We start a new adventure...

Through a Christian charity, our family is hosting, for five weeks this summer, these two sisters from the Ukraine.  They currently live in an orphanage.  A good friend of ours and her family are hosting a young boy from Latvia through the same charity.  We became interested and while looking at pictures of children that our friend had posted on her blog we were drawn to two different sets of siblings.  One was a shy brother and sister from Latvia living with a foster family and the other were these two sisters living in an orphanage in Ukraine. 

We were torn between the two sets of siblings and asked the coordinator for the charity which siblings needed to be hosted more.  She immediately said the two sisters needed it, so we committed  to bringing them to our family.  We are all very excited.  Looking at the older girl especially we see an excitement for life which was confirmed by what the coordinator, who has personally met the two sisters, told us about her.  She is very eager to learn.  Here is the charity's description for them:

Here are smart sisters highly recommended by their director.  They helped the team to learn Russian and used a team member's phone to translate.  Both showed appropriate affection and patience during the visit.  The older sister likes to bike, dance, and swim.  Her favorite colors are blue and red.  She would like to learn how to speak English and play guitar.  The younger sister likes to dance, swim and go to exercise class.  Her favorite colors are yellow and green.  Her favorite toys are a dog and cat.  Both sisters said if they had money, they would like to have a pet fish.  Both would like to be hairdressers when they are older.  They would love to see mountains in America!  The orphanage they are from is considered one with "delayed children" however, our team felt that they were doing very well and when in situations like this, we look for children who have a lack of opportunity as their "delay" issue instead of lack of ability.

Our daughter, Sara, is excited to be big sister to them and take them biking, to the mountains, swimming and more.  Our son, John, upon hearing that we will be hosting the siblings from Ukraine, set his favorite online game to Russian and has started learning Russian words with Google Translate! 

We are all excited to help the girls experience things that they haven't been able to before, including what a functional family life is like.  Hopefully it gives them a model for their future families.  We are also excited to learn about them, their culture and their country.  From the girls' stated interests we feel that our family is a good fit as we are active and love to camp, bike and swim ourselves! 

Maybe something more will come from hosting them.  We are open to adoption.  We had been concerned about hurting them if we only host and don't adopt, but after talking to the coordinator we realize how much even just hosting helps them.