Christmas/New Year Update

Hello All,

Liam opening gifts on Christmas Morning.

Just wanted to give a year end update about our new family. Since getting back from Ukraine at the beginning of October, we have been well supported by our family and church community and other friends as well as through a state-sponsored post-adoption support group run by Bethany Christian Services. People from church have lavished us with gift cards so we could buy Liam some clothes and other supplies. It also helped with Christmas shopping! The Bethany group meets every other week and adopted kids get to hang out with each other while the parents meet, share struggles, ideas and learn parenting strategies etc. We are also part of another support group through Love Cradle which has been very helpful as well. Liam has started attending our church's youth group and he has been taking Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu classes which he loves.

The last last 3 months have been full of both joy and struggle as Liam learns to fully trust us and we learn  how to parent a 14 year old (which is enough of a challenge) but also a 14 year old who is experiencing a huge change in his life circumstances and adjusting to a new culture. I would say that things are very positive at least 80% of the time. During the other 20% Beth and I take turns talking the other off the ledge as it were. Our biggest challenge is to insist on respectful behavior and cooperation from Liam while remaining calm and patient and also giving a lot of praise when he does well. We've learned that low self-esteem is a big cause of some of these problems even if it seems the opposite is the case.  There are times when he resists, complains and shuts down on us but thankfully we have also seen that he will come back to us and ask forgiveness after he's had a chance to think things over. We feel really blessed that despite the problems, Liam is definitely bonding with us and his spirit is open to us (most of the time.) He has a fun-loving spirit and is very affectionate. He's great with the little kids at our house church. We are learning about many techniques for approaching parenting, some of them contradict each other. But we know the biggest thing is to pray for God's wisdom and stay open to His voice.

Since getting back Beth has been doing some homeschooling with Liam, mostly concentrating on his English. She is supported in this by a weekly ESL class. She's also been doing some math and other things with him. This has been a challenge as Liam is sometimes resistant and gets easily frustrated. So, we've decided that instead of homeschooling we will send him to a private Christian school where he can get the individual support he needs in a healthy atmosphere.  At first we thought public school was our only realistic option but we were encouraged to at least apply at a local Christian school and see if we could find a way to pay for it. Well, we enrolled him figuring we could pay at least 3 months of the next semester and then see what happens after that. But one day, we got a call from the school saying that an anonymous donor had paid Liam's tuition for the semester in full!!! Once again we have been blessed beyond all expectation. It's incredible the way God keeps making a way where there seems to be no way. That's been the story of this adoption from the beginning and it continues to be the case as we raise Liam. Thank you all for being a part of making Liam's life here possible.

Liam's first Christmas with us (he calls it his first real Christmas) was very happy. Looking forward to the joys and challenges of the new year.

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year to you all!

Beth, Bill and Liam

We're Home!

Made it back late last night after a slightly delayed flight from London. Rachael and Brendon Derr picked us up. Today we are resting, unpacking and sorting through all the mail that piled up. Liam is bouncing off the walls with happiness. When we walked in the door last night we were shocked to see that our house church group bought a brand new bike for Liam, a cool BMX xtreme sports bike. Plus all kinds of gifts, flowers and a freezer packed with prepared meals and a big sign in the living room that says "Welcome Home Carroll Family." We are so grateful!

It's great to be back but we are feeling a little disoriented. It kinda feels like we just woke up from a strange Wizard of Oz experience...."and Toto was there and you were there Uncle Henry, and you too auntie Em, and you, and you....all of you were there!" 

There's no place like home!

Spaceba (Thank you) and blagoslovit vas Bog! (God bless you.)

Do svidania, (Good bye)

Bill, Beth and Liam

Goin' Home

Our appointments at the U.S. embassy to get a visa for Liam went well. Yesterday we went to apply for the visa. They received all of the paperwork such as the adoption court decree etc. Today we returned to pick up the visa and everything went very smoothly. So, everything we needed to do is done and we will be heading home tomorrow afternoon. We on on a British Airways flight via London. Should be home around 9 or 10 in the evening.

After our embassy appointment we went to the old city section near the very ornate Adreavsky church, where there are many street vendors and bought some gifts including a Ukrainian flag and a Euro-cup scarf for Vlad. Then we went to an Italian restaurant for dinner. Menu was in Russian and Italian so we could kinda figure out the Italian which was nice. We feel like five year olds here...can't read or write or make ourselves understood. Yesterday we got hopelessly lost on the metro because we couldn't read the signs. Despite all the difficulties in communication etc we feel a bit nervous about coming home to the "real world" and picking up our routines again. It will take awhile to get back into the groove.

Beth is massaging Vlad's head right now and he is falling asleep. It's time for all of us to head off to bed.

Goodnight and see you soon.

Bill, Beth and Liam (Vlad)

Passport Received!

We went to the passport office with our Simferopol helper, Dmitry this morning and after a short wait we received Liam's new passport. The lady at the passport office has a reputation as a meanie. She has given others serious problems in the past. So you have to treat her like the Soup Nazi....try not to make eye contact, don't ask any questions, sign your name and move on quickly before she changes her mind. Our friend Ed got into an argument with her the other day and she said to him, "All you Americans do is take our children away and send them back when your tired of them." (A reference to that woman who sent her adopted children back to Russia on a plane.) Later he tried to appease her with a "gift." He was just ahead of us in line this morning and everything seemed to go well for him, thankfully.

