Letting Go

Today was our last full day with our boy...  :(

So, so, so sad. But we didn't spend it bumming out, we partied it up instead!!

Our sweet friends, the Helgrens, invited us and Dzintars best buddies the Ellis brothers over for some swimming! After Dzintars comment about wanting a "Mario" party for this 15th birthday in October I decided to declare today his official "unbirthday" instead!! Sadly "Mario" party supplies were no where to be found so I chose "Angry Birds" instead and it worked quite nice! I made cupcakes, bought decorations and we sang to him and let him blow out the candles. You couldn't have found a happier boy anywhere on the planet!! After we celebrated him and all that God has done in his life he told me "Stacey, I VERY happy!"

Posing on top of the waterfall quickly turned from this...

to this!!

Happy almost 15th birthday buddy!!

My "angry birds"

Is he adorable or what??

Did I mention the Helgren's pool is AWESOME!!!

Trying to get a good pic of these boys is near impossible, someone is always goofing off! And on a side note, I taught every one of these boys except Dz:) 

He braved the slide even though it dumps into the deep end:) 

We ended our "unbirthday" celebration with a farewell dinner with the Ellis brothers! These boys have been one of the biggest blessings in Dzintars life this summer! He's really going to miss them:(

They sang to him at dinner:) 

Can't blog without including some pics of my princess:)

Nice "photo bomb" honey!!

We are in the final stages of packing. I'll let you know how THAT goes! He's been blessed with so many donated clothes and he wants to take them all. Only problem is he's strictly limited to one suitcase and one backpack and the suitcase can weigh no more than 50 lbs. We're working on it! Yesterday my sweet friend and hairdresser extraordinaire came over with THREE winter coats for him to try on and choose from!! It was like going shopping at home! You should have seen his smile! If you've been reading this blog for awhile you probably already know Dzintars is like ZERO percent body fat and the kid gets cold like nobody's business. We're talking full on goose bumps and shivers with a few drops of water on him. So when he saw those big puffy jackets he was nearly beside himself. With a HUGE smile on his face he says "Stacey, mine no cold in Latvia!" He was seriously stoked!! Laura also brought him some gloves, beanies and sweatshirts to help him stay warm this winter!! He's such a cute little model!!!

With Dzintars departure day looming it's been hard to keep my heart in the moment, the here and now. I'm trying my best not to worry about his future and love him while he's here but still my mind wanders sometimes and I start to worry. I absolutely HATE that he has to leave tomorrow, it just feels wrong. So while I was throwing myself a little pity party in the car yesterday because this hurts! I do not want to let him go, I want to keep him here where I know he is safe and loved. I heard a song by Kari Jobe called "Steady My Heart" that really spoke to all I was wrestling with in that very moment. 

Even when it hurts
Even when it's hard
Even when it all just falls apart
I will run to You
Cause I know that You are
Lover of my soul
Healer of my scars
You steady my heart

 I'm not gonna worry
I know that You got me
Right inside the palm of your hand
Each and every moment
What's good and what gets broken
Happens just the way that You plan

And I will run to You
You're my refuge in Your arms
And I will sing to You
Cause of everything You are

 Then as if that wasn't enough the very next song was this one called "Center of It" by Chris August:

Some nights I lay awake and I
Can’t push these thoughts away
I’m worried where I’m gonna go
Where I’m gonna be are You gonna be there for me
When it feels like the doors are closing
Gotta trust that You’re doing something
Come sun come rainy day
You are all I need

In the dark, in the light
In the morning and night
In the good, in the hurt
In the places I hide
When I rise, when I fall You’ll be there through it all
At the start, at the end
In the center of the center of it

Truth is I'm terribly worried about Dzintars returning to Latvia. And I have no idea what God has planned for him, I only know our hosting him this summer was somehow a part of it all and that his story has impacted and touched people far and wide. And that even as he returns to Latvia and an unknown future God is with him through it all! This summer was only a piece of the puzzle, only a tiny part of the tapestry He is weaving in Dzintars life! So many miraculous and wonderful things have come out of this hosting expereicne, many of which I can't even share, you'll just have to take my word for it! But God is at work my friends and his love for Dzintars is clear!!

