Wonderful World

My last day home starts out on an inauspicious note when one of my host families drops the bombshell that they won’t be traveling to host Yana, age seven. Other families would have jumped at the chance to host her, and I turned them away in favor of the defector. Yana’s age and orphanage make her a prime target for Russian foster care; she’ll never last until my June trip. Believing her life might depend on it, I work the phones for five hours I can ill-afford. One family sounds promising; I try to entice them by offering a complementary trip, and derive a short-lived thrill when they consider the offer, ultimately declining due to the short notice. Late afternoon, I get my final “no”; out of time and having exhausted reasonable leads, I concede defeat. In my dejection, I call Elaine, who commiserates patiently with me. While I know the results are in God’s hands, the knowledge things might have ended differently had only I offered Yana to a different family chafes.

Wednesday morning finds me hobbling, having aggravated an old knee injury I sustained during a run-in with a horse in veterinary school. At the airport, I’m offered a wheelchair, but in my vanity refuse, worried I’ll look more lazy than injured. Inching along, I arrive at my gate to await my jaunt from Detroit to Amsterdam. Retreating to a serendipitously appointed phone booth, I score a small desk, seat, pay phone, and plug for my computer. My husband e-mails me a phone card, and I dial with abandon, in the rarified position of seeking activities to fill time. From my phone booth office, I spy a potted Ficus tree sporting the scrawled words “Jesus is Lord” in marker on its trunk, and I’m struck by the incongruity between message and delivery.

My flight to Amsterdam is a non-event. Aeroflot, a Russian airline, operates my connecting flight from Amsterdam to Moscow. They name their aircraft, and I’m charmed when they preface the safety demonstration with an announcement that our “ship” is dubbed Afanasiy Nikitin, after the fifteenth-century Russian explorer. Russians eschew smiling at those they don’t know, branding indiscriminate smilers lunatics, making the country a little chillier. Maria, one of our flight attendants, seeks to change that as she patrols the aisle wearing a perpetual smile.

A British couple with an infant is in my row. The child’s outbursts, timed with 1984-esque distraction prowess, remind me why I like older child adoption. As the baby shrieks rhythmically, the Brits sully their reputation for unfailing composure when the woman has a cow, told there are no vegetarian meals on board. Her withering diatribe finally wipes the smile from Maria’s face. When a meatless meal is conjured up, another attendant presents it with a triumphant look that expects the Brit will be pleased. Alas, two meals were ordered, and the resultant verbal smack down leaves me wincing and praying the attendant’s English is proficient enough to distinguish between their British English, and my American English.

Russians returning from abroad cheer on landing in the motherland, and at touchdown, I join their giddy applause. Entering the terminal, I am pushed along in a stampede toward three open immigration lanes. The line jumping is so brazen and aggressive that the ensuing chaos slows everything. Several immigration officers witness the melee, seemingly powerless to open the other lanes, despite the glaring want. I finally make it to the front of the queue by trebling my width with my carry-ons. Even then, it is with difficulty that I retain position.

Most luggage is out before I get to the baggage claim area; unfortunately, mine is not. After a futile search, I go the lost luggage area. A lady directs me to look again; I have little hope, but don’t possess the Russian skills to argue. Predictably, the luggage is absent, so she directs me to fill out a claim form in three parts. In Russia, inefficiency is a lifestyle; filling a form in triplicate means filling out the same single form three times. I am almost finished when the first worker goes home without explanation. A new worker clocks in, clucks when she sees my paperwork completed improperly, and presents me three clean forms. Russian workers, no matter their station, have a propensity for wordlessly interrupting their service to the polite to assist brassier clientele. During the ordeal, the episode is replayed until I despair of ever leaving the airport. When I am at last dismissed, the command to return to the airport myself to retrieve my bags myself is ringing in my ears.

Our driver Dima knows I’m tired, and he is thoughtful enough to let me lie down on the trip from the airport to the hotel, covering me with a blanket and giving me a furry Russian hat for a pillow. When the radio comes on, Louis Armstrong is crooning “It’s a Wonderful World.” It’s a timely reminder that, minor inconveniences in my journey notwithstanding, I am blessed to see the world again with a program I love, striving to make the future wonderful for our Lighthouse Project kids.

