HE is the Gift

Every Christmas I get the kiddos an ornament. I have been doing that since they were born. Usually one or both of their grandmothers do the same. So they have quite a collection for a good start with their own tree someday. I have all of my ornaments from my childhood as well, since my mom did the same thing with my sister and I, and she still gives us an ornament for our tree every year. I love this tradition. Our Christmas tree is full of memories of Christmases past. If we travel somewhere new, I usually get an ornament on our trip as well, to remember all the places we've been. Back when Dr. G was in residency, he had a two month rotation in Baltimore one year, far away from where we lived in Texas, and he brought me home a little, tall-masted, old fashioned ship ornament that said Baltimore and the year. Although I had never been to Baltimore at that time, it still reminds me every year that I survived two months alone with four kids under the age of 6 while he was there receiving training. :) This year I added a handmade, metallic pineapple ornament from our trip to Maui in October when Dr. G and I went to celebrate our 20th wedding anniversary. It's one of my favorites. In the past, I've put all the ornaments together when I take down the tree, but this year I think I will separate them into boxes for each child. The younger girls each have a little tree in their room that they like to decorate every year with paper ornaments and small, sparkly red balls, so maybe they can add of few of their own ornaments next year.

So this year, after noticing how full the tree is getting, I decided I would do something different for the kids' ornaments from now on. I bought them each a small nativity (pictured above). (Hopefully they don't read this before Christmas...pretty sure I'm safe on that one.) From now on, I will add a nativity to their collection every year and they can use them to decorate their own homes someday. I ordered them online and bought seven. I was thinking of YP in China and it's the first gift I have bought for him (if you don't count the Nerf guns that Little Bro asked for for his birthday so he and YP can play together.) ;) I hope he likes it. We will save it for when he comes and he can have two for next Christmas. I love decorating with nativities at Christmas time. I had a friend whom we knew in Texas and she had an entire house full. They were everywhere in her home, in every room at Christmas, and she had collected them from all corners of the world. Each one had a story. It was a special feeling to go into her home during the holiday season.

The account of the birth of the Savior is still an amazing thing to me, and every Christmas I get the same feeling I had when I learned about His birth for the first time. I love sharing the scriptural account with our children and it's so wonderful to watch them as they understand it for the first time. It was always so fun watching their faces when they were little and they loved to rearrange, over and over, the several nativities we have had over the years. I finally learned to buy less expensive, plastic ones after the first few years. Miss M was pretty careful when she was little, but when the boys came along, we seemed to lose an arm or a halo or an animal's head every year. I am excited to share the nativity story with YP when he comes. I'm not sure how much exposure he has had to the first Christmas story, but I am hoping that he will love hearing about the Savior's birth as much as each of our other kids have.

My first remembrance of knowing about "Baby Jesus" was when I was about 4 1/2. I can still remember the reverence and awe I felt that entire Christmas season. Our family lived in Italy near Rome and were there for two years. We had only been there since August of that year (1973) and by December my Italian was still emerging. I went to an Italian preschool during the week that was near our apartment, and I credit my parents for being brave enough to send me to school like that, being so young and new in a foreign country. It took about six months or so for me to become fluent in Italian and I became somewhat of a little celebrity in the small town later that year being the only little American girl around who could speak to and hang out with all the locals on the beach in our little city. My school was a little Catholic preschool run by nuns who were Yugoslavian.

My sister and I (I'm in red) with some of the nuns who taught at my Catholic preschool in Italy. (circa 1973)

 
I know they spoke Italian too, but it didn't much matter because I didn't understand anyone anyway at first. I remember being quite "lost" and frustrated at school for the first several months.(At least that gives me a bit of perspective for how YP will feel at first, so I can be more mindful of his certain frustration with the language and culture.) I know the kids at school tried to help me along, but I remember thinking I WAS understanding things right, only to realize I really wasn't after watching what the other kids were doing. Case in point was the little Christmas program that we did for our parents. We practiced Christmas songs in Italian and prayers and they told us when to stand and when to sit and when to fold our hands in prayer etc. I was pretty sure I got it. When the evening came and we all showed up dressed in our nice clothes for the program, I did my best to sing and watched all the other kids to follow them. I was pretty sure the nuns had said we were supposed to keep our hands folded in prayer any time we were seated. I just KNEW I was right and all the other Italian speaking (and understanding) kids must be wrong. My mom snapped a photo of me sitting during the pageant, and she said I sat that way for the ENTIRE evening any time we were sitting.

