november 12, 2007

Dear Family and Friends,

Calvin has done most of the posting and has done a great job. I'm sitting here in an internet cafe with him. It's about 10:00 pm, and we need to hurry back to the apartment but he wanted to quickly get some work things off to BYU. Nadia was telling me about the name we gave her. We thought it would be nice to give her a french middle name because of all the time she spent in France. I thought Collette was a beautiful name and so we chose that. She said that Collette is the name of her french "mother's" friend. She said she loved this friend and that this lady Collette, loved her. It felt like a tender mercy from the Lord. She is a sweet girl, and a devoted, loyal friend. I weep over the losses she has had in her life, and over the thought that taking her away from Ukraine will mean even more losses. I can't imagine the type of faith and courage it would take to make a decision like this - to leave everything familiar and live with a family in a strange country, especially one where she has to learn to live under family rules, which she has never had. She is strong though. She sure whips Roman into shape! We had a type of English lesson where I would ask questions that they had to try to answer in English. I asked them what their biggest fear was, and Roman didn't even hesitate when he answered, "Nadia!"

So many of our big fears about these children have been allayed as we have spent time with them. No doubt we have an interesting and difficult road ahead of us, but I don't fear attachment disorder, or children who pull legs off of insects for fun, or burn down houses. They have been in the care for the most part of loving dedicated, long-term people, and their education has been marvelous. Roman has traveled all over Ukraine and in the US and spent excellent quaility time in scouts. Nadia has had a good taste of family life in a very loving supportive environment in France for the past 9 summers. In fact she speaks English with a french accent - it's a real crack-up. She's even been to Disneyland in France and our children in America haven't even been to Disneyland in America! Nadia loves to read and can devour a 200 page book in a long afternoon. We'll have to work on her genre of choice however. She prefers detective stories and the scarier and gorier the better!