Missouri Loves Company

Last week, shrugging off advice we rent, we’d driven our one vehicle, an older, high mileage Silhouette threatening to strand us, to Tulsa. Excessively emboldened by our trouble-free trip, we left for Tulsa this time serene in the confidence of last week’s precedent.

I don’t expect I’ll drive to Tulsa again without stopping to see my sweet friend, Missouri Lighthouse coordinator Elaine. On Friday, we’d made good enough time through the night to justify a lengthy visit. Elaine and her husband Kenny own a car dealership in St. Robert. Per our request, they’d been watching for a van in our price range to replace the Silhouette. Elaine was working, so we visited her at the lot. Walking into the showroom, we laughed that the trade-in value of our wheels was surely rising with its reliability on our frequent Tulsa runs. After a three hour stop, we waved goodbye and hurried on our way.

I-44 in central Missouri is a scenic route wending through tree-crowned hills and limestone outcroppings. It was a scorcher, and as the van labored up a hill near Conway, 45 miles west of St. Robert, it became clear we’d taken it one trip too far. Providentially, we were near a downhill exit so the van coasted off the interstate. In my humiliation pushing it to a gas station, I had visions of Julie arriving at the airport, new brood in tow, oblivious to the extent we’d gone through to greet them there. Adding to the comedic inconvenience, our cell phone chose this particular day not to work, so we were left to plead for techno-mercy from passersby. People always love my children, but this time we benefitted less from their charm than their urchin impersonations made doubly convincing by riding all night, then being stranded in the hot sun. Lent a phone, I called Elaine, scarcely recounting our woes before she became a take-charge Wonder Woman without my even asking. Bidding me not to worry, she promised to call in their driver, send a flatbed truck with a minivan we could take on to Tulsa, and take the disabled van back to the dealership. She also called my mother-in-law in Tulsa, telling her to go to the airport herself, since we’d likely be too late to make it.

Sitting at a gas station table in resignation, we consoled ourselves knowing Julie would realize it was the thought that counted. We cut a piteous enough pose that a station employee offered us a pizza she’d made in error. When the flatbed arrived, our things were ready and we leaped into the replacement van. With a little more than three hours and 220 miles to go to Tulsa, it seemed remotely possible that with smooth sailing, we might make it in time to the airport if we hurried.

Entering Oklahoma, we’d made great headway, so I made my welcome sign en route. Close to the airport, we found that, not only would we be punctual, but we would be early. When Julie, Dave, their two biological sons, and three new children entered the waiting area, our family was there waiting, looking like we’d spent the day by a busy road, but waiting nonetheless. How delightful to surprise my serially hosting friends, to finally meet Vladimir, and to hug, then hug again! I wanted Julie to know how special her adoption was to us, and I think she understood.

Elaine called later while we were at dinner and said we could take the van back to Michigan while we looked for something else. But after our 220-mile test drive and the impeccable service of Mid-Missouri Motors, we were interested in the van Elaine and Kenny had graciously lent us. Our van shopping had been conveniently completed alongside the Missouri interstate-- no going to look, no wondering about color, just grab it and go, no fuss at all.

On our way back home today, we went through a toll booth in Oklahoma. The same collector from last week saw our kids in the back and told Randy, “Be careful driving. I see you’ve got precious cargo there!” Even the toll people are friendly in Oklahoma; it’s one of the reasons, besides being Julie’s home, that I love coordinating Lighthouse trips there. Through Rolla, we stopped again to see Elaine, Kenny, and their kids at home; we showed off our new van, but they acted like they’d seen it before. Seeing them on weekends could be habit-forming.

Blessed emotionally last week’s trip, we were blessed physically this trip with providential care at every turn. We broke down close enough to Elaine at a time she could help us, we got an especially long test drive of a vehicle we needed anyway, and we avoided a trip to Missouri later to look at other vehicles, all in time to see dear friends come home. As if that weren’t enough, the deal was sweetened with free pizza.

Sometimes I wonder why people are so nice to us. The answer is God directs us every step of our way, putting us where we need to be, when we need to be there, and allowing us to meet those we need to meet. As we have blessed, we have been smothered in blessings. God has been good to us again and again. And now He wants to use us to bless others.

Blessed, Part One

I took a road trip with my better half Thursday. Randy doesn’t just tolerate my Lighthouse Project activities, he embraces them. He never says no when saying yes will benefit the program in some way. Randy has cared for our four kids himself for stretches while I was out of town coordinating trips, spent his inopportunely-timed birthday at Chuck E. Cheese because the Lighthouse kids were having a get-together there, told me one hundred times to go ahead and pick up the phone for Lighthouse calls arriving at dinnertime, helped prepare mailings at all hours of the night, and gone on thankless paper chases for every trip I’ve done in the past two years. We left Michigan on Thursday, drove 870 miles to Tulsa, arrived at 5 p.m., and headed back Friday morning to Grand Rapids another 870 miles. While the story revolves around the few hours spent in Tulsa, for Randy it’s less compartmentalized. His cooperation borders on the fanatical no matter how creative my suggestion; a girl couldn’t ask for a more supportive husband. When I proposed this audaciously abbreviated trip to attend a welcome home party for a dear friend of the Lighthouse Project, Randy didn’t bat an eye, insisted of course we should do it, and said he’d drive. As it transpires now, we are speeding by semis less full than my heart has been in the short time since we left home.

