A Year Ago Tonight: A Phone Call that Would Change Our Lives

Mrs. Beaver:

A year ago, Mr. Beaver and I were in St. Thomas for a week-long business trip. The scenery was everything one would hope for on a Caribbean Island.

We basked in the 80 degree warmth after leaving a white, frigid landscape worthy of the upper midwest in mid January.

We'd arrived Saturday night, and spent Sunday mostly relaxing on the beach and renewing friendships within this group we only see once a year. We spent Monday in the capital of St. Thomas, with it's distinct architecture and views of the cruise ships that come and go regularly.

We roamed the shops with friends from California and had a delicious local lunch with the group.

After a lovely nap on the beach, we had dinner with some of the clients of Mr. Beaver's company. They were an interesting couple. She grew up in the the former Yugoslavia, and he was raised in Iran. We talked quite a bit about adoption because their children were nearly grown and they held onto a bit of a dream that they might be able to help a child from Eastern Europe since she was still fluent. The conversation was animated and fun, and we retired and exhausted after an adventure-filled day. We also went ot be happy knowing the trip had only just begun.

Mr. Beaver was fast asleep and already snoring softly. I was close to falling asleep when my cell phone rang. The ringer had been set to vibrate so it proved to be a good thing that I wasn't asleep or we would have both slept through the call. I immediately thought something must have gone wrong at home, but was surprised to see an area code with which I had only recently become familiar. I answered the call and sure enough, found Becky on the other end of the line. She is the project coordinator for the Russian Orphan Light House Project (see blog list on side toward bottom.)

We'd had several conversations with Becky since mid December about a 10 year old boy, named Alexander, whom we were interested in adding to our family. We had worked out plans to meet Alexander on the Lighthouse Project's March trip. We had also told Becky that our hearts yearned for one more little girl--younger than Princess Bink who was seven at the time.

Becky had told us it would be challenging to find a little girl by March because little girls are the first to get snatched up into the Russian foster care system. So when Becky called with the news that she had a little girl who would be on the January trip that was due to start in a day or two we were overjoyed. She asked if we would consider changing our plans and dropping everything to join her on the January trip.

She told us there was one hitch we had to consider. Another host who had been waiting longer than we had would also be on the trip. This other host would be first in line to adopt 5-year-old Oksana, but, if for some reason, the host backed out, then we would be next in line and free to adopt the little girl. We would be taking a big chance leaving St. Thomas for Moscow, so Becky wanted to know if we would be willing to take the risk.

We didn't even need time to talk it over. We both knew right away that we would take the chance and take the trip.

More tomorrow on how the story unfolded...