Karina and Svietlana, her guardian, have been here almost two weeks. We are having a great time despite the language barrier. Karina and Svietlana are great guests and have each other to talk to. They are both learning some English. I am trying to learn some Russian but they have to keep repeating the Russian for me. Karina is very quick and smart. She has already put some sentences together. My accomplishments are much less. I have learned a number of words, but I have not yet accomplished putting them together in a sentence. I can say only a few phrases. The best advice I got was to buy a Russian-English dictionary. That has worked well for basic communication. A very challenging aspect of Russian is that the alphabet is so different. They say you can’t teach an old dog new tricks. We will see.

A wonderful blessing from the Lord is his provision of a young Ukrainian woman, Tasha, who is working as a counselor at a local church camp for the summer. She is fluent in English. She is a caring and thoughtful person with a deep love of the Lord. She has been staying with us at my house on weekends. It has been wonderful to have her as a translator on weekends.

We have been shopping so that Karina would have arts and crafts to work on. She is making a scrapbook. She said later in English: “Americans have great shopping.”

Last week all three of us helped during the Redeemer Church’s VBS in the crafts room. It was a good choice. Karina and Svietlana are very good with crafts, and the language barrier was not a major issue.

We have made connections with a group of Belarus children, who are staying for a few weeks in the area. Karina was able to make friends and visit with them, since they speak Russian also.

Another fun event for Karina was joining the children at a local church camp for outdoor activities yesterday. We will be able to do that again, and I think she really enjoyed it.

This post was submitted by Grace Marsh.

With a ton of patience and the grace of God….we were able to become parents to THREE girls who were part of the hosting program! Running across the FH website was a life changing event…it put us in a position to host a child we were sponsoring through another organization. One thing led to many others and we have doubled our family!

I’ve never met KT…but I feel like she is my crazy long lost sister…and in a way, she is ;) You can read our adoption blog: www.thekellettclan.blogspot.com and see more pics of our great kids!!

This post was submitted by The Kelletts.