the church | Wide Awake Family

June Happened.

Posted on July 1, 2017 by kimnjed

Hello July!

What in the world? June was a tornado. It was a tornado of awesomeness and craziness and life-changingness. But yeah, it was definitely a tornado.

Recap:

May 31: Our sweet Sara left after a month of massage and intern-training. We miss you Saramama!

June 7: We celebrated our kids’ completion of one year of Ukrainian school and our precious Seth’s birthday at a water park in Kyiv. Yay!

June 10: We moved to the Wide Awake Homestead! MONUMENTAL DAY.

June 11: Tara and Christiana arrived! Tara and Christiana are both American girls who came to bless our boys and our team. Their presence was so refreshing. They served and smiled and brought every one of us so much joy. Internet friendships can turn out to be real-life awesome!

June 12-16: Tara and Christiana started going to Romaniv with our team and interns, getting to know the boys. Addy went to a day camp at school and made new friends. 🙂

June 17: The team from Hands of Hope arrived! Hands of Hope is our wonderful partner in Indiana. They have poured much love and support into Romaniv and Wide Awake over many years. They came to help with a Romaniv Day Camp that was put on by Mission to Ukraine and Wide Awake. They also brought an awesome builder with them who served us by building a deck at the Homestead!!!!

June 19: Day Camp begins and a team of medical professionals from Germany arrived to help at the camp and observe our team.

June 22: Sydney, an American friend and long-time Wide Awake supporter was “in the neighborhood” and arrived to visit, help, and see all the craziness we are up to. ALSO a crazy awesome American arrived to begin the in-country process of adopting our sweet Stephan!!! His presence was just the hugest encouragement to our team. We were so blessed to see him open his heart to Stephan and say YES to what God has for his family. Just wow.

June 23: Final day of Day Camp! Hands of Hope threw our team a party and it was awesome. They encouraged us and blessed us all. Our hearts needed it.

June 24: Hands of Hope headed home.

June 25: Our church had a beautiful baptism and picnic at the river. All our German friends and American friends joined in and it was just a really special day.

June 26: The German team provided a training for our interns after observing their work over the past week. Their insight and wisdom, how they saw the boys and the work with fresh eyes was invaluable. They challenged us and pushed us in new ways. A little pushing can hurt, but when done in love it can foster so much growth. We really so appreciated their hearts and hard work!

June 27: The German team did more training for the interns, and then a training for our team. So much good stuff!!

June 28: Good bye German team! Thank you!! Please come again. 🙂

June 29: Good bye dear Tara, Christiana and Sydney. Your wide open hearts and contagious laughter will be greatly missed. Come again!

So there you have it. Tornado.

It was quite the balance of scheduling and transportation and feeding, but the goodness far outweighed any stress that came along with it. I mean, all those wonderful people came because they love our boys and they believe in the vision of what we are doing here. They believe in God’s dream and they see the incredible worth of our boys. They gave up their vacation time and spent a lot of money to come pour into our boys, our family, and our team. We are forever grateful and super humbled by their giving.

I know I promised you a walk-through of the Homestead and I haven’t forgotten. With all the craziness of June we really haven’t gotten a chance to settle at all, and speaking of tornados…well, you get the idea. I’d like to tidy up a bit before sharing with you. 😉 Hopefully this week I’ll have something to show you. Thank you for your patience!

Now for pics.

Camp theme for the Isolation Hall: “Fun in the Sun and Shade”

We had stations for each of the 5 senses. For some boys every station became the “taste” station. Ha!

Thank you Barry and Tom for all your hard work on the deck!

Americans at work, picking Colorado bugs off our potatoes. Welcome to Ukraine. hehe

Village life is gross sometimes.

fullsizeoutput_6745

The German team arrived! (plus Ava, not pictured)

Thanks Hands of Hope for the great party!

Sweet Friends. Thank you for refreshing my soul!

Taking a break from training 🙂

I can’t believe they finished the deck! Photos will follow in the next post.

Team training: Respect, appreciation, safety

So much love entered the Romaniv gates over the past month. We are so immensely grateful for all the sweet moments our boys experienced. May they hold those moments in their hearts forever. I know we will.

The Front Lines

Posted on October 15, 2016 by kimnjed

Last night, in the middle of the night, we stood outside the orphanage, unsure of what to do. A young child lay dying inside and never had we felt so helpless. All the details of what transpired are for a later post, as a lot is still unresolved, but last night there was a fight for his life on all levels, and I will never ever forget it. For now, he lives.

