These are the pictures that should have been included in the most recent post. I don't know why it didn't work the first time.

This is Mikaela during one of her breathing treatments.

Mikaela and Gabriela with their grandparents

Mikaela playing pat-a-cake with Great-Aunt Bev

Mikaela, Gabriela, and Josiah with their little cousin, Jason

Although life is very busy with three children under the age of three, Mikaela continues to thrive and grow. She is still gaining weight and is just about on the growth charts now. Cognitively and socially, she is pretty much at an age-appropriate level, although very near the bottom of the range. Verbally she is very, very slightly delayed. Her motor skills still need a lot of work, but she is making progress in those areas as well. We are so proud of her, and both forget that there was a time when she wasn't part of our family. We made a trip out to PA to visit with Greg's family, and it was her first big road trip. She did really well for about four-and-a-half hours of the five-hour trip. The last half hour was really hard on all three kids, and both girls screamed pretty much the whole time. Once we got there, they all did great. Mikaela was a huge hit with extended family members who hadn't had a chance to meet her yet, and I am including some pictures of that trip. Mikaela caught Gabriela's cold right about the time we got to PA, but she was a good sport about the stuffy head and runny nose. While we were out there, however, Mikaela developed a very bad case of croup. We spent most of the night up with her trying to decide if we needed to take her to the emergency room. Finally between steam and cold air, we did manage to get her through the night, but she didn't ever recover like she should have. Once we got back home, we took her to see the pediatrician, and we found out that we had a pretty sick little girl. Mikaela's cold had turned into an ear infection and resulted in some fluid in her lungs. In addition, she was still struggling with the croup. They put her on three different types of medication, including breathing treatments with a nebulizer and told us to come back in a week. Fortunately, that did the trick, and she is now fully healthy. We are so happy to have our happy, healthy baby girl back with us again. We also had Mikaela dedicated at our church this past Sunday. She had been baptized in her home country, so our church decided to dedicate her instead, re-affirming her previous baptism, emphasizing our responsibilities as her parents, and welcoming her into our congregation. It was a very nice little ceremony. I don't have the pictures of that yet; I think they are on my Dad's camera. I will try to get them soon.

We are still here

Hello to all. As we mentioned back in May, we decided to switch over to a private blog while we were in Europe so that we could share the details of Mikaela's adoption a bit more freely. We did maintain that blog while we were in country, so if you did not get the login information for that and would like to read the details about our trip, feel free to email us at 2polyglots@gmail.com, and we will be happy to send you the login information. Now that we are home, we can go back to using this blog. Our goal will be to keep both blogs updated, so most of the posts will be identical. To bring you all up to speed, I will give a really quick summary of the last few months.

Near the end of May, we flew to Eastern Europe. As we shared with you then, we were still short of the funding that we needed, and we were trusting God to provide everything for us. We are convinced that we were right to follow God even without knowing where His provision would come from, but we realized shortly after arriving in Europe that we had been very wrong not to communicate this information to our facilitators. We had never intended to be dishonest, but by not telling them how far short we were of the funds that we needed, we put them in a very difficult spot and jeopardized Mikaela's entire adoption. As a matter of fact, one of our facilitators told us that if we could not raise $7800 that day, he would send us back to America. We were devastated. We had already come to love Mikaela like our two bio children, and could not stand the thought of loosing her. We called my parents and begged them to pray, and they sent out an urgent plea for help. We couldn't imagine any way to raise that much money in one day, but God is very gracious. The members of our church banded together to raise that entire amount, and other friends and family raised the rest of the funds that we would need while we were in country. Rather than being angry with us, Reece's Rainbow even helped us raise a good bit of the money that we were lacking. We were so humbled and awed by God's mercy and the love that His people showed to us. We will never forget His goodness or the lessons that he taught us that day. Once we got through that initial crisis, we had a wonderful time in Mikaela's home country. We have wonderful memories of almost every day, and I am already wanting to go back. I think it will take Greg a little longer to get there, but he had a wonderful time too. The food was delicious, the people were kind and gracious, and the city was beautiful.

