A little bit of Lera

Lately, I read several blogs about children that were adopted from Torez and it sparked something in me. It was the place we prayed and prayed our daughter, Lera would not go to.  We didn't want her to die of starvation and abuse like the e-mail said!  Miraculously,  the e-mail we received was forwarded all over the United States from one support group to another until we got it in our mailbox about a "little blond angel" that needed a home at Christmastime.  We didn't plan on adopting her, it just happened!  Prior to that, I guess you could say we were found first by our new friend, Jane Miller, when she spotted my husband carrying Hannah up to the snack bar in the bowling ally.  That's when she introduced herself to us and her support group with the Anne Arundel County Down Syndrome Connection. We were only familiar with the group for a short period of time when we got the e-mail from them.  All we knew was our daughter, Hannah had Down syndrome and God spared her life.  It was all so fresh knowing Hannah, too, could have died because she didn't have a rectum when she was born.  We were just getting over the operations that saved her life when the e-mail came.  How could we say no to another little girl that needed us when God just saved our Hannah?  There was no time to waste when we responded.  God called us and we knew we had to make a choice, and we said YES!  It would take another two years before God would make her our daughter.  So we prayed for God to hold her for us until we could hold her for Him. (Please refer to my book for more interesting details about adopting our daughter, Lera.)  When I thought about writing this post the picture of Lera sitting at the airport waiting to go home for the first time popped in my mind.  Up to then, she lived in the baby house in Donetsk for the first five years of her life, and then right before we were able to get to her, she was transferred to Druzhkovka. 

Lera the day we left Kiev, Ukraine and headed home to the States. This is when we are waiting in NY to board to plane to DC to head home.This is the same day Lera and Hannah met for the first time on October 22, 2009 in our home.