Lately we have felt pressed on all sides. Lately it’s felt like the difficulties will never stop and the obstacles will just keep on coming without relief. Several times over the past couple of months we’ve said “Something’s gotta give.” Some days we felt like we just couldn’t take one more challenge. It all just feels like too much.

BUT

Then we remember the big picture. We are not simply fighting an injust system. We are not just battling passport officers and city administrators and higher-ups only looking to fill their pockets. This battle is not against flesh and blood.

We are fighting for lives. We are fighting for precious souls who have been discarded by the world. We are fighting for God’s Kingdom to come in a very dark place. We are fighting for glimpses of Heaven to break through. And we do not fight alone. God goes before us and this is HIS battle.

Right now our team is on the front lines and we are advancing. Look what God is doing!

Our sweet Stephan will have a family! Yes, a family has committed to adopting our little love. It’s a miracle. He will have a future. He will be saved. They are in the beginning stages of paperwork, but they love him and are fighting to get to him.

Two other families are still working hard to adopt Isaiah and Jonathan. They have hit many roadblocks along the way, but progress is being made and we are confident that God goes before them.

The new roof is going up on our Wide Awake property house. Every day brings us closer to bringing our boys out for good.

Next week our family will submit our documents for permanent residency. Once we get permission to stay here forever it will be much easier for us to register Wide Awake as a Ukrainian non-profit. That will be a big and necessary step toward getting our boys out.

Jed and Den, our pastor and board member, met with the Ukrainian Ombudsman for the Rights and Protection of children to discuss Wide Awake’s vision and plans. The President’s office is aware of our team and the work. Relationship is building there and who knows how God plans to use that?

All of this is thanks to God. He gets the glory for every single bit of it because there is NO WAY we could have strategized enough or worked hard enough for this kind of advancement. We certainly would have screwed it all up. God loves our Boys so very much and He is clearing the way for the freedom. HE is doing all of this, not us.

So, it is no wonder that we meet resistance. It’s no wonder that with all of this amazing stuff happening that we meet obstacles of every kind. It’s no wonder that our hearts get overwhelmed and we are hit with trial after trial. It’s no wonder that we get afraid and intimidated and distracted. The enemy will not give up his ground so easily.

Last night, standing in the cold, knowing death was near, we were on the very edge of the front line. We were in the line of fire. Never in your life can you be prepared for a moment like that. Never in your life could you imagine that you would need to convince medical professionals of the value and worth of a life.

Friends, we need prayer like never before. The battle is heating up and much is at stake. We need supernatural wisdom like never before. We need favor with government officials and orphanage administration. We need to know when to push and when to hold back. Most of all we just need Jesus. We need to have his heart and his eyes. We need to remain humble and small in our own eyes, that He might be lifted up. We need to simply say yes and give Him the control. He loves our boys more than we ever could.

Please pray for our new little one who is so sick. I will give details as I am able. Thank you!

A Week in Photos: August 7th

Posted on August 11, 2016 by kimnjed

I think I’ll try to get back into posting photos of our daily life here. I know lots of people (besides just the grandmas) are interested in our daily life, and posting weekly pics forces me to get on here and share even if I don’t feel like I have a heckuvalot to say. 🙂

The kids are adjusting pretty well to life back in Ukraine. Seth acts as though we never left. Ha! He easily picked back up with little friends from church. Ukrainian life with all the walking and more naturally active life suits him just fine. Hava, Addy, and Ezra are all doing fine. School hasn’t started yet, and we still haven’t nailed down exactly where they will go and which grade everyone will be in, so they’re still in our family/church bubble. Things may get a bit more dicey once we get closer to beginning school…we’ll see. I’m nervous about it, but what’s new? Today all is well, so I’ll just be content with that. Vladik is doing great. He was pretty emotional and regressed quite a bit in our first week here, but he seems to be coming back to his old self. I could do a whole post on that…maybe I will!

Bluebell is adjusting to Ukrainian life as well! It’s killing her to not be able to just run and run and run. But, we have LOADS of stray dogs in our neighborhood so she has to be on the leash at all times. We take her for several walks a day, but I know she misses her freedom. Soon! Bluebell will LOVE village life! We are so glad we brought her. I see the kids going to her for comfort and joy often throughout the day. What a blessing. I could do a whole post on that as well! Maybe I will! 😉

On Sunday night a bunch of our church family came out to the new property to check it out and to pray. It was awesome! We felt so loved, and it was massively encouraging to see so many people from church interested and engaged in what God is doing. It was a beautiful time.

A friend from church, Andriy, brought his camera along and took some cool pics while we were all out at the property. I love them!!! There are SO MANY super old things left at the house. Like serious antiques. It will be so fun to use them in decorating. EEK! I’m horrible at that kind of thing. I need Fixer-Uppers International!!! Seriously though, our house would be so super fun for someone who is good at that kind of thing. It’s like a museum!