Heading west on I-44 to Tulsa, I had a great excuse to stop and see Elaine, coordinator of last month’s stupendously successful Rolla, Missouri, trip. It was great to see her again; even three weeks apart left us with plenty of catching up to do. Randy, who’d been polite enough to show interest in my spate of stories about the Missouri trip, felt like he knew Elaine already when he finally met her yesterday. We ate lunch with her and her husband, celebrating their anniversary with more Lighthouse Project talk. Randy got a kick out of meeting another husband as tolerant of his wife’s Lighthouse work as he is.

Late afternoon brought Tulsa; my friend, for whose daughter Katya the party was held, had no idea I was coming. I’d been racking my brain for months trying to figure out what I could do to show her how special she and her family are to us. (Happy Birthday, Katya!, 7/9/09) So when I heard about a welcome party for Katya that would be like a baby shower, only for a fifteen-year-old, I knew I had to be there. When my friend saw me, it took three proclamations I’d come to Tulsa just to go to her party before she finally believed me. Each avowal on my part was punctuated by a hug from her. The third hug, when she finally believed I really was there just for her, was so emphatic that I had to brace myself to keep from falling to the floor. Her reaction was more than I could have hoped for. I didn’t know anyone else at the party, so I made literal small talk with Katya, given my painfully limited Russian vocabulary. When my friend’s phone began to ring, Katya called, “Mama, Mama!” and hurried the phone to her. She had waited fifteen years to call someone that; knowing I’d had any part in making that one word reality was worthy of a tear. Later, opening gifts, Katya found the partygoers’ generosity overwhelming, so her mom took over the unwrapping honors. Kids in orphanages are not accustomed to receiving presents.

After the party, there was just time enough to get to the airport to welcome a family arriving with new brothers Losha, 12, and Jacob, 15, both from the November 2008 Tulsa trip. (Tulsa World article, 11/10/08) I’m a veteran of countless airport homecomings, and the assembled throng was, by far, the largest I’d seen. The boys beamed from ear to ear when they saw the signs and heard the ascendant cheer as they entered the airport’s waiting area. Several of the family’s other children had stayed behind in Tulsa while their parents went to Russia. Reunited, their mom Marie cried and had to reassure the younger ones her tears were of the happy variety. That my own young daughter had the same reaction on my return from Russia years ago was worth a few more tears on my part. As Marie saw me in the crowd, her face registered shock. We shared a long embrace, and her whispered “Thank you!” gladdened my heart at having had part in the festal occasion. When they’d gotten Jacob at his orphanage the previous week, he was the only child there: the rest were at camps or with foster families for the summer. My dear friend Julie, also in Russia picking up her three new children, was along for the ride, too, and found it odd to see an orphanage sans children. I sometimes lament our efforts make scarcely a dent in the worldwide orphan population, but that vision of Julie’s was a sneak preview of what we work toward every day with our program.

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Due to length, the remainder of this entry will be posted Wednesday.

Rolla

It’s near the end of another Lighthouse Project trip; we’re in Rolla, Missouri, this time, a town I’ve passed through driving I-44 toward Tulsa, Oklahoma, to plan and coordinate my trips there. It’s small town America, memorable only since I love Rolo candy, so if you’d told me my last time through that next time I’d stay a week to help a new coordinator run her first trip, I’d have found the claim dubious, at best.

When Elaine first wrote to me asking about running a trip to Rolla, it was on the heels of my January Tulsa trip. I’d just arrived home and was recovering from the almost unspeakably exhausting task of coordinating a trip, so I begged out of calling her right away. Not to worry, she said. She’d just gotten home five days earlier with her new twelve-year-old daughter from China and was recovering herself. I was on alert that Elaine was either very naïve about the rigors of running a trip, or else she was strangely ambitious, maybe had a Wonder Woman suit under her clothes.

Elaine was the first potential coordinator I didn’t manage to scare off with my description of the grueling task of coordinating. Through hours and hours and hours of conversations, we discussed how to present the project to callers, the merits of every potential host family, where children should go, everything I’d found that worked and didn’t, running Vacation Bible School, producing the evening program, how to promote the kids while they were in town, how to entertain the translator and chaperone, where to buy Russian Bibles, how to troubleshoot a palette of problems, and myriad other subjects too numerous to count. Elaine listened, understood, and followed through with aplomb. The truth is she doesn’t have a Wonder Woman suit; she’s got a whole closetful.

It wasn’t her fault I left one part off.

