Three Whole Different Lives

I suppose not many folks are still checking in here, since it has been so long since we have posted! Sorry about that - life just keeps happening. ;-) I did want to post this short essay that Anna wrote for school, though. She has changed so much in the past three years - all for the better. Her middle name rings true these days - Joy! Here is what she wrote:

I had three whole different lives. My first was eight years of orphanage life. My second was three years of misery. And my third is a forever life.

While living in the orphanage my mind was lost. I didn't know anything except anger, attitudes, selfishness and that I was in an orphanage. Actually, it felt more like jail.

My second life was in a family that had good and bad people. I got along with three and got in fights with the other three. I was stuck in the middle. I, of course, constantly got in trouble. I knew more things and I started knowing God, but not enough.

And, my third life is a forever life. There's no more anger, I suppose. Honestly, I feel more freedom and relaxation in my third life. I am also meeting a bunch of kids. Of course I still get in fights and all. And I also know much more about God. This God gave me three whole different lives. He gave me those lives for a purpose. I was in an orphanage, then He gave me a family that didn't work, so He gave me a different family so that I can hear more about Him. How great! It's a puzzle.

Anna is 14 years old and has been our daughter for three years. We have seen her mature a great deal and she has recently come to know the Lord as her Savior! She is currently writing her testimony to share with our church when she is baptized.

She asked me if the word "forever"was the correct word to use in regards to being in our family and I assured her that she would indeed forever be a part of our family while we are on this earth, even after she becomes an adult and leaves home.

Her hunger for things of the Lord is so refreshing and exciting. She strives to truly understand what she reads in her Bible each day and how she can apply it in her own life.

Perspectives

Below you will find stories written by the three teens we adopted that September of 2001. A story is best understood when looked at from differing perspectives. What stands out to me when I read the kids' stories is that they were basically unaware of the tragedy preceeding their adoptions.

I have made grammar and English corrections, but otherwise the stories are their own, told from their unique perspectives.