Please continue to pray for him as he heads home! He does not want to go, we are the only family he's ever known and he certainly doesn't want this to end! He's begging to stay and it just breaks my heart!! Pray that he'll have a peace about leaving! I keep telling him this is not the end, God has big plans for him, but all he is able to think about is losing the one thing he's always wanted...a family! 

The Proof Of Your Love

Whew! We spent 8 LONGGGG hours in the car yesterday so we could spend Dzintars final weekend with my family. Tomorrow we have a family reunion to go to where we'll get to hang out with all my aunts, uncles and cousins. It's going to be a great day!

Today was mostly spent swimming, with a birthday party in the middle. Since my parents have a pool I knew Dzintars would want to swim so I begged my dad to REALLY heat the pool for the weekend, normally he relies on the solar panels to heat it, but I just knew that wouldn't be enough for my cold blooded Latvian. Ya'll might think I'm kidding when I say he gets cold the second he gets wet. I'm not! We're talking full on goose bumps and visible shaking! The kid is cold! I was so happy when he stepped into the pool today and said "Stacey, pool hot!" and smiled, then proceeded to spend the next several hours working on his skills!! We spent quite a bit of our pool time practicing what he's learned in swim lessons, including many trips across the deep end:) The kid has a seriously good stroke when he's doing everything he's been taught and could probably do well in competitive swimming someday:)

And because there are some other cute boys in my life too, here's one of Brennan and Lukey today!

We took a break after lunch and made a quick jaunt over to a birthday party. It was a "Super Mario" themed party with fun decorations, water balloons and a bean bag toss. When we left he told me: "Stacey, mine birthday October. Mine Mario party. No mine Latvia. Mine America!"

He still has no serious prospects for a forever family. So if you want to make his dreams come true speak now people!!! You could be the answers to his prayers and so many others around the world who have been moved by his story and are praying!

One of my favorite blogs to read is Babe of My Heart. I've been reading Andrea's blog for a few years now and I just love her heart! She's a mama of four littles, and decided to tackle hosting a girl from the Ukraine as well this summer! She shoots straight and her words just resonate with my heart! Here's an excerpt from one of her posts this week:

"WHAT IF EVERY FAMILY JUST DECIDED TO HELP JUST ONE…JUST ONE…JUST ONE…THINK OF WHAT THAT WOULD DO? Why call me? We are crazy. But what if EVERY family just took care of ONE. They don’t have to adopt. They can host. They can foster. They can send a child that doesn’t have family to college and look after them across the world. What would the world look like if EVERY family just took care of ONE…JUST ONE?! Scripture calls us to care for orphans. That is for sure plural. But what if we decided to start with JUST ONE??? 

It is NOT just my calling. It is the calling of EVERY believer. It’s for sure plural. But what if we all just cared for ONE??? If we kept just one out of sex trafficking? Just one off of drugs? Just one from prostitution? Because these orphans–they become adults. And many of them…without wanting too will add to the orphan crisis. ONE FAMILY–ONE ORPHAN…just think of how the world would change!


Not every family can adopt. But every family CAN do something. What if every family loved an orphan deep and wide…and in their love…that child became no longer an orphan? Adoption will not be the plan for every child, but every child does need a family to love them and look after them in some capacity. Sure sponsoring a child through Compassion or Wiphan or this organization or that is great–but what might it look like to get REALLY involved in the life of a child who needs a family? What if the Lord wanted to use your family in the life of just ONE in a big, real, lasting way??? Will you pray about reaching out–being available–and for Him to show you just ONE??" To read her full post click here.

 Oh man! Can you imagine what the world would look like if that's how we all actually lived???

I once read a statistic that boggled my mind, it still does.

"There are 147 million orphans in the world, if only 7% of the 2 billion Christians in the world would care for a single orphan in distress, there would effectively be no more orphans." 

Those 147 million orphans have names and faces and stories similar to Dzintars!

If you've been reading my blog for awhile you know the Lord uses music to speak to me a lot. Today I heard another great song on the radio that I wanted to share with you. It's by a group called "For King & Country" and it's called "The Proof of Your Love". The chorus is SO good and fully expresses the reason we chose to host this summer. The bible says "faith without deeds is dead" (James 2:26) so we stepped out in faith and answered the call to host Dzintars because we want our lives to be the proof of His love!

