I Have Lost All Faith In the Child Welfare Program

Recently a girl came to visit the land of boys for a few days. Normally if this happens it is a very happy time. However, this particular girl was awakened Tuesday morning by a social worker and people from the sheriff's office. This girl lives in a tough situation with her mom and her mom's boyfriend. The mom's boyfriend has numerous times gotten drunk, thrown the mom and her two girls out of his house, and is very likely to yell at them. This I knew. What I did NOT know is that every night he makes girl and little sister give him goodnight kisses. He tickles them on the leg or the chest area and when they tell him to stop, he does not. They have to yell and the mom has to get involved to get him to stop. Girl's friend's aunt called and reported this. So I get a call asking if girl can come to our house for a few days. (sister is visiting relatives at the time)
Social worker, mom, and girl come over. Social worker has me sign ONE paper and gives me guardianship rights to girl. No showing ID, no background check, not even wanting to know my husband's name. Just one piece of paper. the only rule was girl could have no contact with mom's boyfriend while "investigation" is going on. Mom and girl get into a yelling match. Social worker and mom leave.
Girl's mom calls. They continue the shouting. Mom proceeds to tell me how bad of a mom girl's friend's mom is. Girl's friend has no right to say anything about what has happened. Girl and mom yell more. Girl's mom tells her she is going to have to move out of state to live with grandparents because "this is HIS house" Girl cries.
I call friend who is also social worker. Find out what it would take to let girl be a part of our family. Basically, another piece of paper. But mom has to agree. Mom does not.
Wednesday, mom calls back. Tells girl she has two options: move in with grandparents or move back home. Moving home means changing the way she dresses (which btw would happen here) meaning no butt shorts or spaghetti strap tops. No contact at all with girl whose aunt called dhr, grounded from everything but school and church. Apparently though, this does not raise a red flag to DHR. This does not say "hey, maybe mom thinks this guy really is a creep who can't control himself around little girls," the way it does to me.
Thursday, social worker goes to talk to mom's boyfriend. Tells him he is not allowed to put his hands on girl. Comes here to talk to girl. Talks, then says she can go home. A precious girl is in a bad situation and there is nothing I can do. She got put back into a home where her own mother cares more about her boyfriend than her kids. Mark and I are both sick about it. When Samuel found out we were taking her back he said, "But this is your home. You live here now." Oh, if only the system knew what little kids know.

My Other Kids

We recently got to spend some time with kids visiting Birmingham from Poltava Orphanage in Ukraine. This was our second year to be involved with Reach Orphans With Hope. They are an orphan care ministry that helps kids in Ukraine to understand that God has a purpose for their lives. Last year when we went the only words I knew in Russian were yes, no, and juice. This year I visited a website called Mango Languages for free Russian lessons. I knew how to say hello, how are you, what is your name, my name is Kelli, and goodbye. That is still soo not enough. My husband and I have decided we are really going to make learning Russian a priority. It would be so great to really get to talk to these kids. They are so precious. I wish that we could adopt several of them. There were some last year that i just wanted to bring home right on the spot. This year was no different. I have a few pictures giving a glimpse of what we got to do.

Our youth that went


Andriy sharing his ring pop with a DOG!!!! (the dog was behind the picnic table)


Sergiy showing off the blue mouth he got from his ring pop


The guys from our group got STOMPED at soccer


Samuel and Artem on the slip and slide


Artur was cold when the water hit him


Everybody liked the slip and slide


More slip and slide fun


It started to rain so we went inside for some indoor fun


Tanya shows off the hat she made


I think Jordan and Matt had as much fun as any of the kids


Vlad


Benjamin and Matt


Vicka with an interpreter


Tanya painting a wooden box


Vlad creating


Look what Vlad made!!!


Artur hard at work long after everyone else


Mark and me with Andy


Playing the piano


Sometimes I wonder why we take them places


Legos- the universal language of little boys everywhere



Artem dominating the chessboard, Chris is observing and taking notes


Atrem beating Jordan, Chris is praying that he does well


Aha! Checkmate. Mulah dietz, Artem!!!

