Caring

A few nights ago, I was happily bouncing a smiling, filthy dirty baby in my lap when I was told that her mother is HIV+. Both live in the street. My heart sunk as I quickly connected the dots and realized that her baby must be positive as well.

Apart from our little girl at CDA and an occasional meeting, I have never been in daily contact with so many with HIV until now. And I can feel so helpless beyond just being there for them and being their friend. But watching the video in this post, "Dying and Rejected by the Church", reminded me that sometimes that's all we can do.

And it is considered significant by those surviving even though rejected by "normal" society. Every day, every night, when I offer a listening ear and a word of encouragement or share a laugh, I see a light come back in their eyes. Could it be hope?

Words cannot describe how privileged I feel to be able to live here, surrounded by need, spending myself on behalf of the weak as we walk side by side. Since last week, that includes keeping track of 3 medications, multiple tests and doctor/lab appointments, and seven days of 9pm injections for one of my friends from the bridge. And that's just ONE of my friends... It's exhausting, but I cannot imagine doing anything else.

As I type, I hear little voices float up to the office. It is snack time, and the prayer included a blessing for the street children. So young, and yet already ministering.

Watch the video and think of who you can love today.


Ten years ago today, my family had the court hearing in Russia that made Emma "ours"! Today, a Bolivian couple has their court hearing to become the parents of our 20 month old boy F. Exciting!

hodge podge

Upon arrival to my family's apartment in Tennessee, one of the first things I noticed was how three cultures easily mix in the relaxed decor.

Antique Bolivia wall map
Cowboy lampshade

Painting given to us from some of our very first Russian friends in 1999

Painting from Bolivia (farewell gift for my parents)

Two enlarged photographs: Heather in front of St. Basil's, Red Square, Moscow (by me I think) and gates to a church in the outskirts of Kostroma region (made by our Dad)

Russia and adoption agency memorabilia
(yes, that's our Emma on the coin can!)

Pictures of our grandpa in a Texas rodeo

Bell from Kostroma, Russia

Painting from Bolivia
Matryoshka nesting doll from Russia


Painting purchased from a lady selling her original artwork on Red Square, Moscow
Magnets of pictures of my kids in Bolivia

more Russia memories....

Heather at St. Basil's, Red Square, Moscow

Ten years ago today, our family got back from Russia and adopting my new sister Emma.

However, we left part of our hearts behind.

With each passing day we realized how much. Like, we could never-just-return-to-our-normal-lives-and-forget-Russia much.

Emma in our home was a daily reminder to us of the other children we had left behind, who had not been adopted. All we could talk about was how to return and help them.

Amazingly, God worked and just a couple months later I was back in Russia with Buckners, a friend, and a team of people delivering shoes [only those didn't arrive on time] and supplies to about 8 other children's homes in the Kostroma region. Due to team constraints, I didn't get back to Emma's Baby Home that trip.

But yes, on the next 7 trips!! In each of those my sister Heather was with me, and sometimes other family members (including Emma).

passing out baby dolls to her "cousins" as we called them, in the Baby Home

The absolute highlight of those trips was being able to walk up and knock on the Baby Home door and ask "What do you need?" with our new Russian skills.

And of course to check on the babies!!

twins! (girl and boy)

Once Heather and I took out a staff member from the Baby Home to chose a new outfit for every child for summer, because their donated clothing was worn out.

Heather and I got our first experience of third world country supply issues. Remember going from store to store buying them out of diapers or other baby things we needed? People looked at us so funny returning on buses with our arms loaded with diapers and formula.

I attached quickly to this little boy, and him to me, and here I had just been crying before leaving him. He had extra fingers and extra toes... (The Russian family we were staying with loaned me this coat - which there is a necessity, not an extravagance.)




Eventually our church sponsored Volzhskiy (school aged children) and Heather would give some mini-violin lessons when we visited.

My Mom and me with some kids at Volzhskiy

And now for the point of this post. =) I didn't intend to post all these pictures but once I started it was hard to stop. Who knows when I'll have a good excuse to blog about Russia again!

I've always cherished this picture, with all the memories and significance it holds for me:

Friend/translator Ira, Baby Home Director, me, sister Heather in the Baby Home director's office, Kostroma Russia
date on back of picture says June 30, 2000

We had just been rained on terribly while out buying fresh produce (a treat because of the expense).

It was special before as a reminder of Dr. Valentina Andreevna's willingness to trust us and let us visit. But once I became director of my own Baby Home, well....... I just wonder if someone had told me then that I would be in her shoes one day, overseeing the care and financing of dozens of babies and young children, what I would have said?! It's such an honor, and yet huge responsibility.

But if she can do it since she was a young woman like me, for so many years, with so many children, and so little funding, I can do it! The picture is on my desk here at my Baby Home office in Cochabamba, Bolivia, to remind me of friends in Russia and the great joy I had in working alongside them as they do the best they can in extremely challenging circumstances.

Between two worlds...

My Mom and Emma, giving a gift to Dr. Andreevna on her visit back in 2002

Happy Gotcha Day!!!

