A Successful First Year Complete!

Well, we have all made it in one piece. Erin has been in America for one year now as of 11 November 2007. It just so happened that it was the same day as we celebrated Gary's parent's 50th wedding anniversary down in Brooksville, Florida. Gary's sister, Stacy, did a lovely slide show for her parents which included great images of Gary's parents but also included a nice celebration of Erin's first year. We were very grateful that Stacy took the time to remember and recognize Erin's first year. It even brought some tears from Erin.




(L to R: Brittany, Abby, Zachary, Erin, Beverly & Gary)

Erin has been doing well and seems to be a normal American teenager for the most part. That doesn't mean that everything is easy as any parent of any teenager knows ;-) She is doing very well in school even making an "A" in Spanish. The fantastic thing is that her Spanish teacher speaks fluent Russian. What a wonderful blessing! Now if we can just get her science teach to speak Russian we'd be all set. Erin said, "Why do I have to take science, I don't want to be a scientist!" Gary's answer to her was "Because I did and I'm not a scientist either so you have to too." Not a very "scientific" answer but it seemed to work.

We still deal with Erin's feelings of not being good enough. Despite doing very well in just about everything she does it is still not good enough to her. She thinks that if she can be perfect she is deserving of being loved and accepted by us. But we keep explaining that our love is unconditional no matter what she does or doesn't do. We've tried to explain God's love for us despite our own many failings and that we can never be truly perfect, but God loves us anyway. Also, she's just a typical competitive Ukrainian kid. From getting in the front of the food or movie line to winning at every conversation, she can be stubborn to the core...But she fits right in to the stubborn Bruce family ;-)

Thank you all for your support and prayers over the last 2 years. From the initial meeting of Irina Lobanova (Erin) December 2005 to her arrival here last November 2006 it has been an amazing view of God's grace and power through people like you. As we watch as even more children arrive from Ukraine we marvel at God's vision for these children. We will continue to pray for those that are still pursuing adoption and pray that God may touch even more families to consider adding one of these children to their family. We in the United States are truly blessed and have so much to offer.

Also, adoption is not the only way people can help. If you're interested in other ways to help we have been working with families that have or are adopting from Ukraine to start a small non-profit group called "Heart For Orphans". Thanks to Mr. Tim Quiram, we now have a web site if you are interested in seeing some of the ways we are trying to help:






http://www.heartfororphans.com/

Anyway, may God Bless you all. We hope you have a wonderful Christmas

Gary & Beverly