Jennifer's Five Year Anniversary Story

I was fourteen years of age when I was adopted. Two years before my mom and dad came to adopt us, we had some American people come to our orphanage to help us learn how to make jewelry. I had a friend who was a Christian in Russia and her name was Tanya. There were two American women who came. Tanya and I were standing together and Tanya was talking to them. At that time I really wanted to be adopted and I asked those two women if they could adopt me and my brothers. They couldn’t, because one of them wasn’t married and the other didn’t have a husband any more so they couldn’t adopt us. After the Americans left, I would call Tanya every day and ask if she had someone that could adopt us. Then after a year passed, someone came to our orphanage to take pictures of us and I knew that maybe someone would adopt us, but I still called Tanya about every day.
It was the year two thousand one when we heard that someone would adopt us. That year we also got a big box of candy, note pads, and other things. I thought it was from the people who came to our orphanage once, but later I found out that our new parents and some other people put it together for us.
It was summer that year and we were at the summer camp for a month, when one of the workers at the orphanage came to me and said that our new parents would come in the summer, soon. After the camp, I was supposed to go on the boat for eighteen days, but a worker told me that I could not go, because what if they would come and they would have to chase after me. So I didn’t go. I was waiting till they came to us, but later I heard they would come in September. That time I really wanted to go on the boat, but I didn’t, because my brothers and I had to go to the hospital for a check up. They told me that I would not stay there for a long time and they would not give me any shots or do other things to me. But I stayed there for a while with my brothers and they did give us shots and pills.
Sergei, Zhenya and I had a really good friend, which I met in the hospital, but at a different one. She really liked us and took care of us. She would come to the hospital to see us and visit with us.
One day, I asked the doctor when I would leave the hospital, and she told me that I could leave any time, but first I had to call the orphanage to take me back. They told me that they didn’t have any transportation to bring me back. One day they took me back to the orphanage, but not my brothers. I asked them when they would come, but they didn’t know, either.
When my brothers came back, our secretary called us and told us to write a paper, saying that we all agreed to be adopted, but Zhenya didn’t want to be adopted and the secretary and I talked to him and told him that the life there would be better than he had then. I think he understood that and he agreed to write the paper. We also heard from some people that our new mom and dad would adopt us and to be slaves there or work on the farm, because they had so many kids.
We started back to school in September, and it was not that long till our new parents came to Russia to visit us. I think they came to Russia on September 25th, I think, and it was Friday. That day I wanted to go to someone’s house but I didn’t, because my parents came. I was outside, talking to my friend and I saw them come inside the orphanage, so I told my friend good bye and that I would see her Saturday at school. I went inside into my group and waited till they called us. First they were talking to our director, but later they called us, so we could meet our new parents. Our parents asked our director if they could take us with them and stay there for a while, so they could know us better. But the director told them that they need to write a paper to her, about letting us go with them and they did.
We were with them in the apartment. We stayed there over night and the next day we went shopping for clothes and we had fun together. We went to the Chinese market to buy some clothes. After that we went to a book store to look around, and our mom bought us ice cream and I asked her if she wanted some and I asked dad too. But they didn’t wanted, but it was all right with me that they didn’t want, because they wanted us to have fun.
On September 27th we went to the court, but before that a worker at the orphanage told me to cry in the court, because if we did then they would let us be adopted. We were at court and didn’t cry because I thought it wasn’t necessary to cry. The judge asked us why we wanted to be adopted and what got us interested in those people. I told them that they loved kids and they liked to take care of them. After they asked questions they asked us to go out of the court room for a while, till they decided if they wanted us to go to America. We were waiting and finally the door opened and one of the judges told us to go in and hug our new parents, so we did. That day I also gave my mom a necklace, which was a gift from my friend, but I didn’t care who it came from. I just wanted to give it to my new mom. The next day, we went to the orphanage to say good bye to our friends and workers who took care of us, then we went back to the apartment and packed our things to get ready to leave the next day.
The next day we were at the airport and ready to leave, but Tanya came and she gave us a big bag of Russian candies and she also made a game for us, which is called Pop It in America, but she made it with her own hands. We said good bye to Tanya and we started to go on the airplane. We flew to one city in Russia and waited for the airplane to come so we could travel to Moscow. We arrived in Moscow and we stayed there for a few days. We had a good time going to places and seeing things in Moscow. In my life I really wanted to visit Moscow but now my dream came true.
It was time for us to go. We were at the airport and in an airplane flying to America. Mom and I sat together and the boys sat with Dad. Mom would write me something on the paper in English and I would write in Russian. We also played games and did other things. We arrived in Chicago, Illinois. We went to sit down to wait for the airplane, and I saw other people lying or sitting on the floor at the airport and I thought it was really weird for them to do that. So I think somehow I asked mom what they were doing, and she told me it was their home, so they could do that.
The airplane came and we started to travel to Tulsa, Oklahoma. I asked my mom a lot of times if we were in Oklahoma yet and she told me not yet. I was impatient to come to our new home. We finally arrived. When we walked out from the airplane, we saw a lot of people there who came to meet us and see Mom and Dad come home with their new children. When we came home, were really shy at first. I was standing in the dining room, when I saw a big dog running toward me. I panicked, and I wanted them to take this dog away from me because I thought she will bite me because in Russia big dogs aren’t friendly. But later I found out that she would not bite and she was friendly, so I started to like dogs after I met Sandy, our dog.
I lived in Oklahoma for a month and a half and then we moved to Alabama. I still live in Alabama but in a different house. We moved into a bigger one, because we have more kids than before.
After four years or little bit more, my mom asked me questions about what kind of husband would I like and later she told me about Micah, who is right now my fiancée and we will marry some day. This September on the twenty seventh, my brothers and I will be adopted five years ago and on October second we arrived in America. I thank my Mom and Dad for giving me a good life and letting me know God and His son. Thank you so much, Mom and Dad for raising me in a good way and my brothers, too. If you didn’t adopt us maybe two of my brothers would be in jail by now if we were in Russia, but may be not Zhenya. And now I am getting married. I thought this day would not come, but when I came to America the years went faster for me than they did in Russia.

Sergei's Five Year Anniversary Story

(Editor's Note - Sergei chose to write a series of smaller stories, some of which tell about life in the orphanages.)