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Positive

I field scads of adoption-related calls; most want preschool children, younger than we typically have available to travel on our trips. But ten days ago, three little treasures were added, ages five and under, all available to travel last minute on our March Moscow trip. Two of them were born of HIV-positive mothers, and had tested positive themselves. Without much hope, I called a fussy family who’d been entreating me for a young girl for months. Even with my low expectations, their response floored me in its heartlessness.

“Why in the world would you put a child like that on the trip?” the speaker on the other end of the line interrupted, demanding caustically. It wasn’t a polite or genuine question; it was accusatory, implying some children were beneath our efforts. My chiding that I believe all children deserve families was countered by a snorted retort, “Well, I never heard of it before. They’re under a death sentence anyway.” I hung up, hackles raised not because of their disinterest, but because they’d deemed a little child unworthy not just of their family, but of any family at all.

Thankfully, the voice was as wrong as it was rude. Dr. Larry Gray, of the University of Chicago’s Comer Children’s Hospital International Adoption Clinic, says HIV in America has become just a chronic condition, something he deems more manageable than diabetes. He opines HIV patients nowadays should expect to get married, bear uninfected children, grow old, and see their grandchildren.

Yuliana and Artem, both five, are promisingly characterized by a teacher as “well developed”, a rare description for orphans so subject to institutional delays. Yuliana, especially, ought to have been snatched up; young girls are, by far, the most coveted children. Requests for them grossly outpace those for all other kids put together. Both children are adorable, but HIV-positive; even with a reduction in adoption fees, no family intends to visit them.

Project Hopeful (http://www.projecthopeful.org/), a volunteer organization run by parents who have adopted children infected with HIV, is on a mission to find families for others like them. Traci, adoptive mother of five and awaiting the homecoming of a young girl with the virus, this afternoon filled me in about the risk of adopting HIV-positive children, and their long-term prognosis.

HIV is transmitted from mother to child during childbirth, through breastfeeding, through sexual intercourse, and through blood contact. Since the virus cannot survive air exposure, parents tending to wounds need take only the same precautions they’d take in dealing with any child’s wounds. Dr. Gray sites studies showing that even 5 cc of infected blood injected directly into a recipient’s veins still confer just a 5% chance of contracting the virus. A typical child patient, once assessed and stabilized, could expect quarterly doctor’s visits for monitoring, and would likely take medication to contain viral count. But properly monitored and medicated, infected kids have virtually no probability of developing full-blown AIDS. Disclosure of the condition is not legally required in most cases, not even to dentists, schools, or daycare providers.

Not understanding the disease, I worried about holding the kids’ hands next week, but was reassured as I found Traci’s optimism far more contagious than the virus. She has a friend with several children; while two are HIV-positive, Traci claims they are impossible to differentiate from the others. Other friends of hers, newly home with their children, blog about the adjustments; HIV is relegated to moot afterthought. Kids first, now sons and daughters, the HIV infections they hardly notice are minor details in the bigger picture of becoming a family, of giving a child with a need the home every child longs for.

I’ve puzzled at the injustice of life, how a child’s special need consigns him to an orphanage, and then conspires to keep him there. Right now, Yuliana and Artem need more Tracis, Dr. Grays, and Project Hopefuls; friends who act on their beliefs that being born with a special need can’t make you unworthy.

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Yuliana and Artem need host families for the Moscow Lighthouse Project trip March 25-31.   Interested families need a valid passport in hand, and would need to apply for a visa by Saturday, March 20.  If you have even slight interest in going to Moscow to meet these children and sightsee with them, please call Becky at (616) 245-3216 as soon as possible.

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No Chance at a Chance

Bouncing along the back roads of Russia, swerving at the penultimate nanosecond to pass cars we’re tailgating, I’m grateful for the plentiful potholes and our Volga’s poor shocks, as our driver must temper his speed somewhat in heed of them. The day before I’d left home, I’d acquiesced to Hope’s advice to buy insurance for the trip. In the back seat, watching wide-eyed as we surge past a motorized contraption defying categorization, I comfort myself with a promise from the insurance brochure that, should this jaunt end in my demise, repatriation of remains is a covered benefit. Immediately after one of our risky passes, an ambulance flies by. The way we’re driving, I worry we’ll see it again.

