The Road to Matveevka

The road to Matveevka orphanage is not an easy one. It was about 6,000 miles from here. It's literally trains, planes and automobiles. I hope to give you a few highlights of our first trip in a video montage as we prepare for our second. We had a 12hrs layover in Germany, then to Kiev, Zaporozhyzha and finally the village of Matveevka where the orphanage is. I have made this video as closure from our failed adoption as we prepare to leave again. 

The next few weeks we will be challenging since we will be leaving our home again and embarking on another emotional journey. I hope you can help us with our adoption efforts by praying mainly. God will provide us all we need for these children. Our fundraising efforts are on-going until we are back safe in the U.S.A. If you feel led the donate, please do. We appreciate everything.  He has already given us such great people we call friends. Our fast turn around time is due to the pending cold winter weather in the Ukraine. The likes of which no Southerner has ever seen. With that said we don't have any winter clothes, yikes! And we want to be back for the holidays here in America.

Also, adoption paperwork has a shelf life. It took eight months to prepare, working daily on it and the longer we wait the older it gets.  Finally and most importantly, Ruslan and Karina are waiting for us. We don't want to keep them waiting any longer than they have to.
Enjoy The Road to Matveevka

Lucy, I'm home! or I'm back in the saddle again!

The truth is revealed and Lucy and Ricky are home. Now that we returned to Alabama we had time to contemplate the situation that just happened. Was that real? A friend of ours jokes that we could have made millions as a reality show. So true. "Keeping up with the Pattens" maybe? Hmm

Right before we left, the final hour before our cab driver arrived I received a call from a sweet orphan we had met last year. She was happy and bubbly as usual when we talked on the phone. I had also received a message from another friend who had been wounded in this a whole adoption process. Unbeknownst to her she had given me a glimmer of hope. Believe me this process is not for the weak hearted. I feel like Mel Gibson in Brave Heart somedays.

You see this young girl, her brother and the email were all part of the next plan God has revealed to us. Within the next few days several twists of fate occurred. And today we are preparing to head back to the Ukraine to adopt Ruslan and Karina, the siblings, we originally had also considered adopting last December.

Ruslan and Karina

Aerosmith, one of my favorite rock bands, would say, "I'm back in the saddle again"! 

God tells me everyday to trust him and I try to everyday. He has revealed this new opportunity and plan for our lives. We contacted the children and asked them if they would accept us as their parents. They both said yes and agreed. 

Ephesians 6:11

"Put on the full armor of God so that you can take your stand against the devil's schemes". Wow! That is a powerful statement. But how does he come? A person, a situation and disappointment? a betrayal of the heart? Pastor Mike at Journey Church had just finished his series on this message right before we left. How timely. It's all in the plan. This much anticipated trip to the Ukraine turned out to be a major disappointment for us and could have led us to become prey to the devil's scheme and turn away from God because our hearts were broken. But instead we put on the full armor of God, just as we are trained at work to do when preparing to enter battle. Scott and I helped each other tighten anything that may expose a body part to harm. No one or nothing was going to take away the love we have for Jesus. We were also blessed to have two amazing people with us as our wingmen. Armed with all this in our hearts we both felt a sense of calm when it was certain we should have fallen apart. This is not to say we did not hurt or feel pain. The child we came there for did not want us. She did not see or could not see us as her parents. For reasons that I will not go into in this blog and we feel attributed to the determinant of this situation, we returned home empty-handed after three weeks in the Ukraine. The Matveevka Orphanage Behind these gates we left a child. A child we had waited for and worked towards for eight months. Although I was not pregnant, I felt like she had died. Except she wasn't and isn't. She is there and will stay there until she can accept the multiple parents put before her or she ages out after the eleventh grade. It's hard to know exactly what God's plan is for you when these things happen. It's hard to think actually. You are numb and in disbelief. But God has a plan and purpose for all of us. Little did we know that he had already started unveiling that plan and continues to do so.

Philippians 4:13

Phil 4:13 says: ^" I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me".  But God I'm only human.

Upon our return from our Christmas trip to Florida to visit my dear mother in law who is forever energetic, festive, filled with holiday spirit, and loves to entertain we decided to go visit the children at the camp.  Being with the children totally engulfs you and you lose track of time because its so wonderful to be there. You may think you are there to give and make them feel better, but in reality these children are giving to you strength you never thought you had. Who could complain about our boring lives when these children who have nothing give you everything. A hug, a smile, a drawing, any small token they may have. Your gifts to them may be big or small, inexpensive or not, but the one gift they all really want is a family.

Some of these kids aren't orphans, just saying..lol

So as the weeks go by we decide we need to adopt one of these children.  Did we just say that together? Why yes we did! Thank you Jesus! 

But now which one or maybe just give us all nine. Through the difficult process of deciding and asking about all the children, we settle on three. Yes! Three. We're crazy right? Well, not so fast. We are told that two of the three, a sibling group are 'spoken' for and that there are other families interested in them that have already started 'the process'. Darn! Oh well, this is the best for the children. The most important thing is that they find home. So we decided to rock on with our one.

The children leave in late January after almost four weeks here. Its decided its crunch time! Time to get the ball moving fast. And fast it does move, thankfully to our military years of service we have already been background checked and fingerprinted more than you ever need to know. So the accordion folder of papers is slowly getting filled so fast that I must buy a new one so that the elastic doesn't break off! I will tell you that you will need a lot of patience to endure the mountains of paperwork from every office, from your local police dept. to the FBI checks. But it is as it should be, you are adopting a child, not a pet from the local shelter. 