Me (second from left...praying)

I remember the little girl sitting next to me trying to tell me I didn't have to stay that way, but I was sure she was wrong and the nuns would be upset if I didn't do what I was supposed to. Later after the program was over, we got to eat Italian candy and treats. That, of course, was my favorite part.

Me (left) and my little sister (right) at my preschool Christmas Program. Dec. 21st, 1973

My little Italian friend and I eating LOTS of sweets. (Italian treats are THE BEST!)

 
In preparation for the program, we had worked on many little crafts to display for our parents. All of them centered around the birth of the Savior. I don't remember hearing too much about Santa Claus that year although I know on Christmas morning, there were gifts from him under the tree and my parents said he must have found us in Italy since we had moved from America. The Italians didn't have a Santa Claus figure nor Christmas trees then. My mother had shipped our 6 foot tall, fake 1970's Christmas tree and a bunch of colored lights and ornaments over from the US in a shipping crate along with our other stuff, so our Italian friends in the apartment building were completely enamored with the decorated tree. I think she gave it to someone in Italy when we moved back to the US two years later. Anyway, my focus that Christmas was on my new found love for "Baby Jesus". The nuns had sparkly cards and decorations and manger scenes for us to make for our parents and all of them had to do with the nativity. I was in awe of this little baby who seemed so important. My understanding would grow from year to year, but the feeling of reverence remains the same as it was that first Christmas in Italy. I am so grateful that forty-one (Wow, that's a lot.) years later, my understanding of the Savior's mission has grown to what it is today and it will continue to grow. HE is the true gift of Christmas. Nothing else about the season can bring that feeling of reverence and awe that pondering on His birth and life can bring. I love that the seed was planted early in my life by some Yugoslavian nuns at an Italian preschool half way across the world. I am grateful that seed grew to a sure knowledge that He is MY Savior, and that Jesus Christ is the Savior of the world. I love that I can plant that same seed in the hearts of my own children. I am so excited to share the wonder and beauty of the Gift that is the Savior with YP next year when he is here. 
 
Below is a link for one of my favorite recent videos called "He is the Gift" about how we can focus on that first Gift of Christmas which was the Christ child. I LOVE this video! #sharethegift
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uzjFEMmM0Xs

....The One.

This boy...our boy. He is an amazing child already and we can make a difference in his life. Sometimes it's hard to fathom that there are so many children out there, so many that we can't get to every single one of them. I have read in other adoption blogs and stories about families that have traveled to finally bring their child home and it's then that they have the full realization of just how many children there are who won't be going home. It's one thing to see it on paper or to review many, many files of available orphaned children. It's another thing, I imagine, to actually go and see their faces, hundreds of them, looking at you when you go to pick up "the one" child that you have worked for months to bring home. There are so many ways to help. Funding programs for better orphanage care or sponsoring specific children, so they may receive special medical care that their orphanage might not be able to otherwise provide, are among just a few ways. I like to think that I can make a difference in the life of one child. I can make a big difference. There are so many children...I can't change their plight by myself. But I can change the life of one boy and it will make a difference for him...and for us.