When I was in Russia my dad died and we buried him. Once when I was in school the police came to school and took us, and we ended up in some kind of police kids place and when I was there they were mean people. They would make people read books even if they didn’t know how to read. When we went to eat, we had to go line up and go eat and that’s when we could go to the bathroom and outside. When someone behaved badly, they would lock them up in one of the rooms with concrete walls and a bucket in a corner to go to the bathroom. When we went to bed we all went into one room and they would lock up us and we couldn’t do anything.
After I had been there three months they transferred us to a different orphanage which was better than some kind of police orphanage. After we had been in the new orphanage for about a year my Russian mom came and got us again. Then a few months later the police came and brought us to the police orphanage and from that orphanage we were transferred to a different one. Then we were transferred to the Belagorsk orphanage and my older sister visited us.



When I was in a Belagorsk orphanage, we went to camps and did karate until they sent us to the Blagoveschensk orphanage. The reason we were sent to the Blagoveschensk orphanage was because our mom died of cancer. When I was in the Blagoveschensk orphanage we would go on eighteen day boat trips every year and go to camps in the summer.
When I was eleven I ended up with the wrong kind of friends. I started to use drugs and alcohol. Once me and my friend went picking marijuana and one of the men followed us but we didn’t know that he was a police officer. When we were done picking marijuana that man caught us and sent us to the police station. They questioned us about why we picked but we lied and said we were picking for someone else. Later, I heard they were talking about if we should go to jail but they said we were too young to go to jail, so they let us go but they kept the records of us that we had been involved with drugs.



When I was in the orphanage we usually did fun things in the summer, like go to a little place where there were good trees and start playing tree tag. What we would do is try to get away from one person while we were all on the tree and you couldn’t touch the ground. When we were stuck and it looked like we didn’t have anywhere to go, we usually would jump on different branches to run away from the person who was “it”.
Once when we were playing tree tag, one of my friends jumped on a different branch and he slipped and landed on his head from a fifteen feet height and he didn’t even break his neck but he did go unconscious for a while. When we picked him up and carried him back to the orphanage some people thought he was high on drugs. Then the doctor came and asked us what happened and we told the doctor, “When we were playing tree tag he fell on his head.” After a few days he felt good and he started playing tree tag again.


When I was in an orphanage, every year we had summer breaks and in the summer we would go on eighteen day boat trips. When we took eighteen day boat trips we would stop in different places to refuel and do some fish trading. While they did that, most of the people went around the city and bought things and we stopped in several cities like that. We also would stop on some kind of land where there were trees and a lot of sand and there were no people. When we stopped there we spent about two days on the sandy part. We would swim and do some contests like who could build the prettiest sand sculptures. Then we would do some competitions but since there was a lot of people we would usually separate all of the people into four groups.
We also fished there and once when we were fishing we caught a huge fish and the fish had eggs, so what we did with the eggs was turned them in to caviar.




When I heard me, Zhenya and Jennifer were going to be adopted I was excited. Then the director told me if we went to America they might use us as slaves and my friend told me they were going to break us like robots but I did not believe that.
Then we waited at least for a year, before Mom and Dad came. They put us in a hospital for no reason and when they did that we could not go outside so me and the guy I met there would go out from the hospital without asking because we knew that they would say no to us. The few days we were in the hospital I was thinking of going back to the orphanage but I decided to stay. Then Jennifer’s friend came to the hospital to visit her and she visited me and Zhenya. When she was visiting she smelled that we had smoked cigarettes and she had been saying to us for a while not to smoke cigarettes because they are bad for you.