We’re ambitious today, visiting four orphanages, the furthest a death-defying three hours south of our home base. So many of our orphans hail from this backwoods institution, I’m anxious to see it. While no orphanage replicates a family, there is a quality continuum, and this one is at the bottom. The orphanage is in a sizable town also housing a large prison; some kids here are orphaned by a parent’s incarceration. Tiny wood dwellings trimmed in blue line the road; at one, an elderly babushka restrains a leashed cow in her postage stamp yard outside the orphanage grounds.

The Volga halts outside the orphanage. Grubby children spill out heavy doors to greet us, and shadow us in. A row of posters bearing Soviet-era safety admonitions hangs just inside, on walls thick with paint. Soiled linoleum, ’70s-style, covers creaky floors; workers in blue house dress uniforms and caps pretend to sweep but eye us warily, without welcome. After several kids’ adoptions, they worry our success will close the orphanage, at the cost of their jobs. Faith navigates the orphanages effortlessly, and we hurry to keep pace with her. I can’t get over how purposefully we race into each, meet the kids on our list, and run out. Here, children form a gauntlet along a corridor, watching us rush by. Many older boys in ill-fitting, shiny suits appear and vie for our attention as we head for the office. A teacher tells us she’s been waiting for us six hours on her day off. It’s a friendly rebuke, and she proudly breaks out an album of her daughter’s weekend wedding. In several photos, the bride is flanked by adoring parents, one of whom will introduce us to kids without any, once we’ve seen her own child. The normalcy of this Russian bride’s life, contrasted with the lives of these orphans, who know no normal, smacks me hard with its inequity.

Several kids from Elaine’s trip, and a few from mine, enter. Egor, nine, clutches a gift from his anxious family, but doesn’t open it until Faith urges him. He beams at the photo of himself and the family, taken in Missouri. Faith tells him they’re excited and coming soon. “They will be my family forever?” he chirps, incredulous. “Forever,” Faith assures, adding that another boy in the orphanage, Sergei, will be his brother ("He Just Won Our Hearts", 7/17/09).

Vasily, ten, is mistakenly summoned with three boys awaiting families. I’d loved him in Missouri, but no one chose him to be a son. When the three with families receive gifts, Vasily alone stands empty-handed, trying heroically to smile, as if it doesn’t matter. Faith produces a trinket, but it’s a sorry substitute for a care package from waiting parents (Solid Gold, 12/1/09).

We begin meeting prospective kids for future trips. The amount of need distresses, but that I’ll have a substantive say in who travels and has a chance at a future, and who stays behind and ends up dying on the streets, is beyond agonizing. Vanya, age unknown, stands in a group outside the door. “Please show us,” he entreats the teacher guarding the entry. He wants to be a welder, and aspires to visit America. He calls Denis, newly in the States, his best friend ("Tell her you want a family, too!", 2/18/10). Andrei, thirteen, is next. He likes to read, but not too much, he says, ironically hastening to add his favorite poet is Pushkin. He dreams of travel. Sergei, ten, likes to read, especially the aptly-titled Reading. Asked if he cooks, we’re told he makes soup from a powder. Andrei, nine, claims he knows English, and scrawls a “w” on paper as proof. He doesn’t yet have a dream. Dima, 15, has wiled away eight years of his childhood in the orphanage, and no longer remembers his parents’ faces. He yearns to ask them why they hid away so long and never visited him. He graduated his class with honor last year, but turning sixteen in less than six months, will graduate from the orphanage without a family. He dreams of seeing his best friend Sergei again. Now in America from one of my trips, and home less than a year at the time of this visit, Sergei is the first child adopted from this orphanage (It's a Boy!, 12/8/08).

