We have a date!!!!!

     We finally got an appointment date!  Well, two to be more specific.  The first date was 8/15/13.  I  was amazed and a bit concerned as Dave was still in Ukraine.  It would leave him a week to get rested and ready to go again but I was game.  Even got a confirmation.  One never knows though when your doing an international adoption.  Things change so quickly!
     Later that day I was on the Internet just checking things and saw someone had mentioned me.  When I checked , sure enough, the date had been changed!  The new date is 9/9/13.  We're sticking to that one!  One thing Dave and I have learned is to roll with the  punches.  David called me to tell me he was home at last and making his way from Washington.  I got to share with him our new news.  Always something.  That's going to be the name of my book.  When I get time to write it.
     So this month I get to make plans to leave and get the kids ready for school and do wedding shopping!  Liz's bridal shower is going to be on the 24th.  I had to change the date to the 7th of September and then change it back to August 24th.  Liz, having been with us on three adoptions just said, "Will you be home in time for the wedding?"   It's October 12th and I wouldn't miss that for the world.  Maybe we''ll all be together.  All fourteen of us, with our Brian and Daniel looking on from heaven.  They wouldn't miss their sister's wedding either!    It'll be a great day!

 

Soon to be Mrs. Liz Anderson!  Come to think of it we're getting two new kids, Molly and Bryce.  Welcome to our crazy family Bryce!

 

Adventures in Ukraine!

     It has been an interesting 9 days since David left for Ukraine.  He went to take part in the Third International Conference on the needs of children with disabilities presented in Kiev, Ukraine.  This is the first one I've missed and  Dave says the last.   He tells me he'll never do another one without me.  Nice to know I'm missed!!!
     The team from the states consisting of Johnny and Alesha Kelley, Cynthia Normandia and my husband David had quite a trip!  Dave tells me it was his worst flying experience and this was his 28th time!  Poor Johnny and Alesha, it was their first!  They were late flying out of Washington and missed their connecting flight in Frankfurt.  Johnny's power chair got damaged and they then missed 4 flights and had to stay the night in Frankfurt.  Now that part I'm glad I missed!
     After staying the night in Frankfurt they finally got to Kiev and were met by our dear friends Sasha and Olya Skripak.  Their first mission was to Znemenka to do some teaching there.      
I know the ladies there were grateful for the time the team made for them as most of them could not get to the conference in Kiev.  This picture is of Cindy Normandia teaching OT skills to these caregivers.

 

    

      The team then traveled back to Ukraine to prepare for the big day!

So many great translators who help us communicate and make us look good!    Not an easy job!  Almaz church does a great job in setting up the conferences every year.  Pastor Sasha and Olya work tirelessly to make these conferences a success.  This year we had 320 people attending including 80 volunteers!

 

These are people waiting in line to register for the conference.  They all get a schedule and check off the classes they want to attend.  At the end of the day they even get certificates of completion!

So many of our team this year were people living and working in Ukraine for the orphans!

The team is now in Zhytomyr where they gave a mini conference to the good folks from Mission to Ukraine.  Tomorrow they go to the lost boys of Romanov.  I found it a rough place to visit last year.  The boys there are from ages 5 to 25 all with some type of physical or mental disability.  Their lives are bleak but things are changing, little by little.  One of the things that promotes change are conferences like this.  We thank all of you who have prayed for us and given to our mission....To change the heart of a country.  God bless you!!!

 

 

Change Our Future!

That is the name of our third international conference...Change Our Future!
Last year it was entitled, We are People First.  Pastor Sasha called the first one, Hug and Do Not Let Go!  He continues to give every conference that title!
Since we had such a large team last year we thought it would continue in the same vein.  We planned on going to 4 different orphanages with 4 different teams, spending a few days and reconvening in Kiev for the conference.

We plan, God laughs.

We were astounded when one after the other from our previous team could not join us this year because of various reasons.  We had a keynote speaker from Virginia and his wife and our friend Cindy, who has been with us for all the conferences, but NO ONE ELSE.  My husband David said maybe there wouldn't be a conference this year.  I said," let's wait two weeks."

In two weeks we had a bigger and better conference taking shape that we hadn't envisioned.

But He had.