We have a small team here this week from the UK Vineyard, and one friend from Ventura Vineyard. Oh man, we love those guys so much. They’re mostly here to help the Ukrainian Vineyard pastors, but a couple of the team members are Speech and Language Pathologists and they came just to support our interns at Romaniv. They have all been such an encouragement to us. They also makes us laugh a ton, so that’s a big bonus. We are so thankful for their love for Ukraine and her people, and their love for us. We don’t want them to leeeeeeeeave!!!! (I don’t have pics of them all, but you get the idea. They rock.) Thank you Jim, Jeremy, Josh, Sophie, and Ali! 🙂

And, of course we have our boys. Our sweeties. Our urgency to get them out grows more every day. It’s hard to trust God’s timing, but we really don’t want to push ahead on our own. We are certain to fall flat on our faces if we get ahead of ourselves. So, one foot in front of the other we say yes. And in the meantime we try to give them all the love we can while they wait.

Introducing…Interns!

Posted on January 4, 2016 by kimnjed

“The vision of Wide Awake is to offer hope, dignity, and improved quality of life for some of Eastern Europe’s most marginalized children.”

If you’ve hung around here for a while you know that our big, God-size dream is to open small group homes for our boys to live out their days. The dream is to remove the boys from their horrible reality and insert them into safe, loving, warm environments where they can get all the love and help they need for the rest of their lives. They will play and receive therapy and sleep in soft, warm beds. They will be surrounded by music and laughter. If they are able to work they will garden and care for animals and work with their hands. Our boys need occupation. They need to contribute to the world around them. It brings meaning to their lives. The dream is for them to be IN the city, not hidden away from society. The dream is for them to have the opportunity to become all that God has created them to be, surrounded by people who love them and treasure them and believe in them.
We’ve got big dreams around here. We’re dreaming big, believing that God has great futures in mind for our boys.

We will not believe that God’s best for them is to lay in bed 24 hours a day, seven days a week, staring at blank walls. We will not believe that spending the next 20 years rocking back and forth on a bench is God’s hope for their future.
We know God wants more for our boys and we know that He uses people as his hands and feet in the world.

Last year it became apparent that less money needed to be spent improving the physical living conditions of the boys, and more money needed to be spent placing loving, consistent people in their lives. To answer that need, through a three-way partnership with Hands of Hope (funded by their child-sponsorship program), Mission to Ukraine (local non-profit acting as fiscal agent), and Wide Awake (hiring and training) we were able to hire two full-time teachers who teach the bigger boys Monday through Friday. That need is also being answered by an increase in the amount of time our team spends with the boys each week. Since last spring there are teams going to visit the boys 3 days a week. The team has grown in number and in love. It is a truly beautiful thing.

Now I am so very happy to report that the need is being answered in yet another way. INTERNS!

Tanya, Mira, and Maxim

Our family attends a wonderful church in Zhytomyr: Христианской Молодежной Церкви (Christian Youth Church). Youth Church is our family in Ukraine. God has done a wonderful thing in partnering us together. Almost all of our team comes from Youth Church, and Wide Awake gave Youth Church a grant to carry on the work of bringing teams to the boys while our family is here in the US. Youth Church has done a FANTASTIC job of growing the team, and now the work in Romaniv has become an official ministry of our church! Vika, the team leader for Romaniv, has just rocked it. We are so proud of her and the whole team, and are honored to call Youth Church our Ukrainian home. 🙂

Youth Church, in partnership with Wide Awake is now sending three interns to Romaniv three days a week! The interns were picked from our team. Maxim, Tanya, and Mira have been volunteering at Romaniv since October of 2014. They have been faithful, loving, extremely dedicated and committed to the boys. This is not a project for them. This is their love. The three interns are university students who are doing this paid internship in addition to their schooling. They will be with the boys for six hours, three days a week and are an answer to prayer. Jed began their training when he was in Ukraine in October, and then our dear friend Olya, an OT, continued their training when Jed came back to the US. Thank you to Salem Vineyard, our sending church in Oregon, whose child-sponsorship helps to pay for this exciting new venture!

Yesterday was their first day on the job and we are all so excited! Maxim, Tanya, and Mira’s focus is on the boys in the Isolation Hall, since the teachers are not working with those boys. They have divided the Isolation boys up between themselves and will each work with the same boys every day they are there. They are beginning with performing functional assessments on each boy and then setting individual goals for the development of each boy. Their work is more focused and therapeutic because they have the ability to give their time and attention to the same boys each day.

