HFTW is the best!

I'm going to take a moment to explain a few things. I admit that I haven't been too great at explaining some things so here goes!

We are using Bethany Christian Services to facilitate our adoption. The country of Albania will not allow for an independent adoption, and Bethany is one of only two agencies that they allow at all.

Hope for the World -Albania is an organization that helps assist widows and orphan's. One of the ways they help is through sponsorships. We first found out about them when we wanted to sponsor Mishel. We are now sponsoring Mariada's English lessons though them. They are really working hard to change lives in Albania. Take a look http://www.hopefortheworldalbania.com/ .

We have asked Bethany to give us as much information and updates on Mariada as they can, unfortunately they have told us that they can't do that until September. But since we are sponsoring Mariada though HFTW they have sent us some pictures and basic info! These little things mean so much to us and we can't thank them enough for it!

Hope for the World has employee's that live and work near Mariada's orphanage. They do all sorts of things one of which is give the weekly Bible studies that Mariada attends. They also have the kids come over to play with their two children. The following pictures were taken at their home. The other little girl is Mariada's friend she is also an orphan.

isn’t she adorable?

They also sent us a list of things they know about Mariada! This is something that we will keep forever. I am going to cut and paste it from the e-mail they sent us, so please excuse the spelling errors. Also they left out what grade she is in but they are finding that out for us. And you will see that the Albanian way of spelling her name is with a j instead of the i we plan to use.

Marjada is 12 years old.
She is in the grade.
She is a good student..... she is really one of the best students in the whole orphanages of Albania.
She loves to be a doctor in the future.
She likes playing soccer.
She playes with a small team.
She has seven years that lives in Shkodra.
She has received Christ and she comes faithfully to Bible classes.
She has lots of friends and she is a very friendly girl.
VEry sweet and loving.
She prays that God will find her a family.
Marjada says. .. I have lots of people that love me ,, in school, workers and educators of the orphanage...but there is nothing like having a family.
I love to have a family,
It will give me lots of joy and piece in my heart.

Isn't that just the best?!

I wanted to share that with all of you.

The Road to Mariada

First off, thank you to all of you who sent such beautiful replies to our post about Mariada, we are truly blessed to have such wonderful friends!

We have had so many questions on what the next steps are to bring Mariada home that I thought I would just post them. Here's what we know, and I can only hope that I have it right. Mariada's abandonment papers where signed by a judge in February, once he/she signed them it put Mariada up for adoption, but only to an Albanian family. After six months she will be placed with Bethany Christian Services and available to be adopted internationally. Bethany has already chosen us and we as you know have gladly said that we would be her family. Her six months is up in August, but like a lot of Europe Albania shuts down for the month and goes on holiday. This includes the Albanian Adoption Committee (AAC). So in September the AAC will meet and formally assign Mariada to us, we will then sign some papers which will be sent to the judge and he/she will set a court date. Bob and I both have to be in the country 10 days prior to the court date. We get to meet Mariada as soon as we get there. The ten day rule is time for us to bond and we will be watched by a social worker that will testify that there is in fact a bond. On the day of court Mariada, Bob and myself will all testify that we want the adoption to take place. God willing the judge will then sign the adoption paperwork. After that Bob will fly home and I will stay with Mariada to get her visa and passport etc. completed ( about 3 weeks). Then Bob will fly back, hopefully with Ben and Sara and we will all come home as a family to all of you! I think that's it, although I'm sure there's one or two things that I have forgotten.

I promise to bring my laptop so you can follow along!

In other Gezon news we had a lovely Mother's day. Bob knows I want a butterfly garden so he brought home a butterfly bush to start it off, and Ben gave me the nicest card that he bought all on his own! What a great kid. We had diner with my Mother and Grandmothers and then went over to visit Mom Gezon in Holland. Tulip time is just ending and it was so beautiful to see all the tulips, what a great year for them.

Lucky is doing well. This was his week off from treatment but I'll post a picture from last week, he came home and headed for his favorite spot in the yard, can't really blame him it was a beautiful warm and sunny day.

It's time

OK we can't keep our secret any longer. We have told some of you so it wasn't a very good secret to begin with but here's the story.

While we where in Albania we where told about a girl whose abandonment papers where just signed. She is 12 turning 13 in Aug. she was in an orphanage north of Tirana and had been living there since about the age of 6. She loves to play soccer and would very much like to be adopted. We wanted very badly to visit but where not permitted and time would not have allowed for it anyway. We came home and talked about it with the kids and of course prayed about it. This was a big change, from a boy to a girl and a 5 year old to a teen! Well about six weeks ago we made up our minds (although it wasn't a surprise to anyone really). We called our SW told her that we wanted to adopt her and to please find out when her six month waiting period would be up. We decided to keep it close until we at least knew that, finally today we found out that if an Albanian family does not adopt her she will be assigned to us in September! We are so very happy to have this news. We are guarding our hearts as much as possible. So as many prayers as you would like to say feel free!

