Wednesday

We had another good day today.  We continue to acquaint ourselves with Victoria.  She is definitely enjoying showing off her new daddy and mommy.  The caretakers of the orphanage remind her often about the process of this adoption--how Daddy and Mommy will have to leave for a while to get things ready and then they will be back to bring her home.  She also knows that she will have to leave the orphanage.  It is becoming more apparent to us how hard this will be for Victoria.  We are really turning her world upside-down.  We know that this is God's will, though, for our family and for Victoria, and we must continue to trust His leading.  We are already trying to plan ways to make this transition easier for Victoria and our family and will be working diligently on this in the next few months.

During our visits, we went outside today and played on the orphanage playground.  It seems Victoria enjoys being outside as much as Jocylin and Cherith do--a lot!  We were able to sit down with her and go through some picture flashcards.  She even repeated the English words that we said!  She surprised us today by saying some things that she picked up from us: "no" and "this one".  She is a very bright girl; at this rate, I don't think it will be too long before we can understand each other.  We hope to see Victoria's physical therapy tomorrow as her therapist was not available during our visits today. 

We also found out that Victoria has an older half-brother who has already been adopted and a 2 year old half-sister who was just taken into the orphanage.  The sister is not available at this time for adoption, but our translator/adoption facilitator is going to ask the orphanage director to see if we can visit with this little girl briefly while we're here, just so that we can remind Victoria about her.  We may not be permitted to do this.  We'll see.

We can't believe that we have only two days with Victoria left before we head home!  It has gone so fast.  As anxious as we are to go home, it's going to be very hard to leave Victoria behind.  We're working to keep things in perspective.  We are so thankful that God has directed our steps and provided for our every need.