Adopting Again?!

Quick update on Availya and Evalina:
We have had them home for a year!! It's so hard to believe! Thinking back about the "waiting", it's hard to even remember. It was SO hard when we just waited and waited for 3 years, but now life is just normal. Don't get me wrong, it's not easy, as any of you with kids know. But we have fallen into a new normal. It's hard to remember what life was like without our girls.
In the last year, I (Kathy) have been homeschooling the girls. They have finished 1st grade and half of 2nd grade. They tested in the 80% in math and English, amazing!! We are working on getting caught up with other kids their age. We are working through the summer to get them into 4th grade by next school year. We are not pushing them though, they are very smart and they like to learn.
They have completely lost their native language, Bulgarian. It's hard to believe that you could speak a language for 7 years, and then completely forget it in just one year! They are mostly fluent in English, with a few mistakes here and there. They don't even understand when I speak the little Bulgarian that I know. Evalina still has a slight accent, but Availya sounds like a good, ol' American country girl!
They have started piano lessons, and playing basketball. They are just starting to learn, but they are doing well and enjoying it.
They are attaching well. There are still times that we wonder how attached they really are, but our bond is getting stronger everyday!

A little before Thanksgiving, Justin told me that he was feeling like we should adopt again, not knowing that I had been having the same feelings. So we started talking and praying about it. A few days later, as we met with our adoption counselor about the girls, he mentioned out of the blue that we should consider adopting again. We felt that we were being nudged, so we started to look into it more. I was thinking that we should adopt domestically. I wasn't comfortable with adopting an infant, but I wanted to go with a younger child this time. Justin was thinking more about international, and he wanted an older sibling group again. The only thing we agreed on is that we both wanted boys this time. We were on totally different pages, so we just continued to talk and pray about it. In the end, we both wanted to just be as open as possible and let God lead us. We started to look through waiting children profiles, this includes kids from all over the world, including the United States. There were several kids that we thought were cute or sweet, but none that we felt nudged towards. Slowly, I had moved from wanting 1 child to being open to 2 children. But I wouldn't even consider 3 kids, or kids over 5 years old. Of course, this was all because of what I wanted, not what God wanted. Then I began to warm to the idea of older sibling groups. Not everyone can or wants to adopt older children, especially when they come with siblings, which is completely understandable. However, these kids need a home too. For some reason, (definitely not because of our abilities) God has given both of us a heart for older children. As much as I would love to have all of my children from birth, I feel like God is calling us to do it differently.

We came across a sibling group of 3 brothers one day. They were really cute. But 3 kids?! We already have 2, so that would make 5!!! That's crazy! I saved their profile and showed it to Justin, but I really didn't think it would go anywhere. Justin felt like he should call and inquire about them, just to see. Surprisingly, they were very helpful and thought that it would be completely possible to start now and still be able to bring them home in just 8-12 months. (This is super speed in the adoption world!) Sure, maybe it could be done, but there is no way that God is asking us to do this. It's just too crazy! We wanted to do our due diligence and pray about it anyway. Instead of feeling a leading away from these boys, we actually both felt lead to them. We kept inquiring about them and praying for God to close a door, but it never happened. The door kept standing wide open and wouldn't close no matter how much we prayed that it would. We dragged our feet for a while, and then realized that the only thing left to do was walk through that open door. This was going to take so much faith though.

So here we are inching our way through the door. We don't know exactly what is going to happen, but we are faithfully following the path that God has set before us. We are trying to keep our trust in Him, and it is very difficult! We have started doing the paperwork, and have even set up an appointment to get our home study updated. The only thing that is holding us back is the funding. We just don't have it!

Throughout our first adoption, God provided the fees every time they were due. Of course, He always waited until the last minute (I think to test our faith!). I know that God is faithful, and if this is what He wants us to do, then He will provide!! Please pray for all of us as we go through this process again! If God is calling you to give financially, please give. It is so humbling to ask for money, but this money is not for us. This money is going to give a home to 3 orphans. It's going to put these boys into a family that will love them and teach them about their Savior, Jesus Christ! Ultimately, this money will go towards the command in James 1:27, to look after orphans in their distress!
Thank you so much for supporting us! Words of encouragement mean so much to us!

We have set up a donation site with YouCaring. You can visit here: https://www.youcaring.com/justin-kathy-hansen-492181 There is more information and updates there. There is a Donate button on the right that will also take you straight to the site to help with adoption costs. 

Thanks again! 