So now we are sitting in our apartment watching Daffy Duck dubbed in Russian and waiting till it's time to go to the train station. We will leave at about 3pm get a bite to eat, meet Ed, Dina and their kids, Aidan and Colin who will all be on the same train with us then it's off to Kiev. Our appointment at the U.S. Embassy is tomorrow morning. We hear they are very pleasant and helpful there.

Photo: Artwork that Liam did on the computer last night.

In Kiev we will stay at a hospitality house run by a Christian woman who runs it as a ministry to adopting families in Ukraine. She offers a place to stay free of charge which is great.

Heading for the Home Stretch!

Hi Friends,
It's been a while since we blogged. Just a quick update: We left Kerch with Liam (Vlad) about 2 weeks ago. We are in an apartment in Simferopol. Last Tuesday we applied for Liam's passport and we should be able to pick it up this Tuesday. In anticipation of this we have booked train tickets for the 14 hour overnight trip to Kiev for Tuesday afternoon. On Wednesday morning in Kiev we will go to the U.S. embassy on  to apply for an immigrant Visa and then get a medical exam for Liam. On Thursday we will return to the embassy to hopefully pick up the Visa. Then, if all goes well we will get on a plane for home on Friday!!!! We can't believe things are finally coming to a conclusion. Please pray that these final steps go well and we can actually leave next Friday as planned.

Liam chillin' in our apartment in Simferopol.

Liam is doing well. We are having fun together and getting the hang of being a family. Lots of things for all of us to learn. But by and large he is very cooperative and very affectionate. (but also very goofy just like his dad.)  Today we went to the circus and then hung out  in a park with our friends Ed and Dina who have adopted two young kids from Kerch.

Can't wait to be home. Very thankful that we've gotten this far and that Liam is with us.

Hope to see you all soon!

Love,

Bill, Beth and Liam

Meet the Carrollskis!

Praise God! Our hearing went without a hitch and the court approved our adoption of Vlad pending a 10 day waiting period. So, although it is not officially official, we're celebrating anyway.

We are now, Papa Bill, Mama Beth and introducing....Vladyslav Williamson Carroll! In Ukraine the convention is for children to take their father's name as a sort of middle name or description. Vlad had been Vladyslav Alexadrovitch (literally, son of Alexander) Markov.  We decided to replace Alexander, the father he never met, with William the person who will actually be his father. Williamson...son of William. Not sure what he will end up going by. Early indications are "Liam" but we'll see how that pans out. If he wants to continue going  by Vlad that's fine too. We had wanted to keep the name Markov as a second middle name but they wouldn't let us. Apparently they never heard of this concept here. They told us,  "Markov is his surname, it can't be his middle name." Our protest, "Yeah but in America you can  have ten names and call yourself "Storage Unit # 32" if you want to," fell of deaf ears.

The courtroom was small and cramped, Beth, our translator and I sat in the front row in front of the judge, a middle aged woman who had that bored, tired, judgey look about her. Also there was a representative from the public welfare department, a prosecutor who looked like she was about 25 and dressed for a rave and several other courtiers.

After several minutes of talking amongst themselves the Judge asked me to stand and asked what I was asking of the court. She also asked a few other questions about where we live, where I work etc. Then she asked Beth the same series of questions. Then the judge read aloud from parts of all the documents we submitted. Everybody looked on the verge of sleep. There was another series of questions, how we met Vlad, when did we decide to adopt him etc. The Judge asked Vlad if he wanted to be adopted etc. and it was all over in under an hour. They dismissed us into the hallway for about five minutes and then called us back in and gave us the favorable decision. After signing some papers and saying "spaceba" we were out the door.

We went out and celebrated over Ukrainian pizza and ice cream and then took Vlad back to the orphanage. Tomorrow is his 14th birthday and we are hoping to get permission to take him out for the day. We plan to actually take custody of him on September 11th and then head to Simferopol to work on changing his passport and getting his visa etc.

Thank you all for your prayers, thoughts and kind words of encouragement. We are also grateful to our facilitator and translator here for all the incredible hard work they put in that resulted in such a smooth hearing. We thank God for  giving us the victory in spite of our weaknesses and for rescuing another orphan from a very uncertain future.

I just came across these verses as I was trying to find some appropriate scripture to thank God. This is perfect:

Sing to God, sing in praise of his name, extol him who rides on the clouds; Rejoice before him. His name is YHWH (Jehovah.) A father to the fatherless, a defender of widows is God in His holy dwelling. He sets the lonely in families, he leads out the prisoners with singing..." Psalm 68: 4-6.

Court Day Tomorrow. Pray Early and Often!

Well folks, tomorrow is the big day. Our hearing to adopt Vlad is tomorrow at 1:30 pm local time (6:30 am for all you early birds who might be up and praying for us.) Tonight we are going over our home study one last time and preparing for potential questions the judge may ask. We are nervous but also trusting in God. In one way, we could look at court as a formality. We've been told that this court has not rejected anyone's adoption request in six years. On the other hand, we have been strongly cautioned not to take this hearing for granted!  Bill has had a severe sinus infection for the last several days and is not feeling well. So, please pray with and for us, including Vlad!

"We know not all his plans, but we know we're in His hands!"

 The Carrolls