IRINA!!!!

Do you remember my post about Irina??? If not, please go read it before reading further into this post.

There, did you read it? Did it make your heart sick to think of the future ahead of this beautiful child? Of all the orphans there? 

Well, Irina's face has haunted me for months. Every day, I have thought of Irina. I've prayed for her, that she will have the opportunity to know the love of a family. 

I'm in the process of creating Angela's dream bedroom...a pirate room (god forbid she should want anything girly. LOL) As I'm doing that room, I think of Irena, in an orphanage. Sleeping in a sunken crummy old "mattress" that nobody here would ever dream of sleeping on. Of paint chipped off the walls. Of cold, drafty, dimly lit rooms. I think of the bedroom Angela will be moving out of. How fun it would be to decorate it for another tween girl. How excited a girl like Irena would be to have a room like that. A place to call her own. A closet to hold HER things. A warm, comfortable bed. Walls with posters of cute boys. When my boys were young I painted each of their names on the wall, in letters as tall as they were. They loved them. I bet Irena would feel proud to see her name in giant letters and know that those letters were painted with love.

Could Dean and I handle all that would come with a girl like Irena? What Would come with her? Would I have the stamina? How would Angela feel having a sibling here who doesn't go away? How would a girl like Irena feel having a sister like Angela? And yet, I'm in the most ethnically diverse school district in the entire state of MN. In the elem. school Angela graduated from last year, there were 23 language represented! Surely I could find someone around who Irena could connect with. Just a few very short years to help her find her way into adulthood. And what would my boys think?

But, Dean isn't where I am. He hasn't spent nearly 2 years reading the adoption blogs, so he doesn't understand that  most of these families had NOTHING to put towards an adoption. That they've done it by faith alone, and God has made sure the money is there. He doesn't understand how my heart aches for these kids. He just wishes I'd stop reading "all those sad blogs. Why do you keep torturing yourself with them?" He doesn't understand how I wish Angela would have a sister, maybe even a sister with Down syndrome just like her. Maybe just a typical girl who needs a chance to BE something other than a statistic in a country who doesn't want her. A country where orphans are considered an embarrassment. 

I wish I knew why God has put Irena on my heart. Maybe its as simple as she needs me to be praying for her. And so I'll do that simple task. I pray for her every time she enters my mind, which is several times per day lately.

And then, last week, I was on Reece's Rainbow, and Irina's picture was gone. My heart skipped a beat. Where did she go? Were my prayers answered, and someone stepped up and committed to adopting her? I contacted the director of RR and was told no...she was removed because she's older, and doesn't have a disability, and the people who go to RR are looking for kids who have disabilities. Irina's only "disability" is that she's an orphan.

I could have let it go. I could have stopped asking questions.

But.....but....what will happen to her? I told God I would pray for her every day, and I can do that, but I want to know MORE!

So I asked, and was put in touch with her facilitator, and eventually with a hosting program called Frontier Horizons. 

There are a lot of little piddly details I'll spare you with, most of which are things that have just kind of "fallen into place". Like certain requirements that I didn't even know had already been met, etc. 

When I contacted Frontier Horizon about possibly getting Irina here with their summer trip, I was told "Our deadline for submitting the names of the children to the government there is in one week. You've called just in time." Hmmm...I don't think it's *my* timing, do you?

We still don't know if we can get Irina on that trip, but if we can, by golly we will! If we can, IRINA WILL BE COMING HERE in August!!! (it's just a 3 week program, by the way.)

Dean asked me what are my long term goals for bringing Irina here. I don't know that I have a GOAL. So, thinking about it, my "goal" right now is to bring Irina here. To show her there IS life outside the orphanage, and that it can be GOOD! The other is that maybe...here....right here in Minnesota, there is a family who will meet her, fall in love with her, and adopt her. Maybe the purpose of her coming here is to find her forever family. 

 As soon I get word that she can be included in the August trip, you better believe there will be an announcement here!!!!