Our last subject is Slava. Faith’s first question is his age. “Sixteen,” he says, as my heart sinks. “There’s nothing we can do,” Faith moans, but asks a few more questions, out of courtesy. His dream is to visit home to see what happened to his family. I wonder if he notices how much shorter his interview is than all the others, or if he  realizes donning the suit was in vain. As Faith dismisses him, she tells the doorkeeper sixteen-year-olds cannot enter America on an orphan’s immigrant visa. “I know,” the teacher explains, “but when he begged me, ‘Please show me to them!’ I couldn’t tell him no.” It’s enough to rend the chilliest heart.

We’re still in demand, but hours away from our hotel, with two orphanages yet to visit. As we scurry out, kids trail, requesting pictures with us outside. Faith opens the trunk and they circle, curious what treasures it hides. While Elaine and I wait in the Volga, kids knock on our windows and wave. When Faith climbs in and we drive out, a few kids chase us. I can’t tell if they’re playing, desperate, or both.

Speeding toward our next stop, I am deeply disturbed. The orphanage’s condition is abysmal, but the urgency the children show transcends mere lack of comfort. They’re hopeless, and know it better than the orphans we’ve seen until now. Adoption is a new phenomenon here, and already the kids are clawing to see us, putting on their best clothes, queuing, pleading if they have to, for their chance at a chance.

Most gut-wrenching is Slava, whose unhappy fate Faith described with truth cruel in its brevity: “There’s nothing we can do.” Kids age out of orphanages daily, and it bothers me. A lot. But a desperate face now exemplifies this factoid, a face I’ve just seen for the first time, when it’s already too late even to try. There is no help for Slava, or Dima either. I’m heartsick, and expect Slava to haunt any sleep I eke out in upcoming days.

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"Tell her you want a family, too!"

In the eleven trips I’ve coordinated, I’ve repeatedly observed quiet, compliant children are in grave danger of being overlooked, while obnoxious kids glide into families.   In all my trips, Denis is unique: his shyness landed him his family.  His hosts Aaron and Robyn heard about the Tulsa Russian Orphan Lighthouse Project through another hosting friend, and signed on shortly before the trip. Like 80% of hosts, they expected to serve only as a bridge between an orphan and an adoptive family, until Denis’s painful reserve stabbed Robyn in the heart. One morning, eyes brimming with tears, she confided she had a quiet child already who, dropped into a similar situation, would never shine and find a family on such a trip. That epiphany, time, and prayer proved the prompts her family needed to pursue adoption of Denis.

Joining Denis on that trip was his best friend, Dmitry. During Dmitry’s visit, he craved hugs, loved laughing, amazed his hosts Lee and Stacey with his artistic prowess, and declared his wish for a car and garage some day. Though initially afraid of the family dachshund, her name was the first he learned, and soon cries of “Louuu-see!” were followed with laughter as she sprang into his lap. Lee and Stacey raved about his attitude, organization, kindness, and enthusiasm for their activities. At the community program the Lighthouse kids present on our American trips, Lee hoped to give a testimonial on his behalf, and seemed genuinely disappointed when I declined. Dmitry, in no demand at age thirteen, returned to Russia with the prayers of his hosts, but without an adoptive family.

In December, after Aaron and Robyn appeared in a Russian court to finalize Denis’s adoption, they left him in the region, as required, and returned to Moscow. Denis, briefly back at the orphanage after spending time with his new family, called our Russian coordinator Love while waiting. Too retiring to ever have pled his own case, but acting with the urgency of one fearing to leave his best friend hopeless, Denis offered Dmitry the phone. As Love spoke with Dmitry, she heard Denis imploring in the background, "Go ahead! Tell her! Tell her you want a family, too!"

In our autumn visit, we saw desperation at Denis and Dmitry’s orphanage we witnessed nowhere else. Kids there made efforts, heartbreaking in their failure, to dress up for us; one boy, already too old for international adoption, sported a shiny polyester suit as he pled with his teacher, “Will you show me to them?” Departing without meeting everybody, kids followed us out the door, some even chasing our car as we drove off.

Waiting in this forlorn place his few last days before his family’s second coming, Denis, erstwhile orphan but now a son, disdained to save only himself. Summoning strength he’d not shown in his own search, now he’d do what he could to pass his blessings on.