We are looking forward to awesome results! Even just their consistent, positive presence is life-changing for our babies.

Do you know what that means? That means that between our teams and the interns we have loving, energetic, amazing youth spending time with the boys SIX DAYS A WEEK!!!!!! Freaking out excited!!!!! That’s not even counting the teachers who are there Monday through Friday and teams who visit from other churches. PRAISE GOD!

I remember back to the spring of 2014 when Jed and I decided to start going to Romaniv a second day each week. It was just the two of us going to Romaniv alone, asking God to bring more help…and now this. God is so amazingly faithful.

We believe that all of this loving presence is preparing the boys for the lives of freedom that await them.

Soon my babies, soon you will be free. But in the meantime, I hope you can see how many people love you so dearly.

Indiana Adventures

Posted on November 21, 2015 by kimnjed

I gotta tell ya, we just had the most encouraging week!

I’ve written before about Hands of Hope, our fabulous partners in Indiana. Hands of Hope provides awesome support to adoptive and foster families in Indiana, and they also do great orphan care through child sponsorship. Through the Hands of Hope Romaniv sponsorship we are able to bring fresh fruit to the boys three days a week, pay the salary of two teachers who are working full-time to teach the boys, and more. Hands of Hope is an immense help in bringing greater quality of life to our boys. Because Hands of Hope pays for much of the work that is done at Romaniv now, Wide Awake is able to put funds away to prepare for the future: group homes instead of institutionalization.

Their partnership and investment into our boys is priceless.

This past Tuesday Jed, Vladik, and I were able to fly to Indiana to spend some time with the Hands of Hope peeps and talk a whole lot about the boys we adore so much. It was a fast and fabulous trip! Jed flew in from Ukraine on Monday and we flew out to Indiana on Tuesday morning. At this point I’m pretty sure Jed could go 10 years without stepping foot on another airplane and be pretty happy with that.

On Tuesday night we got to spend the evening with some lovely people who sponsor sweet Boris and Zhenya. And then on Wednesday night there was an open house for “Friends of Romaniv”. Basically sponsors and any and everyone who loves our boys could come and just hear about what’s happening at Romaniv and how they can pray. It was beautiful. Many of the people who came Wednesday evening have visited Romaniv before and dearly love the boys. We always love talking about our sweeties, but talking about them to a room full of people who have loved them for years (in many cases before we even knew they existed!) takes it to a whole new level. Love-fest level! 🙂

The highlight of our Wednesday was a lovely young lady named Renee. Renee visited Romaniv on a mission trip when she was 16 years old. She fell in love with Vladik on that trip, came home and became his sponsor through Hands of Hope. Renee prayed and prayed over the years that Vladik would find a family. She LOVED our son before we did. Well, now Renee goes to college in Kentucky. She found out Vladik was going to be in Indiana and drove over 3 hours to come and see him in person.

What a special reunion. Vladik was clueless of the importance of that night, but someday he’ll understand.

Thursday night was just beautiful. Hands of Hope had an event called “Sip and Savor”. It was so classy! Free lattes and people walking around with trays of cheesecake? Yes, please. 🙂

The three main focuses of Hands of Hope were presented at the event: Orphan Care (child sponsorship), Foster Care support, and Adoption. Jed and I did the presentation about adoption because we received a matching grant for our adoption through Hands of Hope. THANK YOU!!!!! It was doubly special because Vladik was the first Hands of Hope sponsor child to be adopted. Cool, eh? I say hopefully the first of many!

Man, it was just wonderful to be in a room full of people passionate about caring for the orphan. There are so many different ways to say YES and hearing about all the ways people can say YES by partnering with Hands of Hope is just rad. It’s the real deal.

Besides those official meetings, we just had plenty of time to drink coffee and eat yummy food with our friends. All of these friends we met in Ukraine at one time or another through Hands of Hope, World Next Door, or Mission to Ukraine. They were all so happy to see Vladik in a family and we were so blessed to spend time with people who know our boys and our friends in Ukraine and love them. Common hearts + coffee + cozy couches = a whole lotta good times. We got to stay with our friends Christopher and Lois and it was seriously like a vacation. They spoiled the heck out of us. SO FUN!

God has blessed us so much with this partnership with Hands of Hope. Again, we are just amazed at God’s love for the boys. How is it, why is it that He has drawn so many hearts to this one institution in the middle of nowhere Ukraine? We believe it’s because God has something very special for our boys. He has been drawing them out of darkness into light for such a time as this. I’m just thankful we get to be a part of His unfolding plan.

To God be ALL the glory for the GREAT things He has done!