There are so many things that pictures do not tell, like how precious the children are, how they are so appreciative of just little gifts like pillows and yo-yos. They love it when you smile at them or just talk to them. I wish I had a camera that could capture their expression when I said some of the few words I could in Russian. I wish that I could find homes for all of them. They are flying home as type these words. Some of them will once again get to experience what it is like to have someone say "I love you, you are special, " things like that. Unfortunately, most of them will not. Please pray for these children, as well as the rest of the over 100,000 other orphan children in Ukraine.

Up And Down At Church

I am a Christian. For many years I felt that meant getting dressed up and going to church a few times a week. Sure I would read my Bible now and then, sometimes I would even get on a "study plan" to read so much per day or whatever. I would pray. That was about it. Not too much out my life. Just enough to say "I am a Christian"

One thing that always stood out to me in the "church world" was the area of missions. My local churches would have missionaries come from all over the world and talk about how they were serving God. I used to think that I wanted to go off somewhere far away and exotic so I could tell people that there is a God and He loves them. It never occurred to me that there were people all around me that needed to hear that, too.

A few years ago my husband and I felt that God was really calling us to do more than just sit around on our bench looking pretty. We started looking into seminaries that we could attend. The hard part of that is that we do not live near one, and we had two children at that time. Guess what happened? Samuel came into existence at that same time. Moving out of state was not feasible.

Mark got approached about becoming a youth pastor at a nearby church. My first reaction was youth, you gotta be kidding me?!?!? Like a lot of people I even had the thought that at first that maybe if Mark served with youth for a while that he would eventually get a job as a pastor somewhere.

Fast forward to today: Still a youth pastor. New church. New town. We went from living in an apartment with close-by neighbors and schools to living out in the country with NO neighbors. That is not all that has changed. My whole outlook has changed. I used to think teenagers were all a bunch of self-centered whiny-babies. I used to think that they really did not know what it meant to go through hard times. Boy was I ever wrong.

Our youth group now has a lot of troubled kids. Kids that have lives I could never have imagined. Mark has to become counselor, referee, best friend, male role model, chauffeur, you name it he is it, in addition to husband, father, paper plate maker, teacher/preacher youth pastor.

Don't get me wrong, I am not meaning to complain. I am just saying that I never thought being involved in ministry could be so hard. We care so much about these kids and there are certain situations that we have no control in changing. Like tonight, a kid goes home from church and finds his dad on floor. The kid first thought the dad was dead; he was drunk, again. This kid has seen his mom walk out on the family. His older sister is in college. His grandmother just died. And his dad gets drunk. The kid pretends to be all tough, wearing black and listening to hard rock music. But inside he is still just a hurt little boy who needs his parents. We pray for him. We love him. But what can we do really for him? We were talking to him tonight, but truly what can you say? It is easy for one of us to say "things will get better, just hang in there buddy" when we are here with our family that is together and everybody loves one another.

So there you have it. All those years I spent listening to missionaries from cool places and I am now only an hour or so from where I grew up. I never knew then that the coolest place to be would be so close to home.

Feeling Blessed

Several things have happened lately to make me stop and think about how truely blessed I am. My husband is a youth pastor in a small rural church. I had always thought that small country churches would be the places to find the youth who are well grounded and lead normal lives. Boy, was I ever in for a shocker. We have very few kids who are coming to us from 2 parent homes. Even most of those who do have two parents have some serious issues to deal with. Two of kids have fathers who attempted to murder them as babies. Many of them have mothers who live with boyfriends who are abusive. There is a brother and sister that their mom left them and their dad a few years ago and she is a drug addict and alcoholic. The list goes on and on

As I am around our youth group, and talk to kids to at our sons' school, I realize that there is so much hurting in the world. Sometimes I can get wrapped up in my own life. I don't truely see the needs all around me because I am too focused on myself or my family. I have got to be there when the phone rings and I am needed. I have to not be so focused on housework or cooking that I put someone off when they need me. It is hard sometimes not to say "I really don't have to talk to you about your boyfriend or about the rumors going around, call back later."

As I see my children growing and becoming little men, I worry about the world they will grow up in. Moral decay is rampant. Right now I am praying that this generation growing up will rise up and become better than the previous ones. God help us all if they don't.