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Mission: Never Accomplished

Yakov, a shriveled goatherd wrapped in an ancient camouflage coat, tended his meager flock along the road to our first orphanage, and seemed more surprised than flattered at our stop. Our driver, having given too little thought to risking our lives behind the wheel, was sufficiently obliging for several photo stops; besides the goats, we posed with the sign at the outskirts of town, and shot the hamlet church and its ten napiform domes. Thousands of miles from home, but within minutes of our target, I was stalling with the dread of a mourner en route to a funeral visitation, pregnant with purpose, but reluctant to consummate. Conversation sputtered minutes from the orphanage, in a dichotomous aura of anticipation and foreboding. While I’d been to an orphanage before, it was to pick up my own kids, not to see the need.

Outside the institution, gas pipes a foot in diameter skimmed the ground, then rose up, forming an unsightly bridge over the dirt road just beyond. Sheep freely wandered as geese rested warily in the street beside their pond, framed at its far end by a motley village. The orphanage, white and red brick, was the most auspicious building in sight, seducing me with sufficient curb appeal to briefly sweat the ethics of past depictions of orphanages as bastions of hopelessness.

Faith sprinted in, with a swelling group of kids shadowing her, and I had to hustle to avoid being lost in labyrinthine stairwells and halls. Young and old welcomed us unprompted with formal hellos as they saw us. Several paired children, each lugging a handled cardboard box holding a meat carcass, greeted us with a pleasant self-confidence that said they had no inkling how squeamish their burdens made us. I wondered if this friendliness was standard for all visitors, or if it was reserved for those from America, who might get them out.

We’d come to see Alexandra, a retiring thirteen, who’d earlier said she wanted a mom and dad from the Lighthouse Project. I’d seen the results of a hundred orphanage interviews before, but mystique surrounded their creation. Since interviews are the deciding factor in a family’s child selection prior to a trip, I always imagined discussions of why we were here, what things we would ask, and what answers would be advantageous, before we rolled.

We invaded Alexandra’s room, a spartan space she shared with one mentally impaired girl, at naptime. Underdressed in pajamas, she self-consciously tugged at them in a futile attempt to cover her knees. Faith greeted her, wordlessly turned on her camera, and started questioning. This minute action evoked a barrage of dissonant emotions: relief at the uncoached purity of the interview mingled with horror at the lack of preparation in her appeal for a life, letdown at the loss of the interview’s mystery alongside hope in sharing nascent steps toward a future, empathy for her losing battle for modesty but delight at her desire, and prayer for her success with a yearn to flee because of her discomfort. Oddly, the interview dredged up a strong and haunting reminder of the first euthanasia I witnessed as a student, prior to being numbed as a veterinarian. I’d anticipated these seemingly disparate events with dread and awe, but found them disturbingly similar, each process lacking the drama to portend the weight of the result.

The interview lobbed a few softballs as I willed Alexandra to excel. We gleaned that she likes red, roses on bushes, cats and dogs, and pictures of foxes. She does not study English, since her school has no teacher. And that was all: these few, unpretentious words encapsulated a petition I worried couldn’t be enough to induce a family to take her. Faith earned a smile when she gave Alexandra a purse, then I awkwardly offered a handful of gum and a hug. Leaving, we popped in to see a boy awaiting his Wisconsin family.

Our whirlwind visit left Elaine and me plenty to ponder on the road to our next stop. In an orphanage with one hundred children, we’d entered two rooms, each housing two children, but focused all effort on one resident. How could the others know that we also cared about them, but that their circumstances would not permit adoption? Did they wonder what heroics garnered Alexandra and the Wisconsin boy American attention? Did Faith’s childish shadows pray she might notice them, and lament our determination to visit just two rooms, with hardly a glance their direction? Did Alexandra puzzle why strangers would bounce in, ask a few questions, and go?

How deflating to realize the humble chance we’d given Alexandra was the only glimmer of hope we’d left at her orphanage. Other souls, equally needy and with futures as bleak, were relegated to barely supporting role status, remembered only for the atmosphere of generalized desperation they helped create.  In one stop, one orphanage, ten minutes at most, my optimism abandoned me.  Our mission would never be fully accomplished.

