South Dakota Scene II

This time of year, the Mitchell airport fills up with private jets of the wealthy who come here from all over the United States to hunt South Dakota pheasants.

Here's another picture from last Saturday when I went pheasant hunting. South Dakota can be a very rustic place, but it has it's own kind of beauty.  I'm trying to pick out my favorite picture but I can't decide.  I have a couple more I think I'll post besides these then I'll get back to family stuff.

Our Valentina

I put together a slide show of some recent pictures of Valya. We have more pictures of Valya than of Sergey, because frankly, Sergey doesn't like to have his picture taken too much.

Valya has a distinctive little mole on her upper lip that will always be endeared to me. We had specifically petitioned for her and Sergey at our SDA appointment on Thanksgiving day, last Nov. 27. At the appointment, they showed us two data sheets of the kids that each had a little postage stamp sized picture in the corner. When the lady showed us Valya's, she asked, Is this her? Well, the picture was 7 years old, and the child in the picture had her head completely shaved. It did not look like the Valya we had seen in pictures, except... for that little mole. When I saw that I knew it was her!

The snowy pictures in the later slides were from last Saturday. Our balmy Spring weather has been replaced by snow, but it is beautiful. Now it is warming up again, and quickly disappearing. Valya loves snow and tells me about the way they used to play in it at her intyernat. How blessed we are to have a girl who loves snow, because we do get it here in the Winter. Next season, we'll go to our sledding hill, plus see if we can teach the kids to ski. You people in Colorado I hear you laughing... But we do have a little bit of skiing available in South Dakota! In those pictures she is wearing the coat that I bought her in Rozdilniya and gave to her the day that we took her from her orphanage. You'll see her wearing that coat in our pictures in Odessa and Kiev and the video along the Black Sea last February. But she doesn't wear it too much anymore because now she likes bright colors.

Her English is improving. It is good getting to know her a little more every day. She has a story to tell about her life and we are anxious to hear it. We are getting some of it in little pieces already and it is a sad one.

When you adopt kids there is a time of bonding. It is a two-way street. We often talk of how the kids are bonding with the family, but we also are bonding with them. I think, every day, our love grows stronger for these two gifts that God has given us.

More Hunting Pic's

While we have a lull in the adoption action, I'll post a couple more pictures from hunting last Fri. There were four of us and a yellow lab named Bud. A 14 and 13 y.o. with shotguns!

There's Fury in a Pheasant's Wings

Here in South Dakota, it is pheasant season. Mark and I went on our first pheasant hunt today. The weather today was overcast and rainy. Not ideal conditions for pheasant hunting. When it's like this they like to hunker down and they're not very active, so we only saw one, and the two of us with guns missed him! Anyway, you go for the experience, and if you get a few birds that's a bonus.

Here on the prairies of South Dakota, you won't find many people. Truth be known, we like it that way. Those of you that have never been to pheasant country maybe have never seen a pheasant in flight before... It is a magnificent bird. I'm a little pensive this evening, and I'm thinking about this Rich Mullin song. Enjoy.


Calling Out Your Name - Rich Mullins

Well the moon moved past Nebraska
And spilled laughter on them cold Dakota Hills
And angels danced on Jacob’s stairs
Yeah they danced on Jacob’s stairs
There is this silence in the Badlands
And over Kansas the whole universe was stilled
By the whisper of a prayer
The whisper of a prayer

And the single hawk bursts into flight
And in the east the whole horizon is in flames
I feel the thunder in the sky
I see the sky about to rain
And I hear the prairies calling out Your name

I can feel the earth tremble
Beneath the rumbling of the buffalo hooves
And the fury in the pheasant’s wings
There’s fury in a pheasant’s wings
It tells me the Lord is in His temple
And there is still a faith that can make the mountains move
And a love that can make the heavens ring
And I’ve seen love make heaven ring

Where the sacred rivers meet
Beneath the shadow of the Keeper of the plains
I feel the thunder in the sky
I see the sky about to rain
And I hear the prairies calling out Your name

From the place where morning gathers
You can look sometimes forever ’til you see
What time may never know
What time may never know
How the Lord takes by its corners this old world
And shakes us forward and shakes us free
To run wild with the hope
To run wild with the hope

The hope that this thirst will not last long
That it will soon drown in the song not sung in vain
And I feel the thunder in the sky
I see the sky about to rain
And I hear the prairies calling out Your name

And I know this thirst will not last long
That it will soon drown in the song not sung in vain
I feel the thunder in the sky
I see the sky about to rain
And with the prairies I am calling out Your name

Red Raider-in-Chief

This past weekend we had a whirlwind trip to Orange City, IA and Minneapolis. I'll blog about the Minneapolis trip in another post.

Our friends, the Christy family, moved from Mitchell to Orange City last December, where Greg became the new president of Northwestern College. Though he had been the acting president since January, it was just this last Friday that he was formally inaugurated.

Their oldest son, Ryan, is one of Mark's best friends. They attended school together since kindergarten. Though we hated to see the Christy's go, it was harder on Mark. They remain buds today and we try to get them together when we can.



Greg's wife, Michelle, and Nancy are very close bud-ettes.



Former US Senator and 1972 presidential candidate George McGovern is a Mitchell native and he makes it his home. One of Greg's big projects at Dakota Wesleyan University was overseeing the fundraising of the McGovern Library on campus. He and George traveled and spent a lot of time together during those years. Sen. McGovern was on campus at Northwestern during the week to lend his support to Greg.