We returned home on July 2, and Mikaela has slipped into American life like she has been here from the beginning. She is a delight and a treasure. We can hardly imagine life without her. She has seen quite a few doctors since coming home, and most of the news has been very good. She had no parasites, no hepatitis (A, B, or C), no other diseases, and her heart condition seems to have resolved itself without surgery. We are so thankful for this. She does have hypothyroidism, but that is easy to control with medication. She is gaining weight and getting happier every day. She celebrated her first birthday on August 1, and we are so thankful to have been able to share that milestone with her.

That covers the highlights, and I will include a few pictures of our beautiful girl if I can figure out how to do that. Okay, I did get the pictures to post, but they are at the beginning, not the end of the blog. I have gotten so used to Wordpress, that it will take a little time for me to adjust to blogger again. Sorry about that. From now on, we will try to post all updates on both blogs.

Praying for the Lord's Provision

This has been a rather difficult week for us. As we have mentioned before, one of our central prayers over the past four-and-a-half months has been that God would provide funds as we need them, and that nothing about the adoption would be delayed even by a single day because of a lack of money. As we have also said before, He has never failed to answer this prayer. The closest we have ever come to being unable to complete a step because we couldn't pay the required sum was back in February when we were preparing to submit our application to USCIS (United States Citizenship and Immigration Services) for permission to travel outside the country for the purpose of completing an adoption. (For all of you adoption veterans, this was the all-important submission of the I-600A.) In that particular instance, He sent us the money the day before we needed it, giving us just a little bit of breathing room. Part of us longs for that kind of comfort right now.



We received notice of our first appointment in Mikaela's home country two weeks ago today, and we have been praying earnestly since then for the rest of the funds that we will need to complete her adoption. For days, nothing happened, but we didn't panic because God had shown Himself so faithful throughout this whole process, and because we knew that we didn't have to act immediately. We were extremely grateful when several donations arrived late last week, even though we were still considerably short of what we would eventually need. But we knew that we still had time before the money would actually be needed, and so we again did our best to remain patient and wait on the Lord's timing. On Monday morning, we both felt very peaceful and upbeat about everything, until we saw that there were still no more funds for Mikaela. Then, the urgency of our need descended upon us, and it became very difficult not to despair. We set aside some time that morning to pray together, and by that evening we were both doing better, although our desperation had become acute. God encouraged us again through some friends of ours who have been an incredible support over the past few months, and we awoke on Tuesday morning feeling very encouraged. That was the case all the way through yesterday afternoon, but when yesterday evening arrived and God still had not sent anything major, despair began to set in again. We began this morning in a hopeful mood, but that dissipated quickly when He again was silent. That silence temporarily paralyzed us, as we didn't know where to go. We have been diligently and earnestly—though by no means perfectly—seeking His will, especially over the past two weeks. Repeatedly we have sensed Him telling us simply to wait for His timing, and His history of provision served to encourage us in waiting. And we are not talking only about His past dealings with us during Mikaela's adoption, but His faithfulness in continuing to provide for the work of The Shepherd's Crook and His great faithfulness to His people as recorded in Scripture. And now, it seemed that our attempts to follow His leading had led us to a dead end, with no visible way out. We still cannot imagine how we are supposed to finish this adoption and bring Mikaela home, but we know that she is our daughter, and thus she belongs here with us and not in the orphanage. So, we are moving forward, even though we don't know what God has in store for us. His silence from earlier today is starting to lift, and so we are taking the next steps. We are going to book our flights tonight, and we are praying earnestly that He will continue to supply what we need from this point forward. It's more than a little scary to take such a step into the unknown, but as this is where God is leading us, there is nowhere else for us to go. We would not turn our back on our daughter, and we would not refuse to follow the Lord. It's not for us to know how He is going to work in the coming days; our only duty at the moment is to trust and obey.



Please pray with us that our Heavenly Father will graciously supply what we need to bring Mikaela home. It's not easy to trust Him in the midst of such an intense trial, but that is what we are to do. If the Psalmists and the author of Lamentations can praise God out of the depths of their despair, then certainly we ought to do likewise. So, please pray also that we will not harden our hearts, that we will honor Him in how we conduct ourselves, and that our trust in Him would not give way to hopelessness. We are asking Him to open the flood gates and pour down on us what He knows we need. We are praying for a miracle.



For God alone, O my soul, wait in silence,

for my hope is from Him.

He only is my rock and my salvation,

my fortress; I shall not be shaken.