 

"So let my life be the proof,
The proof of Your love
Let my love look like You and what You're made of
How You lived, how You died
Love is sacrifice
So let my life be the proof,
The proof of Your love"

 

When I first started this blog I figured my parents and a few close friends would read it as a way of keeping up with our hosting adventures but it's turned into far more than that. Somehow this little blog has reached people in multiple countries and is now read by people I do not even know. I assume you keep reading because you've been somehow moved by Dzintars story and the plight of other kids like him. So I'd like to ask all of you to consider what you can do to help because Andrea's right, we can all do SOMETHING! What are you going to do???

 

This Boy...

Is in desperate need of a loving family!! The fact that he must return to Latvia next week has not escaped his attention. His "I love you's" have become more frequent and his hugs last a little longer. He will do anything to spend more time with us, that includes helping me fold clothes and vacuum over watching a movie. He's terribly worried he will never see us again or talk to us. I've assured him that I love him very much and I will be very sad when he leaves. And it's true, I love him with all of my heart and I will be brokenhearted when he leaves. That conversation led to him implore me to call his social worker in Latvia and tell her that we will keep him forever. That conversation had me in tears! This is so hard! We are the only family he has ever known! That just breaks my heart! He's too great of a kid to be sent back to an orphange where he will age out in just over a year! In his words "Mine (which in his mind means "me") no Latvia Stacey. Mine America!"

Loving him was easy, letting him go and having no control of what happens to him from here on out will be the hard part.

Please, please, please share this post and his story in hopes that it will somehow find it's way to his "forever" family!

I cannot say enough good things about him. I'm happy to share in detail, every good and wonderful thing about him, with anyone who is seriously interested in providing him with a loving family!!

When Dzintars arrived we found out he was allergic to our cats, adoptive families will have to be cat free or willing to re-home their cats to rescue him!

A matching grant has been made available to help cover his adoption costs for home study approved families! Both parents MUST be 18 years older than Dzintars (32 years of age or older).

A Day to Remember

Yesterday we took the kids to the "Happiest Place on Earth" (aka Disneyland). My parents wanted to gift us and Dzintars with the trip and we are so grateful! It was such an incredible day, I'm not sure I can even put it all into words! We started at 9:30 and didn't leave till they closed at midnight (that's more than 14 hours, in case you were wondering and it's our new family record)! Did I mention we brought Brennan and Kaelyn as well! It could have been disastrous, they are both running on little sleep this week, but I prayed that they would be little angels and there would be no overly exhausted meltdowns like the previous day! They were rock stars!! I'm not kidding! I love Brennan, but tired Brennan = major emotional breakdowns for him and for me and that would have totally made our Disney day a bummer! Kaelyn napped for 2 hours in the stroller but he was having too much fun to nap and managed to stay awake till nearly midnight and had a good attitude the whole day! Praising God for small miracles:)

Dzintars LOVED Disneyland. I'm so glad, because the kids had such major meltdowns the day before because we've been going non-stop since sometime last week, we almost nixed the whole trip! It's been at least 6 months since our last trip to the Magic Kingdom (our passes expired in January I think) and I had almost forgotten how much I love it! I've been with both our kiddos on their inaugural trips to Disneyland but they were both so little they didn't even realize what was happening. But taking a 14 year old for his first trip was AWESOME!! He wanted to do EVERYTHING, and then he'd get off a ride and want to do it again!! We tried explaining and reexplaining and reexplaining again that there was SO MUCH more to see and that if we did every ride twice we'd never see all that Disneyland had to offer. He just didn't get it! His excitement for what was right in front of him, what he could see and knew to be real was all that he wanted! Isn't that just like our relationship with the Lord? So often I think I know what I want, what will make me happy, what will be best for me and yet I hear the Lord saying "Child, if you only knew all that was out there you wouldn't settle for this one thing!" I was reminded of this verse:

"Now we see but a poor reflection as in a mirror, then we shall see face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known." 1 Corinthians 13:12

Just an FYI, using Google translate to communicate with your Latvian child AND to text back and forth with your spouse to choose rendezvous points when you've gone on separate rides is not recommended as it will bleed your battery dry by noon and require you to use broken English the rest of the day in efforts to conserve said battery for emergencies! I must have translated at least 10 times in 3 different ways that there was more to see and if we kept going on the same rides multiple times we'd never see it all but he just wasn't getting it! After that, we gave up:) It didn't stop him from asking though ;)

He took great pride in the fact that he was the "big kid" and could go on rides that Brennan and Kaelyn either couldn't or wouldn't go on. He told me multiple times that he was big and they were small and they'd cry. For a child who has spent his entire life being made to feel worthless and unimportant, this meant a lot to him. Luckily, Brennan didn't catch on cause he doesn't fancy himself a baby.