We first knew about YP (I can't use his Chinese name until we get our official referral from China) last February. February 23rd to be exact. It was a Sunday and I was talking to my good friend SB at church. She and her husband had just brought home two beautiful boys from China (ages 6 and 8) the previous August and they had been home now for a little over six months and were doing just great! She knew we had been looking at different files of children from China that our adoption agency had acquired. She mentioned that she knew of a ten year old boy in the same orphanage where one of her sons was from. This boy (our boy) was ten years old and had been waiting for a permanent family for his whole life. He came in to orphanage care at 5 months of age. She was advocating for him because of a friend whom we now know, that lives in China and has volunteered at this particular orphanage for many years. This special lady is amazing and advocates for many children who need families. She is an American who has lived in China for many years and has been able to volunteer weekly at this orphanage all that time. She knows the children well, and has been able to help connect children with families by advocating for them in many ways including through social media.

Anyway, SB told me he was a wonderful boy who loved school and her son remembered that he was nice to the other children all the time. Initially, my thought was that we hadn't really considered a ten year old and were looking at children younger than our youngest who was five at the time. We talked a bit more and that was all. The next evening SB posted on a local Facebook adoption advocacy group that I am a member of about this particular boy. Strangely, the very first thing that I noticed was his birthday. It's in January. All of our family members have birthdays in a different month of the year, so that leaves four months with no birthday celebrations. I would always kid around saying that we would know when we found our son or daughter because their birthday would have to be in one of those four open months, so they could have their own month too. (I was kidding...really.) But anyway, January was open and it crossed my mind for a second, so I clicked on the post and saw his picture for the first time. He is such a handsome boy and I became more and more interested as I found out more about him. All of a sudden, it didn't matter that he was ten and we were looking for a five year old. Something told me it was right and it would work. That was the beginning of a journey that has lead us to where we are now.

I was able to contact SB's American friend in China (TW). She sent me several photos of YP and shared so many wonderful details and stories about him and his growing up years. She put me in touch with one of her adult daughters who LOVED to visit and play with YP when she was a teenager and living there in China with her family. She has since moved to the US and started a family of her own, but she was able to give us a glimpse into YP's young life and also send us some wonderful pictures of him as a baby and toddler from when she used to play with him at the orphanage. When he was two, a program called Half the Sky came to his orphanage (halfthesky.org). It is an amazing organization founded in 1998 by a California woman after she and her husband adopted two little girls from China. Over the years they have been able to make a huge impact on orphan care in China by providing much needed training to the caregivers and nurturers of these children. So when YP was two years old, Half the Sky began something called a Family Village at his orphanage and he was able to go live with an "imitating family" or foster family. Not all children have this opportunity, but he has been very fortunate to have grown up outside of institution walls and know what a family is like. TW tells me that his foster mother is a sweet and caring woman who has a heart of gold. He has foster siblings as well, although all of them are from the orphanage and not related to each other. He even has the opportunity to attend normal school, and not the school at the orphanage which is a big blessing for him. We feel like we were led to him and he is just right for our family. I remember Dr. G saying several years ago, "When it's the right child, we will know." I knew it....it didn't take me very long. Like two days. Dr. G took more time to assimilate all the information and adjust to the idea of having an older child instead of a four or five year old like we originally planned. Experience and our adoption training and knowing people and stories of people who have adopted older children gave us a lot of information  to digest and consider. It took a few months, but we eventually submitted our paperwork into our agency to formally request for a pre-approval for this sweet boy. That took place in April and by June we had pre-approval from China which means we were able to now move forward with gathering all of the needed information and paperwork for our dossier (file) to be sent to China, and getting everything in for our Homestudy. It's a long process and one that takes even longer if you have a busy life filled with all kinds of stuff like we do. But we were able to get through it, and now are almost at the end of that road, so we can wrap everything up by the year's end.

We think about him everyday. The kids ask about him and what he is doing and include him in their conversations. Our youngest "Little Bro" turned six last week, and specifically asked for TWO nerf guns so that when YP gets here, they can play together. Our girls helped finish up the Christmas decorations last night and hung an extra stocking on the fireplace for him. It was so cute. Next Christmas, he will be here and life will be very different I imagine....mostly for this sweet boy who will finally have a forever family to love him.