lately I've been teaching her the art of how to loiter in a bookstore, and recently she sat down at Barnes & Noble and leafed all the way through this big book about Leonardo da Vinci.

She's also got a great eye for photography. I've encouraged her to start up her own blog now that she has a new digital camera! Happy Birthday Sweetheart....we love you!

Happy Birthday Christian Peter!

Today our beautiful son is six years old. Christian Peter came into our lives five years ago, when he was adopted from a small town outside Moscow, Russia. The joy that our "little man" has brought into our lives is beyond description. He is truly the funniest child I've ever seen and he never ceases to amaze us with his relentless curiousity and love of learning.

Each year on his birthday, I always pray for and give thanks to God for the woman who chose to give him life. I wish I could let her know how grateful we are, and I pray that God will pour his love and mercy out on her.

Not only have we had the privilege of being Christian's parents, it was the gift of his adoption that has transformed the way we see our lives.

Today we know that we are an adoptive family because this is what God has intended for us all along. Christian knows he is a beloved child of God and he has a wonderful way of demonstrating that love to all the special people in his life, such as "Papa Herb."

Happy Birthday Galyna!

It's so hard to believe that it's been almost two years since little Galyna first came to visit us for Christmas in 2005. She was teeny-tiny, and looked like she was perhaps eight or nine years old. This weekend, we celebrated her 14th birthday! She is a beautiful girl who loves life and has embraced her new country. Before the party she asked me not to speak any Russian as she now wants her identity to be American. We've been home less than three months and this young lady is thriving.


I've never seen a child who loves animals more than Galyna. She's been asking for a dog since day one, but we let her know early on that adding a dog to the mix would just be too much for our family right now. So......

Hello rats!!! One of Galyna's teachers gave a hearty endorsement to pet rats and I was surprised to learn from pet store employees that rats make great pets. They are the most intelligent of all small pets and easy to take care of. Did you know that rats can learn tricks and even remember their names? Galyna was ecstatic! She named her new pets Ashley and Gabriella.

Seven of her classmates helped her celebrate her first American birthday and they had a blast!

Ellen kept us laughing all night long!

Jailene and Anna provided impromptu song and dance
Galyna won't forget this Birthday!

We are so grateful for the kind of young women who've befriended our daughters. Katrina and Margaret helped make this a very special weekend.

Cate is hilarious and quite talented as she writes and sings her own songs!

Galyna doing some High School Musical moves

Our 14 year old daughter with Chris and Deborah Winans.

Happy Birthday sweetheart...We love you!

The Blessing of Adoption

These pictures are a beautiful witness to the blessing of adoption. Banner Christian School recently held a pep rally and I've never seen Anastasia smile so much. I had to fight back the tears because I couldn't help but thinking about her life in Ukraine, where there was little to smile about.

When you see pictures taken of her at the orphanage, it's almost as if she didn't even know how to smile. This is my favorite shot of her previous life. Everyone we talked to in Odessa told us that Nastia spent most of her free time in the art room, putting her heart and soul into creating beautiful works of art. Art remains her passion, but today she enjoys so much more.

Katrina is a vivacious young lady who has reached out to both of our daughters.

Mr. Tom Burkett is not only the headmaster, he's also the varsity volleyball coach and very much in the "old school" tradition. Banner Bearcat volleyball is not for the faint of heart as "Mr. B" runs a brutally tough practice. He's a demanding coach who prefers not to lose, but his off-court demeanor is gentle and soft-spoken. He got a kick out of posing here with Nastia. Afterwards he asked, "Did she smile?"

Nastia and her teammates should compete for the conference volleyball championship. They've been a bit inconsistent lately, but should be ready by tournament time to be a contender. This Christian volleyball is ferocious competition and we love the games. Go BearCats!!!

Galyna with her best friend Anna Winans. Anna is the youngest of three children in an extraordinary missionary family, who recently returned from a five year mission to Japan. Anna's mother grew up in Saigon during the Vietnam war. Their family's incredible story is told in the memoir of Anna's grandfather Sam James. They never left until the fall of Saigon. It is a miracle they didn't become martyrs for Christ. This is an example of how adoption has blessed our entire family as we've all become good friends with the Winans family.

"Let me hear joy and gladness;

let the bones that you have broken rejoice."