OK so here's what's been happening the last six weeks. We know that she is 12 and turning 13 in Aug. she loves to play soccer and apparently is a pretty good player. She enjoys drawing and gets good grades in school. She was raised primarily by nuns until she was 6 and then placed in a school aged orphanage, that's where she is now. She is a Christian and wants to be adopted by a Christian family. In her assessment it states that she would enjoy an active family so we know she will fit right in! We have been paying anonymously for her to have English lessons and she enjoys them very much. She will not know about us until Sept. that's when we can sign the papers and the Judge will set a court date. Hopefully we would travel shortly after that and be home by Christmas.



So here she is! We are working on getting more information and more pictures.

The Last Few Weeks

What a busy last few weeks it has been. First Sara was down with a girlfriend for Spring Break! What fun we had, we went shopping had our nails done, and hung out. We LOVE it when Sara's here and having her friend was wonderful. Can't wait until summer when we will get to see her more often.

Once Sara had to go back up north Ben's Spring Break started! He wanted to hang with his friends for most of it but we did take a road trip down/over to Pittsburgh PA to take a campus tour of Carnegie Mellon University, Ben's second choice (so far) for colleges. It's CRAZY that Ben is this old time goes by so quickly, it seems like yesterday that I was meeting Ben and he was turning eight, now I'm taking him to look at Universities. But I must say he is a wonderful young man and we are so proud of him. I'm sorry to say that I forgot my camera on this trip so I don't have any pictures of CMU's beautiful campus. Bob and I are still hoping for a school a little more south :) we've got a little bit of time to work on him.

In other news the weather has been great and we have been enjoying walks on the beach, oh how we love summer. Today we did some spring cleaning, I put Lucky's bed outside to air out and he thought that was a fine idea, little goof!

That's it for now, hope this finds you all happy and healthy!

And we wait...

OK so it has been forever since I posted, sorry. But since there really hasn't been any change in the adoption I thought I'd wait. Nothing has changed on the adoption front and to be honest it doesn't look like things will change for a while. All are paperwork is ready to go and I don't think anything should be expiring so we are back in the waiting mode. We continue to pray that the social workers in Albania will understand that there are people that want to adopt older children and that they will get the papers in place so that we can bring them home.

Things here for the last few weeks have been busy, we had our company Christmas party, I know it's late but we took the crew to see the Eagles and since we couldn't really dictate when they would play in Michigan we had to have our Christmas party in March. We all had such a great time and the Eagles are just as great now as they where 20 years ago! Great memories for the best marine construction crew.

I have been very busy getting the house we bought last fall ready for sale this spring. I know flipping a house in this economy! Well see how that goes.

Lucky is doing great he had another treatment today and his numbers are heading up, all good signs. The Dr. even said that his spirits where really good today. Apparently while he was in his crate getting chemo intravenously they where handing out cookies to a puppy that had just had some stitches removed, Lucky stood up and barked until he was given his! That's our Lucky dog for you, he will not be ignored!

I've posted a few of our sunset shots today. During winter in Michigan we really don't get to many sunny days, therefore we don't get to see it set to often. The past few weeks the sunsets began coming back. When we bought this house I told Bob that I would never forget how blessed we where to find our dream home, with sunsets like this it's sure to never happen.


Lucky after a treatment, he has to wear a bandage for a day.

A calm day. If it would just warm up this would be a rare water skiing day, only a few more months!

A not so calm day! I didn't think we would get a sunset this day but the line on the horizon opened up just in time.

Update on our Lucky dog

Today Lucky went in for his 2nd chemo treatment. When I went to pick him up the Doctor was so excited that she came right out into the waiting room to tell me that all his levels are already back in the normal range! He did well today and is playing outside in our unseasonably warm sunny weather right now.

This picture was taken the summer after we adopted Lucky, it took a while for him to realize that jumping off the boat was a bad idea, so we had to hold on to him all the time. Those darn Seagulls!

Catching up..

We are starting to catch up now and I thought I would share a couple of photo's from the birthday party at the orphanage in Vlore. When we returned home I e-mailed our shots to the lovely lady we meant and she sent us a couple that she had taken.

I also told you I would keep you updated on the two children that Bob and I had asked about. The girl who is about 10, has a father that visits on occasion so she can not be adopted and the little boy has a mother, uncle and grandparent that have Schizophrenia , apparently the orphanage feels that he to may have it and will not process his paperwork. So we will wait for the AAC to find us a child.

We leave in the morning to travel across the state to watch Ben represent his school at the state meet! That's right while we where in Albania Ben qualified for state with his relay team. We are really excited for him and his team. GO LAKERS!

On the Lucky front, he is doing great it's amazing we can't even feel the lumps in his neck and he's just as happy as always. We will find out more on Monday when I take him in for his 2nd treatment.