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At Any Cost

Some days I could shorten my Lighthouse Project phone time by tackling the thorny subject of adoption cost first. International adoption is pricey, and Russia shows the way. While some callers confound me with claims they cannot afford adoption as they bankroll $250,000 annually, others inspire me with adoption plans despite not earning in a year what their process will cost. I’m not unsympathetic: as mom to four children adopted overseas, I still write a check monthly for my adoption loan, though my kids have been home four years.

One friend, mom of three plucked from my trips, believes adoption of older children is very affordable, for all the years before their arrival that she spent nothing on them. Another friend, mom of three Chinese daughters, sells cars, and grits her teeth when her customers lament their inability to afford adoption as they sign for their new wheels.

It’s a matter of priorities.

Struggling with adoption fees hardly makes a family unique; through my eleven Lighthouse trips, four fingers count those who had money in reserve. Eking out existence on a Michigan realtor’s income, I live the difficulties, but grieve at the masses who, hearing a still, small voice, extinguish it, clutching their money when children wait alone, when siblings are separated, and when girls age out and are forced to prostitute themselves. I weary of cost objections as excuses for those who should adopt, but won’t.

Our program works in two regions of Russia, one expensive, the other more. The majority of our work is within our less expensive region; the more expensive region generally requires a third trip and an extra week in-country. Though I have been promoting kids from this region on my last four trips, I have failed to find hosts for any of them. While compiling my list at the outset of each trip, I dutifully include these children, worrying it is hopeless, but believing they deserve a shot. After weeks of failure, when I cull the kids sans families at the end, experience never eases my regret.

I’ve erased eleven-year-old Alena’s name four times.

Seeing her photo once, I asked Randy, “Is this girl cute or funny looking?”

“She’s cute,” he answered, adding, “She looks like you.”

I was unconvinced this was a compliment until I saw her interview. Out of hundreds, Alena’s shines as the second most charming, ever. Calling herself optimistic, her demeanor rendered the comment superfluous, as the longer her translator spoke English, the more smiley Alena became. Playfully confessing laziness when she doesn’t do her homework, she hopes to improve in school, and aspires to college and teaching kindergarten. She loves playing with young children, and dreams of a family with horses; she adores them, though she’s never seen one.

Darling Dmitry, 7, likes green because of the grass. Gone fishing, he was afraid of pike that “bite hands off.” He labels himself brave, while owning his fear of snakes. He likes picking mushrooms and berries, playing with cars and trucks, and having fun. Outdoors, he skis, plays soccer, and skates. When the little soul said he cooks soup, macaroni, pelmini, and fried potatoes, I wondered why he needed to.

Vladimir, 8, Zoya, 7, and Anastasia, 6, are more challenging as a sibling trio. The girls had a difficult start in life; Zoya is more delayed than a typical orphan, though she’d like to be a doctor. Anastasia is curious, wants to read, and hopes to teach. Vladimir likes building snowmen and throwing snowballs. While his mother never visits, he remembered his father washing the floor.

Situations these precious children couldn’t control landed them in orphanages; stumbling blocks dropped in their paths by their country could keep them there. After countless rejections, my promotion of them has become one of apologetic resignation, fretting my efforts will be unrequited, amidst titanic obstacles.

I falter so easily, forgetting God Himself cares for the orphans and hears their cries. All my money is His, and I know firsthand He is in the business of adoption, since He adopted me. When confronted with a caller who fights the high cost of adoption, it’s a reminder of how thankful I should be Jesus didn’t grouse about the higher cost of my adoption, then turn His back and walk away.

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Tears of Joy

Back in Russia: Day 4

Sunday morning we visit a church I attended twice during my own adoption journey in 2006; back then, they met in an old theater school. Members said the church had changed locations seven times in the previous two years; thus, I was surprised during our November trip to find that, over three years later, the church was still meeting in the same place. Alas, the morning our group attended, an announcement was made the congregation was moving come the new year. This January morning, we take the trolleybus to the new building, staging a photo shoot much of the way. Later, the best pictures I took all trip are evidence that the grime-laden windows filter the morning light exquisitely, turning our trolleybus into a dream photo studio.