I didn’t tell her about the impotence she’d feel as the trip sputters toward its conclusion and there are kids left for whom a draining of her mental resources is insufficient to finding families. I neglected to tell her how she’d feel when she’d done everything, absolutely everything she could think of, and the world keeps turning and nobody notices that a few kids have been on a wild goose chase halfway around the globe. I didn’t say that if you’re conscientious, you’ll ask yourself a thousand times what you could have done but didn’t, what stone you left unturned, that sends a child back to the orphanage thinking there is no one, in Russia or America, who wants to be mom or dad. She didn’t hear that when you finally assuage your conscience realizing you did everything you reasonably could, and then some, resultant comfort is minced since it hardly matters to a still-motherless waif who depended on you without their even knowing it. And the most deflating epiphany might come at the end if families you thought were committed back out later, leaving you no time to further mine the nooks and crannies of resourcefulness.

The secret is out tonight. When Elaine left this evening, she told me to call her if I came up with any brilliant ideas, but her phone’s not ringing. There are three children for whom there is no one; worse, one child is on his second trip. It’s not for lack of spreading the word or praying; Elaine’s been on the radio, sent out a crazy number of press releases, sent 300 letters to churches, made roadside signs advertising the evening program, contacted homeschool groups, offered free housing to out-of-staters to entice them to host a child, and talked herself hoarse. Three kids wait, oblivious to, and unaided by, the efforts expended on their behalves.

Ten-year-old Vasily has the freckles I fall for. Most kids, the first time they meet you, ignore your attempt at basic Russian pleasantries. Not Vasily. My butchered “Preveyet, Vasily! Kak dela?” was met with a hearty “Haroshow!” and outstretched hand for shaking. Freckles? Check. Fun-loving? Check. Friendly? Another check. Vasily’s my favorite child on the trip, but I’m left lamenting that my enthusiasm was less than contagious.

Unobtrusive Vladimir, ten, is Vasily’s polar opposite. Vladimir bowed his head and cried during the question and answer segment of the evening program when he got a question about his visit to the local fire station. He didn’t have a parent to engulf him in a reassuring hug and help him through his shyness. When the trip is over, it appears he still won’t.

Most distressingly, Andrei, age 13, a two-trip alumni, must face his friends in the knowledge that visits to two states were not enough to find someone who wanted him. He still has his glasses from the first trip and wears them religiously, even though it’s not cool, so he’s earning better grades in school. The cynic within me tonight taunts me, saying scholastic improvement is irrelevant, since it looks as if no parent will ever see his report card.

It’s God’s program and the results are His. Elaine knows that. I know that. We’ll take comfort in that later when the kids are gone and there is truly nothing else we can do. But right here, right now, the kids still hope and they still have a chance. Watching the clock tick down toward Monday morning’s departure, we think we should do something. Just what is less clear. And when you’ve done everything you can think of and it’s still not enough, feeling impotent comes naturally.

So I’m sorry, Elaine, that I didn’t tell you the greater the effort, the greater the letdown when that effort is still insufficient. But I’m even sorrier for the kids who will go back, wondering what’s wrong with them, having met so many people, but not one parent.

Meet the Missouri Russian Orphan Lighthouse Project Children This Evening!

The Russian Orphan Lighthouse Project announces a free program of Russian song and poetry to be presented on Wednesday, July 8, at 7:00 p.m. Thirteen Russian orphans are spending July 3-13 in Missouri with host families, giving them the opportunity to meet Jesus and, hopefully, a forever family.You’ll have a chance to meet children available for adoption: Sergei, 11; Vladimir, 10; Anton, 13; Ekaterina, 13; Andrei, 13; Daniil, 10; Xenia, 9; Luba, 13; Anastasia, 13; Vasily, 10; siblings Alexei, 14, and Evgenia, 12; and Egor, 9. The program will be held at First Assembly of God, 1608 N. Oak in Rolla. Even if your only desire is to support the children, you are welcome. If you know of other Christian families interested in adoption, please urge them to attend. Please call Elaine Harrison at (573) 465-3222 or Becky De Nooy at (616) 245-3216 for further details.

Hope, Quarantined

Last evening I fired off an urgent e-mail to Michiganders who were previously involved with the Lighthouse Project, pleading for host families. Early this afternoon, having just hung up with a lady destined to be Maya’s host mom, my quest to find Valentina’s family ended sadly when my next caller was the Lighthouse Project director. Her news was discouraging: Valentina’s orphanage is quarantined, precluding her from traveling next week to Michigan. We’re now reduced to an eleventh-hour attempt to find her parents on a July 3-13 Rolla, Missouri, trip that I am only tangentially involved with. Timing leaves no margin for error; without an adoptive family in Missouri, Valentina will live out her days, however many they’ll be, in Russia somewhere, with no one who cares.

On the cusp of finding a family in Michigan, Valentina instead is victimized by orphanage quarantine, keeping her “home”. Worse is the worry her hope has been quarantined, too.