We worked the system to maximize our time there taking advantage of "fast passes" and "stroller passes" which allowed us to take Dzintars on rides that Bren and Kae couldn't and then switch riders for a much shorter wait time. Then Dzintars got to twice on some of his favorite rides with less wait. When he came off a ride with one of us he always wanted to go again with the other one! He wanted to tell us every detail of the ride, it sounded a lot like his rendition of "The Dark Knight Rises" if you caught that video. Lots of broken English and hand motions. Such a crack up! We had a few extra "stroller passes" left at the end of the night that we were able to give away to several very happy people:)

First stop...Jungle Cruise:)

Pirates of the Caribbean...a fave of his. He asked at least 1,000 (not exaggerating here) times to go on "Per-at-es" again!

Tarzan's Treehouse. 

Splash Mountain with Peter.

Space Mountain, he was so proud of himself for keeping his eyes open for once. If you haven't been on this ride, it's in utter darkness, no need to close your eyes. But I made sure to tell him how proud I was of him anyways.

We stopped to take pictures with our favorite characters! FYI, Kaelyn feel asleep after visiting with her fairy friends so she's absent from most of our photos for the next few hours.

We scored a great deal on some one day park hopper tickets. So midday we hopped on over to California Adventure for a few hours of fun! If you haven't been yet, Cars Land rocks! They took "Radiator Springs" and recreated it inside the park! Super cool! I was so bummed my nephew Lukey wasn't with us, he's beyond obsessed with Cars and would have been in heaven!! We took a few pictures just for him, enjoy buddy!!



Rather than waiting 2 1/2 hours to ride the new Cars Land ride we took our chances in the single rider line. We waited only 45 minutes and were rewarded with two empty seats in the same car. Plus we got a "stroller pass" so Peter and Brennan got to go as well and only waited 15 minutes. We're professionals people, watch out!

The cars go 45 miles an hour, it was a little too fast for my hair! LOL!

About to conquer the "Tower of Terror"

We did not stop to watch any parades, but did see tidbits here and there:)

He saw this Ferris Wheel and desperately wanted to go. Wait or later are not English words we though to teach him beforehand...so while Peter and the kids waited for Toy Story for 45 minutes I took Dz on the Ferris Wheel which had a very short wait. 

Happy to be high in the sky. 

Toy Story

LOVE these three boys!

Kaelyn was there but refused to have her picture taken. 

Fun in a "Bug's Land"

LOVE this one! 

Waiting for Dumbo. 

 

We just had to stop at the "Mad Hatter" store for some fun photo ops! 

He embodies "Goofy" to a tee as this picture suggests. It perfectly captures him as he refused to pose "normal" for me:)

Can't visit the Mouse's House without trying on some ears:)

Love this dimpled little boy!

A whole family of Goofs:)

Oddly enough all our Goofy faces were the same. Totally unplanned.

A little Teacup fun.

This one is so fun! Great shot Peter:) 

Dzintars and I rode the Matterhorn as single riders, so much faster. Our bobsleds took off right as the fireworks were starting. Every time there was an opening in the Mountain we'd get a view of the fireworks. So cool. Then there was a perfect place to watch the remainder right where we got off. Our city put on a pretty decent fireworks show for the 4th of July but Disney puts it to shame. He "oooed and ahhhed and said WOW" a lot!  Peter was off watching the show on Main Street with the littles so it was a special moment between Dzintars and I.

Autopia, a horrible shot, but he LOVED driving his own car. Then told us Peter would be too tired to drive us home so late at night and that he would drive our car home instead. Nice try buddy!

Small World. 

And after 14+ hours of Magical fun this is how the kids ended their night! They hung tight until nearly 11:30. Remember,

It was such a great day! There were many "I love you's" said and hugs given and many requests made to stay in America with us rather than go back to Latvia next week. We even got "Stacey, I VERY happy!" I guess Disneyland really is the "happiest place on earth".