A Young Boy's American Dream, was the title, and underneath the title was the sweetest twelve year old boy with big brown eyes. The article went on to talk about the needs of hundreds of thousands of orphans in Russia. How this one child had come here on a hosting program and hadn't found a family who could commit to him. How very much he wanted a family to call his own.
I often wonder about that exact moment when something changes your lives forever! The defining moment when things are set in motion and nothing for you, or for the others who will be sent to you along the way, will ever be the same.
Our path was before us we were going to Russia. We were heading up to the Arctic Circle to bring our son, the one God had chosen for us, home.
He was there at the gate to meet us, it was -50 degrees on the arctic circle that day. He was covered in a black knit cap and coat. I would have recognized that face and those brown eyes anywhere, after all I had spent the last 6 months memorizing them from his picture.
They let him spend the night with us in the hotel, and we made a bed on the floor between our two twin beds for him. All night I lay awake looking at him, he was doing the same, watching both Mark and I. Assessing these strangers who had just entered his world.
Five years later our boy, Zhenya Alexander, graduated and plans to go to college and we couldn't be prouder of him. He has been such a blessing to our family. Zhenya is going to be an engineer he is going to have a wonderful future, all because two people heard God's call, and answered. It has been such a privilege to be allowed to be part of God's plan. Thank you Lord for asking us, for choosing us out of this whole world to be Zhenya's parents.
Zhenya! We have loved watching you grow and change these past five years from a little boy into a wonderful young man. May God guide you as you leave us to begin the next phase of your life. Your dream came true and so did ours...