The Ukrainian Famine

For those families adopting older children, please make a visit to this somber memorial a priority. A disappointingly high percentage of Russian speaking people in Ukraine remain in a state of shameful denial about the meaning of this monument in Kyiv. It is dedicated to the victims of the forced Ukrainian Famine, which took place between 1932-34, resulting in the starvation death of 5-to-7 million innocent Ukrainians. Some estimates go as high as ten million.

Thanks to the Ukrianian Orthodox Church under the jurisdiction of the Kyiv Patriarch, the truth is finally being told. The monument is located next to the beautiful St. Michael's Monastery. Make sure to take time to read the story about the famine on the wall behind. Shockingly, the Orthodox Church under the jurisdiction of the Moscow Patriarch still officially denies the famine. Just inside the entrance to the church, an excellent self-guided tour carefully documents how the communist regime attempted to wipe out Christianity in the Soviet Union.

It was all orchestrated by Stalin, which makes one wonder why you see this monster's image being peddled by Ukrainian street vendors today. Perhaps even more amazingly, tourists actually buy Stalin matrushka dolls! Imagine going to Berlin and seeing Hitler commercialized in this manner. But Russia, and many of the former Soviet states have not undergone the same kind of reckoning that Germany has. When we adopted our son five years ago in Moscow, a poll had just been conducted that revealed half of the Russian population still regards Stalin as a hero for prevailing in World War II. The truth is that the Russians courageously outfought the Germans despite Stalin's poor leadership.

Especially for those adopting in Odessa, or other regions in the East and Southern part of Ukraine, Soviet and Communist nostalgia lingers. My daughters had never been taught about the famine at the orphanage school, so I gave them an assignment to pay a visit to the famine monument. History records that the totalitarian regime that talked about creating a "classless society," butchered 20 million of its own citizens, making Soviet Communism the bloodiest ideology the world has ever known. It is painfully true that many Ukrainians are suffering even more in the post Soviet world, but it is not because free market economics has been tried and failed. It has never been tried. Ukraine is being strangled by corruption and none of the citizens I spoke to have any faith in the rule of law. So it's understandable that a percentage of the population would go back to totalitarian control of their lives in exchange for the suffering they're now facing. But the events of the 20th century makes clear that communist countries led the way in slaughtering and imprisoning its own people, and nowhere was the persecution more severe than in Ukraine. Perhaps that is why so much denial remains?

Not far from the Famine Monument is this ghastly example of "socialist realist" art. "The Friendship of the Nations" monument was constructed by the Soviets in the early 1950's to pay tribute to the "historic bond of the Russian and Ukrainian people."

Interestingly, the "Friendship of the Nations" monument doesn't mention the fact that millions of Ukrainians were slaughtered by their Soviet leaders in Moscow just two decades before it was built. This is a classic case of how the Soviets brainwashed their people, and did such a good job, that many pro-Russian Ukrainians still don't want to believe the truth.

I am now a father to a Russian born son and two Ukrainian born daughters. I want them to be proud of their culture, but I also want them to know how much pain and suffering that both Russians and Ukrainians have endured at the hands of their own rulers.

Ronald Reagan was right. The Soviet Union was an "Evil Empire" and I won't shield my children from that fact. They need to know the truth about their native countries, just as they need to know the truth about their adopted country.

I won't hide the ugly facts of America's history either, but few countries are as self-examining and self-critical as the United States, and our democratic institutions (such as the free press) don't allow too many things to remain hidden for very long. And if you don't like what our government is doing, you can march right to the gate of the White House and tell the President exactly what you think without fear of punishment (I've done it). Try doing that today at the Kremlin!

An excellent resource documenting the Great Famine is "Harvest of Sorrow" by Robert Conquest. I'm going to order a copy for all three of my children.

For Grandma Lela

This shot is an answered prayer for one special woman affectionately known in Odessa as Grandma Lela. Lela Steel has been a missionary to Odessa's orphans for ten years. For hundreds of these forgotten kids, the only time they've ever heard the words "I love you" came from Lela. She also never fails to let them know that they are loved by Jesus and indeed God has worked through Grandma Lela to convert dozens of orphans to faith in Christ. But our daughter Galyna never responded to Lela's attempts to reach out. Galyna was reportedly rude to her on many occasions. Of course that never stopped Grandma Lela from praying for her and I wanted her to see this picture of Galyna studying her Bible. She recently told me that "Bible" was her favorite class at school. The seeds that Grandma Lela planted years ago are beginning to take root.

We love you Grandma Lela, and thank God for your service in the name of Christ.