Hosting Yulia...or Yuliya. Who cares...we can hardly wait!!

Several months ago, we saw an clip on KSL-TV news about a hosting program that a Utah couple had put together. It involves bringing kids in Ukrainian orphanages here to America for a couple of weeks. Read more about it at http://www.saveachild.cc/Welcome.html. My wife and I have been discussing adoption from Ukraine for quite a while. I am not sure why Ukraine, but somehow as we discuss adoption, our minds always seem to go there. Perhaps it's because the kids are so darn cute! :-)

When we saw this clip on TV, we instantly became intrigued and envisioned this as a way to a means for adoption. We requested additional information and even went as far as to fill out the paperwork. After a little more research, we found that this is simple a hosting program and not an adoption agency in any way. We were almost immediately discouraged and pretty much did nothing more at that point, especially because most of the kids coming over were older(6-16) -- not the age we envisioned for adoption.

On September 20th, Nanette from the foundation called us out-of-the-blue and asked if we were interested. I was at work and could not talk much, so I told her I would call her later. With little intention of calling her back, I kind of forgot about the call. Then on Saturday morning (Sept 22nd), Nanette called back again...this time, I was home with the kids. My wife had left for the scrapbooking store - her favorite hangout. About 5 minutes into the call, my wife returned because it was raining hard and her tires weren't gripping very well. She must have sensed my conversation, because she instantly appeared next to me after walking back into the house. She sat down on the bed and stared at me with a very eager look of anticipation on her face. This was very surprising to me. I told Nanette we would call her back. After hanging up, Carrie instantly made me tell her all about it. I explained that there were 2 teenage boys, 1 6-year old boy, and 1 10-year old girl. When I told her about the girl, there was NO question in her mind that this was who we should have in our home. Again, in my heart was so much excitement, so much happiness, and also a little confusion. In my mind we had already discussed this months earlier. It was clear that this was not the case at all. In fact, she posed the question almost immediately to me, 'How could we ever turn our backs on this child?'. In fact, since then, Carrie has not reneged in the least bit. On the contrary, she has only become more and more excited. We called Nanette back not more than 20 minutes after hanging up and committed ourselves to the program. We found out that our little girl's name is Yulia. We still aren't sure of the exact spelling. It could be Yuliya. Regardless, this we know for sure: Yulia is a special little girl who is coming to America...coming to Utah...coming to our humble little home for a reason. We hope we know the reason why. So to our little Yulia, МИ вас кохаю. :-)

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