After ten years of longing for another baby in our family, "Emma-Liza" arrived and she's now been part of the Thompson family for 10 amazing years!!

On this day in 1999 we were making the crazy trip by van from Kostroma to Moscow, with our Mom dangerously close to just taking the wheel herself as our friendly but daring driver spent more time on the wrong side of the road than right! In between gripping the seats for dear life, we were all getting used to our new baby, and her to us. She weighed only 12 pounds at 8 1/2 months old and didn't sit up yet. Everyone said she looked just like a little doll! (She would be so embarrassed to hear that now.) I can only imagine the sight now as I remember all four of us jumping when she made any little peep or move.

We GOTCHA!!
Leaving the Kostroma Baby Home with our precious bundle
September 1, 1999

Emma gained a pound a week for quite awhile and her hair fairly sprouted, till she barely looked like the same baby we picked up! (As an aside, it's fun to get new babies here who also gain a pound a week until they catch up. Amazing what a little lot of milk can do!!)

She shook up our family like a little Texas tornado! We always said she took one look at our all girl family and decided to introduce us to a few things.

Like refusing to stay in the crib. (Emma, remember the nightly "bottle drills"? You know you did it!!)

Like hunting for bugs and creepy crawly things and then keeping them in insecure containers (or pockets!).

Like dreaming of driving a motorcycle.

Like requesting pocket knives for gifts.

Like preferring the great outdoors to the indoors any day, even a rainy or cold one!

And I could go on and on and on....

Emma Elizabeth certainly turned our family upside down, but in a God-ordained way. I would not be here if not for how she and Russia changed my life on that first trip out of the US when I was 17!

Turns out I have quite a few pictures of her on this computer (all the "early ones" are scanned in, because in the OLDEN days we didn't own a digital camera) and I've had fun looking through them. Maybe these are mostly for my family, who will enjoy this little little walk down memory lane more than anyone - enjoy!

The very week after bringing her home to Texas! My sister Sarah (then 11) used to call her smiley eyes because she said she "smiled with her eyes"



Playing with the photographer



Love those chubby little arms



Will always be one of my favorites of her



Makes me think of Anne Geddes pictures!



She was just 3 or 4 years old here




At the Dr. Pepper Museum in Waco, Texas
Like father like daughter: the beverage of choice for BOTH of them!




Playing a Bolivian charango while wearing her Bolivian sweater (before even living here!)





Emma with her new bunny (one of my little boys was in the same shirt a couple days ago...)




Just 6 1/2 and reading through one of my emails to tell my family CDA news (while wearing her "CDA Baby Home" shirt, which is now S.'s in the Baby Home...see a pattern?!)




The sisters on Thanksgiving Day 2005, at our home in Texas (Emma: always in the driver's seat!!)

Holding our baby A. when she weighed the same as Emma at birth (4 1/2 pounds)

Making a fishy face, Inka Chaca, Bolivia, 2007

Me & Emma, the day she finished and gave me this hat she "knitted" for me (she also made the one she is wearing)

Saying goodbye to "her" beloved horse here in Bolivia, March 2009

I love and miss you, Emma!!!

Я люблю тебя!

¡Te quiero mucho!

I'd say you're growing up too fast, but each year with you just gets better! And now to call you and see how your first Gotcha Day in Tennessee is going. =)


(I now have the full day in the office I've been needing, as Cochabamba is all blocked up with a widespread transportation strike, of indefinite length...lovely. The cook and one office person still haven't made it in. Today is little J.'s birthday at CDA II but we've had to postpone her party till Thursday. Sigh.)

TEN amazing indescribable wonderful years!

It's so amazing, really. Words fail me to describe adoption. Miracle? That this child gets to be in OUR FAMILY! Grace of God? That He would choose US to raise her! Truly a marvel.

Ten years ago today, August 30, 1999, we first held Emma and stared into her blue-green-gray eyes. My new baby sister! I was 17 and it was quite possibly the best day of my life till that point.

That's also the day to blame for my consistent tearing up and the incredible surge of emotions every single time I witness a family meet their new child for the first time!

Particularly this week, as I took on adoption with some extremely difficult government employees, I've been grateful that I have been blessed with an inside look from which to advocate for children without a family. Even if it multiples the pain when others cannot understand. How can they? They have not walked this road.

I am grateful that my parents took the plunge when we barely knew anyone who had adopted, and certainly not from half way around the world. Knowing what we did then (precious little!), it was a jump of faith into the faraway unknown. God spoke to my Mother's heart that her family would never be the same again. He gave my Dad the wisdom to plan to bring us (my sister Heather and me) along, to a formerly communist country with unsafe drinking water....for that infamous "once in a life time field trip to a foreign country", LOL!

Now Emma is the most Texan little girl I know...

August 2005

Loves the US passionately (okay, I admit! At times we've thrown around the thought of her holding high office)

Statue of Liberty

Has a special place in her heart for Russia

Emma & friend Nastya, Kostroma, Russia, December 2002

And is quite at home in Bolivia, dontcha think?

May 2008

Look, it's Eloise Emma at the Plaza Hotel, La Paz, Bolivia!