Our keynote speaker will be Mr. Johnny Kelley who we have heard twice.  He is a very powerful presenter and Ukraine won't know quite what to do with him.  Johnny has Cerebral Palsy and is a technological wizard.  He has a touch screen and writes his own power points that are delivered by a computerized voice.  Johnny says he can do anything if  he has a ramp.  Ukraine doesn't have ramps but we're bringing some along!

His wife, Alesha Kelley is going to accompany Johnny and be a presenter as well.  Alesha is an Occupational Therapist and this will be the first trip out of the country for them both.  We need your prayers, Ukraine will be rough to get around in for these folks.  We admire their spirit and pray it will be a great experience for them.

Dr. Cynthia Normandia, delights the people of Ukraine with her knowledge of how to work with the disabled.  She breaks things down step by step and they are always hungry to hear more.  Cindy is the head Occupational Therapist for the Chesapeake City Schools.  We are blessed to have her.

Cindy shared a documentary with us called NOT FORGOTTEN when we were in the planning stages.  It is about the children in Ukraine who are autistic.  Two doctors were featured in that documentary.  Guess what?  They're both speakers at our conference!

Dr. Irina Galina, lives in Odessa, Ukraine and opened a center for these kids 20 years ago.  She gets government support which is incredible, and she now has 200 young adults she serves.  She has written three books and wants to open another center.  Dr. Galina started the first one at the age of 60.  Don't you want to be that active at 80?

Dr. Jim Peipon is the other doctor who appears in the documentary.  He and his wife are American and have lived in Ukraine for 10 years setting up medical missions trips and ministering to the orphans of Ukraine.  We are so delighted he is joining us with his expertise!

Chris and Mary Malone are an American couple with 9 children who decided to move to Ukraine after adopting 4 boys with Down Syndrome from Ukraine.  We met Mary at last year's conference and knew she was a kindred spirit!  They have 5 birth children, one of whom has DS.  They're like us...but younger!!!  Delighted they can join us!

The Down Syndrome group in Kiev are sending two young men to tell us more about their wonderful group.  The more we read about it the more impressed we are!  The DS group have sent letters to 220 social workers in rehab centers across Ukraine asking them to come to the conference for training.  We are amazed!

My husband David will be presenting as well as helping to make sure everything runs smoothly.  I will REALLY  miss not being there this year but I cannot leave the children for 12 days and come back only to leave again in two weeks for our adoption appt.  I will be there in spirit.

Pastor Sasha Skripak and his lovely wife Olya are our partners in Ukraine who put this all together.  The young people from their church act as our interpreters, techno wizards, set up and break down team, promotional team, program printers, and all around amazing workers!  We could not do this without the months of work they put into it.  Pastor Sasha is a wonderful speaker and will close the conference.

I forgot, we have a Ukrainian mom and her daughter with DS who will be sharing with us.  We met them last year and were so impressed with them both.  They have gone against the flow and have accomplished amazing things!

We started out giving them Hope.  Americans showing Ukrainians what we do.  This year Ukrainians will be showing Ukrainians how to make a difference. 

Isn't that a better plan?  God is so good!

Blessings to you all,  Jane

Summertime and the living is easy?

At the Daulton house the living in the summertime is not exactly as the song says.  We are a full house here with 8 kids schedules to juggle... that means camps, doctor appointments, summer school......  I truly don't know how you homeschoolers do it. 
We travel soon we hope, maybe mid august.  We should be fundraising for our Molly but are caught up in fundraising for our 3rd annual conference in Kiev.  We only have 10 days until departure so all our efforts are going into meeting the budget for this conference.  We partner with Almaz Church in Kiev and they find the hall, do the promos, take reservations, arrange for our stay, do the printing, and send us the bill.  It has gotten so big.  Use to be a ma and pa thing but it's grown beyond us.  Thank God.
This conference sprung up from one presentation to the young adults at Almaz who wanted to work with special needs orphans but knew little about them.   We covered the basics.  One of the questions was, "What do kids with DS look like?"  All we had was a scrapbook which we shared.  It had all 7 of our kids with DS who are all different.  These kids are not seen on the street, if they are kept at home then they are kept at home.  Ukraine does not have any handicap accessibility to speak of so travel for these kids is hard.
Pastor Sasha asked us to please come back and do a conference in six months on the Needs for Children with Disabilities.  We said, "Right.  Come here in the winter in just six months.  I don't think so."  But God had a plan and we were back in six months presenting with our group of 5.  We took our Anya with us because she was the first child with DS to get out of Ukraine as far as we know and she is a charmer.  She was our photographer but she mostly took pictures of the ladies boots.  Many people got their picture taken with her.  There were even a few moms who were brave enough to come with their disabled child.  It was wonderful!
                                                                

 

Anya taking a picture of herself.  We get a lot of these!