While there were many festivities going on, we were only there for the president's luncheon, the inauguration ceremony, and the concert. I'll blog about the concert in a separate post.



One of Greg's gifts is he's so personable. He already has a fan club among the students called PGC (President Greg Christy). Here's a few of them.



It was funny, there were some of the PGC's sitting behind us in the chapel, and they had hand-drawn portraits of Greg on their T-shirts (like in the picture).

Northwestern College has found a fine man in President Christy. Blessings to you, Christy's, in this new ministry from your friends, the Pretre's. Deus est lux!

It's the Time of Year When...

...a grasshopper's thoughts turn to love! I was out walking Sparkle today and these grasshoppers on "dates" were all over the place. I guess I find nature interesting. Proverbs 25:2 says "It is the glory of God to conceal a thing: but the honour of kings is to search out a matter." I suppose this can mean alot of different things, one of which is it's OK and honorable to be a scientist. And I guess that makes me a king today. But I digress.

It's also the time to... send our dossier over to Kiev again. That is - IF WE CAN EVER FINISH GETTING IT UPDATED. This has been like a slow motion wheel that just keeps on turning and never stops.

I mentioned in that LifeLight post that I had news to share with you from our facilitator. On August 3 we had gotten an email from him that we should update our dossier. You may recall that we had let most of our dossier expire, as there hadn't seemed to be any reason to keep it fresh due to having no chance of getting it submitted this year. So when he sent us an email to get it updated, I set to work on it.

Unfortunately, you can't just do it overnight. For example, this was the time that Sergey was with us and we were gone alot. When I called the clinic to get another physical it was 3 weeks before I could get in. Then of course, the lab work took another 2 weeks or so to come back. Then there was a comedy of errors getting the medical reports put together correctly (like last time). We just got the completed ones yesterday.

The news I wanted to share was that Oleg told us that the SDA wants 8-9 months of life on the dossier when it gets submitted. Yikes! This means that the papers need to be updated every 3-4 months. That is terribly inconvenient.

Anyway, I was thinking we could send our dossier out for apostilles, but we had our home study and employment verification documents updated last June (but not sent over). Now with this new requirement they are already too old. I contacted our social worker to get us the third HS update. I hope to have that next week along with the employment forms. It is crazy.

On the positive side, Oleg has hopes that we can get submitted this year yet. From his email:

I have hope submit your dossier in October - November, SDA says that will accept dossiers in this time frame under general line, I think will come a lot facilitators for submit dossiers, and will be very difficult to submit, but I have hope.

South Dakota Is the Center of the Earth

South Dakota is the center of the Earth.

Hey, don't look at me, I didn't say it! A national radio station did!

Maybe you're a K-Love listener. They breadcast all over the USA. We even heard them in Key West when we went on vacation a couple of years ago.

Why did they say that, you ask?

Because this weekend is the LifeLight music festival in Sioux Falls, the largest Christian music festival in the nation and it's cost is... free. Every year K-Love does live broadcasts from LifeLight and has contests to win a trip to Sioux Falls.

Here are some pictures from last year.



Barlow Girl


John Rivers


Phil Joel


Leeland


Chris Tomlin


Big Daddy Weave


Tait


Toby Mac


We will all be at LifeLight this year. If any of you want to meet up with us shoot me an email at the Yahoo address. We'd like to meet you.

I also got bad news from our facilitator today for those of you hoping to submit dossiers this year. I'll blog about it after the festival. You're not going to like it.

Fourteenth Day With Sergey

(Saturday 8/16) Didn't have much time to waste in Rapid City. We needed to get back to Mitchell. But Sergey did get a chance to swim for awhile in the hotel pool with several cousins. Afterward, we went mini-golfing at Pirates Cove with some other cousins.







On the way home, we stopped at Wall Drug for some souvenir shopping. Sergey picked out a couple of South Dakota trinkets to take back to Ukraine with him.





Finally home after a long day of traveling and time for bed.

Thirteenth Day With Sergey

(Friday 8/15) This is the day we decided to climb Harney Peak. I tried and tried to convince Sergey to come on the hike with us but he just didn't want to. So Mark and I did it ourselves. Sergey stayed in Rapid City with Nancy and helped the relatives with wedding preparations.

Here are a few pictures of our trek. The day was drizzly and overcast. Harney Peak is high enough that at the top we were up in the clouds. It wasn't ideal conditions but it had its own beauty.











I was initially disappointed that Sergey opted not to go on the hike, but afterward I realized that God knew that Mark needed that one-on-one time with me. Nancy and I could both tell that he had changed after our time together.

At the wedding, Sergey was on overload with meeting our relatives. He was initially cranky, but afterwards he was back to his usual self.



There was something touching that happened with Sergey during the reception. The wedding was done and we had just finished eating supper at the reception. Sergey pulled Nancy aside to a quiet corner and I could see that they were talking about something but I didn't know what. Later, in the car, on the way to the dance, Sergey asked me what he had asked Nancy earlier. He had asked Nancy, and now was asking me, to promise or vow to adopt him. He had seen the vows between the bride and groom and thought that would be a good thing to do. This wasn't him being silly, which he often is, but he was quite sincere. I try to put myself into his shoes. He has no money, no earthly possessions that he could offer us to earn it. It is simply a hope on his part, that we would love him and come for him. Asking us to promise is the only thing he is able to do.

Kinda like when we come to Jesus.