On God rests my salvation and my glory;

my mighty rock, my refuge is God.

Trust in Him at all times, O people;

pour out your heart before Him;

God is a refuge for us.

— Psalm 62:5-8



In Him,

Greg & Kristie



Tax-deductible donations may be made towards Mikaela's adoption by sending a check made payable to The Shepherd's Crook Ministries to P.O. Box 773, West Chester, OH 45071, or by using PayPal on-line at www.theshepherdscrook.org/donate/now/. Just be sure to designate the funds for Mikaela Colleen Godwin.

A new blog

I just re-read my last post, and realized that it didn't come close to communicating the excitement that Greg and I are feeling right now at this point in our adoption process. I think part of that was because, as I was typing it I was focused on Gabriela, but a bigger part of it was probably that the news still hadn't sunk all the way in for either one of us. Now it is seeming more and more real that we are just about to travel and meet our daughter. Our minds are racing in so many directions. We are thinking about travel, and trying to figure out how to wrap our minds around everything that needs to be done. We are also thinking about the kids, and trying to find ways to make this as easy as possible for them. We are trying to get a picture of what still needs to be done for the adoption. And mixed in with all of this, we are starting to imagine what it will be like to meet our daughter for the first time. Will she be afraid of us? Will she like to be held? Will she be social and affectionate, or reserved and timid? We long for that meeting, but we also dread having to leave her in the orphanage day after day.

Now that we are about to leave, we are switching over to a password-protected blog, so that we can be more open with all of the information about our trip. If you would like to follow that blog, just send us an email, ( 2polyglots@gmail.com ) and we will be happy to send you a user-name and password. We will probably still update this blog from time to time, but most of our posts will be on the new blog.

We are so excited to be at this point in our adoption, and we are thankful to have so many supportive people following our story.

Wonderful News!

We have a court date! We are scheduled for Tuesday May 25th at noon, which means we will fly to Europe around the 22nd. We might leave a little earlier, since flights are often more expensive over the weekend. We will try to write more later. We are very happy, but our heads are spinning. I am also trying to type with one hand while I am holding Gabriela with the other, so it will be a little easier later. Please keep praying for us.

The End Is Near

We got some very exciting news yesterday morning: our dossier has been submitted! That means that we are now only three to six weeks away from our first court date in-country, and we cannot wait for that. Even though it hasn't yet been four months since we first learned of Mikaela, it seems like we have been working on this adoption for much longer. All of the little setbacks that have arisen along the way have stretched the last three and a half months into what feels like at least a year. But, we are now—we think, we hope—officially done with the paperwork on this end. Kristie commented recently that where we are now is very reminiscent of what it feels like to have just crossed the 37-week mark of a pregnancy; probably nothing will happen for a few weeks yet, but we still have to be ready to leave for the hospital—or, in this case, Eastern Europe—at any time. This is especially true since we have heard that families adopting from this country have lately been getting notice of their court date as little as five days before, which leaves almost no time for packing. So, we have begun our preparations, both for leaving and for coming home. Our packing is now underway, with one of the new bags we bought almost completely packed and ready to go. We have a new car seat for Mikaela, which is sitting in her room waiting for her. Also awaiting her arrival is her crib, which at last is ready for use once again. (Josiah generously left some teeth marks on the crib rails, as he employed his crib temporarily as a chew toy, and so we had to refinish those pieces.) We are going to spend this week continuing to get ourselves ready, as we want to be prepared to leave to get Mikaela as soon as we have to, and without much scrambling at the last minute. The last thing we want to do before embarking on this trip is to spend two or three days flying around trying desperately not to forget anything as we cram our suitcases full of our belongings. Doesn't seem to me like the best way to start a trip, if it can be at all avoided. So, please keep praying, both for us and for Mikaela as she waits for us in her orphanage. I keep wondering how she's doing, but never having been in an orphanage myself, I can't really begin to imagine. We're praying for her health and her comfort—as much of either as she can have right now—while she waits in her bed. I wish that someone could tell her, and that she could understand, that her Mommy and Daddy will be coming for her soon, but that seems impossible. Maybe she would be able to comprehend this, but I don't know whether anyone would tell her, anyway. So, we continue to wait and to pray, though now with the knowledge that we are one major step closer to having our whole family together in one place.