Finally getting our girls (Part 1)

I am pretty sure that I am the world's worst blogger! It's been about six months since I have posted an update, and SOOO much has happened. I'll start where I left off last time. (We were still waiting for a court date)

We had to wait until our Bulgarian judge came back from vacation to schedule our court date. She was supposed to come back in October. So on October first, I called our adoption agency to ask if we had a court date yet. (After waiting for two months, I had no patience left!) Surprisingly, She had scheduled our date already. On October 14th, our girls would officially be "OUR" girls, Availya Grace Hansen and Evalina Joy Hansen!!! That was just 2 weeks away at that point. We thought that those 2 weeks would go by so slow, we had nothing to do but wait. However, our agency called and told us that our fingerprints were about to expire and we would have to travel all the way out to WV to redo them. (Didn't know that your fingerprints could expire, did you? Apparently, they are only good for 15 months!) Ok, well at least this was giving us something to do. But before we could get that scheduled, even before our court date, our agency decided just to get us over to Bulgaria and bring the girls home before our fingerprint expiration. We found out that we would be leaving to get our girls in just 3 weeks!!! Wow, that was fast! Now we have a million things to do, we thought we had at least 7-8 weeks! But we were able to get everything together pretty easily. The only thing we were lacking was about $4,000. I know this sounds like a lot, but international adoption is expensive. We had gone through 3 years of seeing these huge fees staring us in the face with weeks and sometimes only days until the due date. God supplied every single time in miraculous ways. We had finally learned our lesson. God was going to provide!! Even though we only had 3 weeks, and we literally would not be able to bring them home without this money, neither one of us was worried. Two weeks before we were scheduled to leave, I had another phone interview with a grant agency. The interview went well, but you just never know. They called me back and told me that we were approved for a $4,000 grant. Seriously folks, you can't make this stuff up! God had, once again, pulled through with the exact amount that we needed to finish the adoption. Our God is so AMAZING! We were fully funded and officially done with all adoption fees. PRAISE THE LORD!!

Now on to our second trip: We were able to book tickets that would give us a 35 hour layover in Vienna, Austria! This would give us some extra time to get used to the time difference, and give Justin and I a last opportunity for it to be just us.  We had a wonderful couple in our church donate their hotel points to book us a hotel in Vienna.

 

The foster mom's biological children just happened to live in Vienna. We were able to set up a meeting with them while we were there as well. We had to have a translator with us, but we were able to ask so many questions. The girls really mean a lot to that entire family. We are so glad that they were so well taken care of and loved in Bulgaria!

 

 

We spent the rest of the time sight seeing and exploring. It was beautiful and fun, but we were so anxious to get to Bulgaria.

 

We finally got to Sofia, Bulgaria, and we had 1 day to get settled in the apartment and stocked up with groceries for the week that we would be staying there with the girls. The next day, we started our 5 hour drive to their town to pick the girls up. We left super early and got there around noon. Click this link to see a video of when we just arrived to get the girls:

 https://www.facebook.com/video.php?v=645674558761&set=vb.291000637&type=3

We spent a few minutes talking to the social workers there and saying goodbye. The foster mom was there and we had to watch as the girls hugged her and said goodbye. That was gut wrenching. Availya took it all pretty well, but Evalina was very upset and did not want to leave her. They understood that they were going to America with us and this was the last time that they would see their foster mom, "Aunt". At one point, Evalina ran out of the building crying. Availya and I chased after her and I picked her up and carried her to the car. The 5 hour ride back to Sofia, took us at least 7 hours. Availya was ready to go, but Evalina cried off and on for the entire trip. It was so hard to hold Evalina as her new mom, while she cried for her foster mom. I completely understood was she was going through, but it didn't make it any easier! The next day, Availya and Evalina switched places. Evalina was doing fine emotionally, and seemed to start bonding with us. Availya was a wreck, having crying fits and tantrums. She was always either ecstatically happy or depressingly sad, there was no middle ground. We had very little to do, except wait. We had visa and passport meetings, doctor appointments and then the final embassy exit interview. Between those, we just tried to live a normal family life. We would play games, watch movies, go for walks, we even went to the zoo and bowling.

 

Availya would do pretty good while in the apartment, and she would be excited to go somewhere, but as soon as we would leave, she would go into this depressed state. She would normally come out of it as soon as we came back. She still struggles with this now, but not quite as bad. She is a homebody, for sure. The language barrier was still pretty bad at first. They really only knew a few words and phrases. We had to use hand gestures and point at pictures for a lot of things. Also, Google Translate was our good friend for a while. We still use it occasionally for random words. We really struggled with Availya not wanting to bond with Justin. She was okay sometimes, but she would always prefer to be with me. She would even shrink away from him when he would go to hug or kiss her. Every single day since we first picked them up, has been a learning experience for all 4 of us.

To be continued...
 (This is part 1, there is too much to write about!)