Sometimes the paperwork process felt redundant or like you were the only person who knew what you needed. Apostilled?? Ever heard of that?? who?? yeah, see....downtown, office of the Secretary of State. See that was easy..yeah right.

After months of notarizing, scanning, fingerprints, medical appts (syphilis test?? say what??), employment records, finances, home study, interviews with social workers you find out you are not a criminal and do not have an STD...yay! So you can adopt a child. 

In the meanwhile, we have been trying to establish, maintain and achieve a relationship with a child who speaks Russian and lives on the other side of the earth in the Ukraine. 

My husband's favorite saying (and Kelly Clarkson..haha)  is, "what doesn't kill you makes you stronger!" Unbeknown to us Phil 4:13 is about to have a whole new meaning in the upcoming weeks as we finalize our travel dates and go head on into the unknown like the good warriors we were meant to be. This would be a war like no other we have been in and God filled us with strength to overcome the this hurdle a little bruised but unscaved.   

I love Lucy

Well it's funny how life turns out. We think we have it all worked out and then it all changes. We think we had the plan and it falls apart. It turns out we're just part of the plan. It seems that even my attempt to write a blog was not in 'my' plan, but I feel I will start now and try to explain it all to you. I hope this blog keeps our friends and family updated with everything going on with us as we walk through this journey called life and this chapter called adoption.

Last December, we met a group of Ukrainian orphans through a ministry called Bridges of Faith that brings children here to experience our culture, our love and the unconditional love Jesus has for all of us. Normally, this would be the beginning of the story, but not for us. Our story started about three years ago.

I have always loved working in the nursery in our church. I worked there on Sunday mornings for almost five years. I have seen many babies come and go. I always desired to have a baby that Scott and I could call our own. You see all our children are grown, with the exception of Kimi who was young enough to build a close relationship with Scott. I on the other hand wanted that kind of relationship from his grown children but never quite got there.

A couple of summer's ago a friend of mine was so excited and overjoyed as she told me that she was going to go to China to get her baby soon.  Wow! I thought that is awesome. I wondered if we could do that also. Well, how do you do that? I gathered all the information she gave me and off I went into my world of research on the internet. Then I realized that I had a problem. How do I choose? How do I choose the country? The child? boy or girl? Oh no, I never thought of that. Luckily, each country has their own qualifications. I start narrowing the countries down and the Ukraine kept coming up as a good fit, but wait, I don't even know where that is.

So now I have to purpose this to my husband the Colonel...lol... and he says, 'no, too much money'. We have kids in college, high school and elementary school, plus he has his retirement all "planned" out. And he doesn't want to look like grandpa picking our kid up from school...lol.  My efforts to convince my husband were shot down one by one and I decided just leave this subject alone. So I just kept working in the nursery.

One day my friend who worked with me in the nursery said she was going to be a foster parent. I thought what a great idea! We could do that! Well Scott agreed and we signed up for the next class and off we went. What else could be better, he's happy. I'm happy. 

Okay, so now we finished and so where is my baby? Oh sorry no babies. And you don't live in the county you took the classes so you have to transfer over and start with them....what?  Did I mention we already have four children and they are all alive and well? So off we go and we transfer...and eventually are  lost in the shuffle of new case workers and lost paperwork. So what's the next plan? I feel like Lucy Ricardo from I love Lucy and all her plans that don't work. So I'm just going to give this one to God. He knows my heart and I will be happy with HIS answer. Although, at this point I prayed he'd work on my husband some, clearly needing intervention..haha.

Time passes and a miracle happens! Well sort of.. the Alabama National Guard picks up a mission to go to the Ukraine! And guess who is in charge of this trip? You guessed it! My wonderful husband. So of course I am thanking God for this great opportunity. Surely, my husband will change his mind once he arrived there. 

Well, not so much. He came back and said no, and no. Darn it! God what do I do? So again, in the meanwhile I am happy and content with what I have. During this time I start hearing about some Ukrainian children that were in Alabama visiting. My friend from the nursery gives me a little information, but neither one of us knows much. So I thought well maybe I will hear something next time. I missed that opportunity. 

Christmas 2011 rolls around and Journey Church has their annual Giving Tree out. I love to participate buying things for children so I decide I'm going to grab an ornament and see who I get. Well I quickly find out there are nine ornaments on the tree that say, "buy gifts for Ukrainian orphans".  You're kidding right God? Okay, okay, I'll take one. I mean Kimi and I would enjoy at least shopping for a child if we can't adopt one. So I take an ornament and never mention it to Scott. I mean, why bother. I didn't want to nag him about it anymore. The day of the shopping trip arrives. I mentioned my evening plans to my husband and he's a little hurt I left him out. I explain, but I'm totally confused by this new interest.  As life would have it, the evening of the shopping trip someone had to go pick my son up. He was just arriving back from a trip. So of course I made Scott go. He wanted to stay and meet the children but had to leave after a few minutes. I enjoyed myself that evening with the children. That evening when my husband came home he said he wanted to go visit the camp before we went out of town.  That Saturday when we went to the camp something immediately changed in Scott.  The following week was Christmas and we were out of town. Upon our return everything changes. Scott wants to know about these children and figures out how to see them again. Was this in my plan, his plan, our plan? The journey begins and I can't wait to tell you all about it finally....