This church facility is more comfortable than the old. Picture windows on the side grant a remarkable, if sinfully distracting, view of the Kremlin bell tower and St. Basil’s Cathedral in the distance. Asked to introduce ourselves when the service begins, I look at Faith, who points back to me. With her extroversion, I consider her more qualified, but when Elaine needles me, too, I give my name, say I’m from Grand Rapids, and add that our group is sightseeing with Russian orphans this weekend.

The building houses a café, thankfully closed, since we’ve promised the kids McDonald’s. Faith holds McDonald’s in low esteem, even more so in Russia, because it’s unhealthy and so safely American. Promising the kids was probably sufficient, but the café’s closure cements our case. On our walk out, Angelina runs with Jamie, grinning, in the first unbridled emotion I see from her. Needing a good photo for her next trip, I have them reenact the run twice, though it only works once before she discerns my treachery.

At McDonald’s, I order for the unhosted kids, while the families order for the others. In one of the most flagrant injustices of the trip, the hosted kids get large fries, fancy sandwiches, and ice cream, while the hostless eat cheeseburgers and small fries. They’re polite if they notice, and while I ache to rectify the inequity, the lines are interminable, and the kids depart soon for their orphanages. Each child adores McDonald’s, and leaves skipping.

Back at the hotel, Faith assigns her charges an essay on their time in Moscow. When all are done, we gather in the common room, where Faith reads us the offerings. Alexander does best, conscientiously detailing each day’s activities. All the essays before his were given by their authors to their new families; after Faith reads Alexander’s, she realizes he has no one. She asks him who should have it, then suggests me. “Be-cky,” he whispers compliantly, as my heart breaks. By now, the kids must know I work for the trip, and am not a family seeking a child. Evgeniy, a good student with a better attitude, surprises me with his lackluster effort, eliminating an ending where others profess appreciation and love of their host families. Sensing he’s still alone, he protects himself to avoid embarrassment. Knowing the work he usually does, and would like to do here, my heart breaks anew (I LOVE This Kid, 12/8/09).

On the return from McDonald’s, sixteen-year-old Maxim accompanies Faith. Many orphans his age already smoke and drink, he says. He asks them why, since they’ll only repeat the mistakes of their parents, which sentenced their children to orphanage existence originally. They’re foolish, he opines. As Faith recounts this exchange to the group, she beams in support of his choices and maturity.

After the essays, families ask kids about orphanage life, school, and who helps with homework. I ask if classmates tease them about being orphans; all say yes, save Nadia, whose demure self-assurance garners friends who affirm her. When the kids ply us with questions, they center on whether or not we like them and want to see them again. Faith suggests we hug every child; we’re not done before the kids with families are crying, which most adults mirror. At these goodbyes, I feel guilty standing dry-eyed. The end of a Lighthouse trip ends a gargantuan workload, and I waver between an unseemly relief and empathy for parents and children who must part. Making my hugging rounds, I spot Faith sobbing in the doorway. Having never seen her cry, it shakes me. I overhear her telling a family how moved she is that Maxim, Daria, and Elizavetta, the forgotten, but hopeful, sibling group, have a family after nine years, and how after all this time in that environment, Maxim seems unaffected by the negative influences surrounding him. This emotion, from one who has witnessed everything, touches me more deeply than anything else this trip, and ends my deliberation on whether or not to cry (Forgotten, But Hopeful, 11/24/09).

When Dima arrives in his minivan to take Faith, the kids, and their chaperone to the train station, fourteen people, most with puffy faces and traveling heavier than when they arrived, cram in. It takes some jockeying, but eventually everything fits and the van creeps away. Families braving the 4° F temperature blow kisses and wave until the vehicle rounds the corner, leaving sight. Walking back into the hotel, I rejoice knowing that the next time seven, or eight, of these children see families from our little band, they’ll be going home, forever.

But Angelina, Evgeniy, and Alexander are incomplete without parents to love and guide them. They need more work, and another chance, which with hopeful heart and the Lord’s help, I’ll give them. Somewhere, families unknowingly await these three. How anxious I am to finish this work.

How relieved I will be when I am truly done.

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