What could it be? The deep longing seemed to be focused on children. While we had peace that we would not be having anymore biological children, we knew that more children were somehow in our future. We just didn’t know what the face of that looked like. We began to pursue our options. We attended informational meetings on Foster Care, we worked with inner-city kids, we worked as volunteers with children at church and in our community and at one point we filled out an application for domestic adoption. These were all worthy causes but somehow they weren’t the answer to the void we were feeling.

On October 12, 2003 we attended a Family Life event called “If You Were Mine”. During one of the sessions at this adoption workshop the answer came to our 7 year question. We were supposed to adopt a child from Russia. We began immediately interviewing international adoption agencies, filling out mounds of paperwork, home study visits, doctor examinations and much more. Each step drawing us closer to our new son and opening doors of opportunity to help the children we would leave behind.

Embraced By Hope was birthed the moment we took our first steps on the grounds of the Artoym Baby House. This is an institution in Vladivostok, Russia. It was home to approximately 100 orphaned children from birth to age 4 and the only home our soon to be son had ever known.

There is no way to describe to anyone who has not been to an orphanage the haunting expressions the children wear on their faces. The longing in their eyes for something they’ve never known but were created to experience . . . LOVE, PURPOSE & HOPE.

The joy we felt when we left Russia to bring our son to his new home was accompanied by a true sadness for the children left behind. We still see their faces when we close our eyes at night, hear their voices as they chanted “mama” and “papa”, and feel their touches as they brought their shoes to us to help them get dressed – all a silent cry for a personal connection.

While adoption offers hope for a small percentage of the children, most will never be adopted for a variety of reasons. In the world we know, most children celebrating their “sweet sixteenth” birthday are surrounded and supported by a network of loving family and friends. For 15,000 Russian orphan boys and girls, sixteen means they are “graduating” and being sent out alone to exist in their world with little preparation and a future with little hope.