Zhenya's Five Year Anniversary Story

About five years ago I was in a children’s home. I was sitting in a room watching tv when my room teacher came and said that I needed to put my good clothing on and go to the director’s office. I didn’t know what that was all about, so I put my clothing on and went to the director’s office. The place where I stayed, if a director asks you to come to his office usually it’s when people did something bad. When I came in there with Veronika (aka, Jennifer) and Sergei, she told us to sit down. As we sat, she told us the reason we were there was that a person was going to come and take a picture of us for the people who were going to adopt us. After they took our pictures the director told us that we could go. Then a couple of months later the people sent us a present.
Winter passed and I forgot that someone was trying to adopt us. In the beginning of the summer, the director told us that we needed to go to her office again. She told us that we were going to be adopted in September and then she said that we needed to sign papers first to be adopted and she said to think about that before we signed the papers. When we told the other boys and teachers, they told us that Americans treat adopted kids really bad and they make them work on farms. One of the teachers said that the people that were adopting us were paying for us so that made me think that we were being sold and that made me not want to sign the papers.
Then a couple of weeks later we went to camp. When I came back I did sign those papers. In September, Mom and Dad came to the children’s home. First, we sat in the assistant director’s office and they talked with her. Then Mom and Dad took us to the store shopping. After shopping, we went to the apartment they were staying in. I think we spent the night there. Then we went back to the orphanage. Some date we went to the court and were approved for our adoptions. A couple of days later we went to the airport and traveled to some city. Then we traveled to Moscow where we stayed a couple of days. Then we came to America.
Now that I’m in the USA I see that I made the right choice on signing those papers and the stories that I’ve heard about Americans treating adopted kids bad is a lie. So, I’m really thankful that God brought me to this country.

Same Story, Different Perspective

I have always enjoyed hearing stories from more than one perspective, particularly if one or more of the stories come from our own children. Tessa, for instance, has a phenominal memory. When she talks about things that happened when she was a small child, it is fascinating for me to remember the same incident and compare her perceptions to mine. Time after time I have discovered that her reasons for doing a particular thing or acting in a specific way had very good reasoning behind them, although she did not have the communication skills at that age to explain herself.

Along those same lines, I would like to share one of our daughter's story of selling our house last week. My tendency is to get caught up in the emotions of a situation like that and not pay as close attention to our children as I should. Stated as simply and matter-of-fact as it is in this writing, I find myself feeling ashamed for having made such a huge deal of it and continually putting the kids off while I tried to deal with the challenges. Hindsight is indeed 20-20.

Here is the story, as written by Anna, age 14. I have left the essay exactly as she wrote it, as the mistakes tend to give it more of a sense of childlike wonder and innocence.

Selling Our House

Selling our house in Owens Cross Roads was hard on my mom. She spendid a lot of time on phones and we the kids had to be patient because we wanted to talk to her right away. Then one day she and grandma needed to go to New Hope which is past Owens Cross roads. So-next day she took some kids with her so she could drop them to our old neighborhood to visit the horses, Johnsons, and the place. While we vsiited the Johnsons grandma and She-She went to New Hope. When they came back She-She and Mrs. Comton waited for the termite guy. While we all waited we played with Mrs. Comton's pets and went through our house that they are trying to buy. The house looked OK execpt they chanced some things inside the house. We waited to long and got tired so we went back home. The next day She-She went back to Owens Cross Rds and the termite guy was there so he looked around the house under the house and they or he signed or did something with the paper sometimes at 11:something. Which in fact that paper needs to return to somewhere at 12:00. If not it is still our house. But She-She returned it in time and WALA we sold our house. It is the Comton's house. She-She went out to eat with couple of people to celebrate. I am happy that it went well.

Sergei has created a "birds and blooms" utopia on the deck next to our sunroom. In the last few days we have had the absolutely delightful opportunity to watch a family of woodpeckers go through their daily routine. God's creation is so totally cool! Along with these guys, we see finches, wrens (one of my favorites!), hummingbirds, cardinals, sparrows, Tufted Titmice, doves, cowbirds and an occasional Goldfinch. Of course we cannot help but be amused at the antics of the squirrels and chipmunks, too. Chipmunks have a way of making me giggle every single time I see them. Those little tails held so high are just too much. Yesterday I also saw three bunnies in our yard, chasing each other around - it was almost more than I could handle at one time!

As amazing as seeing these creatures is, I am equally amazed at the talent God has bestowed upon Sergei in the area of photography. I pray that he will someday have the opportunity to use this talent to His glory.

Oh my... there are two baby woodpeckers out there now. I need to go...;-)