The next year we had 15 presenters!  Such a great group who worked so hard!  Our keynote speaker was Jenny Jensen,  a young lady with DS who delivered a great message and brought the house down!

I will write about this upcoming conference very soon.  It's bus time!!!  God bless!

It's a grand old name

     We are so very excited about adding to our family once again and have been "nesting" as we make room for one more.  We should be able to travel sometime in august and get this last girl home.  We've known Heather for three years.  When we were in the orphanage in November to get our Marina we spent a lot of time with Heather.  Well, she came running every time she saw us and demanded attention!  She adopted us then!
     This will be our fifth girl and we've not run out of names like I have for the boys.  There are eight of those boys!!!   We've decided to name her after my mom.  It will be mom's 27th grandchild, her thirteenth granddaughter.  She would love it that someone is finally going to use her name.  There was an old song she use to sing to us that went like this....
     For it was Mary, Mary, long before the fashions came,
     But in society, propriety they say Marie,
     For it was Mary, Mary, strong as any name can be,
     For there is something there, that sounds so square,
     It's a grand old name!

     It is fitting that Mary Monica gets a namesake.  We will call her Molly which was also mom's nickname.  I believe her dad called her Molly Mae.  It fits this little one to a tea.  Love you mom!                                                         

A Giant Leap!!!!!

I stand amazed and humbled at the same time.  Just three days ago our total donations stood at $89.50 and I was feeling very alone.  The grant we applied for didn't come through our fund raising has been  for our conference entitled, Change Our Future,  on July 27th in Kiev, Ukraine.   It's easy to get discouraged in this adoption journey and feel the weight of it all on your shoulders. 
That's how I was feeling Monday night as I checked my FB account.  I decided to check my blog to see if the paypal had gone up.  I lost my breath when I saw the total......11,114.70!!!  In just one day!!  I showed it to david as tears of joy ran down my face.  My first thought was the incredible goodness of God and my next was how undeserving I am.   I've had so many doubts and tried to carry this myself and yet...... He is faithful.
This has given me the boost I needed to believe this will all work out.  We still have a ways to go but are so very encouraged.  Thanks to all of you who are being His hands and feet.  We are grateful.

God bless you all!!!!!!! 

Countdown has begun!

Our dossier was finally submitted last Wednesday and the countdown has begun!  We have an upcoming missions trip leaving on July 21st and we were hoping to get the first part of the adoption process over at that time.   We've just found out that we will probably travel in the second part of August.  Bummer.  One thing we've learned in this life with this group of kids is how to be flexible so onward and upward!
We are presenting our third annual conference on Children with Disabilities in Kiev, Ukraine on July 27th and it is shaping up to be an awesome conference!  Last summer we had 14 people present at our conference and we imagined it would be bigger this year.  God has shaped our conference into something entirely different and better!  We do have three presenters from the states, excluding us, and we are thrilled about their involvement but the rest of the presenters live and work in Ukraine to make life better for children with disabilities.   So instead of us telling our Ukrainian friends how things are in America for these special kids and showing them how things can be, we will have presenters who can show them how they are making changes in their own country.  It is so exciting and we are humbled that God is using us.  If you would like to make donations toward this conference you can send a tax deductible gift to: Father's Heart, 3808 Poplar Hill Rd, Suite D, Chesapeake, Va.  23321.  Make checks out to Father's Heart.
We will return from that trip at the beginning of August and most likely leave again in just two or three weeks.  We have to do this in stages this time rather than stay over there 26 days like we did with Marina.  I will go with David for the first two trips as I have to be there and he will go back and pick up Heather on the third trip.  We covet your prayers!  We have no idea how we are going to pull this all off but believe that God is able and we rest in that.  (most of the time!)  If you want to donate for the adoption we have a paypal on this site or you can mail it to Father's Heart.  We thank you in advance for your prayers and generosity.  Please share this with your friends!
Just a picture before I go.
Marina Joy enjoying her mom's sweet tea on the front porch.  Does life get any better than this?

God bless you all!