January 2009

Now she's starting a new life in Tennessee as the daughter of cookie store owners (our parents, who would've thunk!!) and doing great (when she's not missing her favorite sister, of course):

May 2009

I love you, Emma!!! You've changed my life forever.

More pictures and stories coming on Gotcha Day....

Random Picture Challenge

This Saturday's Random Picture Challenge

2002
8th folder - July
25th picture

February 2002
Me enjoying time with a little girl in St. Petersburg, Russia

I just did a quick search and this is the only picture that came up on my computer for 2002 (I know there are more but many of those were scanned in later years).

Not surprising it would be a Russia picture! We first visited Bolivia in August of that year, but otherwise Russia dominated in my family and we were all there together by the end of that year.

Russia.....how I'd love to visit again!! It would be so interesting to study again the situation of children-at-risk with all the background that I have now. I knew next to nothing in those days of Russia trips, between 1999--2003. All I knew is I wanted to help, and it's really humbling to see how God took that desire and placed me where I am now! =)

Another baby with family =)

Here in Bolivia, we enjoy pretending like we know what might happen, say, 2 hours from now or even the next day, but in actuality one never knows. (It's a real trip for control freaks!)

Still, we began yesterday knowing it would be a red letter day. It was the day Baby Elias* would go to live with his new parents!!

But even before that "pre-adoption custody" handover took place, a new baby arrived to us. Red Letter Day x Two!

And then watching Elias be “born” into his new family, our 11th adoption (2nd national) turned out to be unique in a way I hadn’t expected. My sister Emma was right in the middle of it! That is super special because firstly, close to 9 ½ years ago, my parents and sisters and I adopted her from Russia. That was the first Baby Home I had ever laid eyes on. The whole deal was life changing (no exaggeration!), for those who don’t know the entire story.

And secondly it was special because Emma just happened to be with me downtown last year when I got the call to say yeah or nay about receiving Elias into the Baby Home. The day: leap year 2008.

(A little background: at the time we were waiting for 1 year old twin girls to come, so I was hesitant to accept another baby because it would mean giving away one of the two spaces we were “creating” for them in our already full home. So since I was near the government office I decided I needed to go in personally and ask which we should take……although I realized this would totally tie me into taking the baby already there and he was even a newborn and was found abandoned on a bench in a Catholic church. In the end, those twins never came but we’ve always been glad that Elias did! And I had thought it would be fun to take in a baby on February 29.)

I always remember Emma’s comment as we walked out of the government office. After an impromptu meeting with the head of child protection I said yes to Elias. From there the time for him to print the memo passing him to us, sign it, hand it over, and the social worker to hand me the baby, was probably 2 minutes flat. If that long.

We walked outside holding our little bundle and Emma looks at me quizzically and goes, “Is that ALL?" As in...now we just....take him home?? It's always been something of a wonder to me, too. To be trusted with these little lives, just like that. Of course all the work to deserve that trust is a whole other story, but the "delivery" of these little ones to us is usually very quick and simple. Then in most cases, they live with us at least a year or two, through thick and thin, in sickness and in health...well, you get the idea. Elias received his family remarkably fast, living with us a brief (for here) 10.5 months.

But I digress. At the most special moment of the adoption, my sister Emma was the one to carry him in to the couple! The father had not yet met Elias (the mother had met him but not seen him again, according to law, during the paperwork period). Normally this step would always be carried out in court, but apparently due to their fear of having a contagion-spreading-child in court (in this case, chicken pox), they made an exception to their rule. Whatever!

It was definitely the first time I had done the official "hand over" while carrying another baby the entire time. Baby F, all 3.3 kilos of him, was happily snuggled in the carrier for hours that afternoon. As we went over Elias' file with his new dad, we realized that Elias had arrived weighing exactly the same. Now if that isn't weird or what!!

A very good day indeed. =)

*name changed

Picture 1: Our family (minus sister Sarah) leaving Kostroma Baby Home in Russia with our TREASURE!!!

Picture 2: Elias on the day he arrived, second from the left, trying to ignore me while I made him pose with our other youngest (Denise, take a stab at naming THESE babies, why dontcha!)

Picture 3: One of the first pictures of Elias the day he came (the redness was gone by the next morning and he has always had the clearest skin since)

Picture 4: Emma just after handing off Elias to his new parents!!! (Hate that my camera delayed a bit in taking the picture, but she was nearly dropping him anyway cuz he's so heavy--10 kilos/22 pounds.)

Gotcha Day!!

Nine years ago today, my family was headed from Kostroma, Russia, to Moscow, Russia, thrilled to be on the way home with our much awaited baby. We thought we were reaching the end of our journey; little did we know that God had other plans regarding us and His little ones!

Emma-Liza was 8 1/2 months old, weighed less than 12 pounds, and didn't do much...yet. Now she is 9 1/2 years old, proud to finally weigh over 50 pounds, and a bundle of energy and spunk! This weekend she was at horse camp (yep, here in Cochabamba) and the picture is of her afterwards, all cleaned up and holding one of her birds. WE LOVE YOU, EMMA!!! You're a very special part of our family.