I was scrambling desperately to find at least a hint, a scrap of paper, a scribble- anything that would have an address on it…but nothing.  I sat totally defeated in my chair as I became lost in my thoughts of how I entirely forget to get such a simple piece of info as an address.  It was two months after our trip when I began to really want to search for a way to contact the kids from my family group.  I tried to contact my translator, Ilya Smirnov, but without an e-mail I put off writing a letter or trying to call.  A few months passed and I was so happy for my friend Sara, who went to Russia with us, had received a letter from her kids that she shared with me but I began to feel so crippled that I could not contact the kids I had.  I began the next desperate search by going to the Children’s Hope Chest(CHC) website in hopes I could write them through CHC, however I had only common first names and no idea of even where their orphanage was…thus ending my second search.

As a year went past, finding the orphanage became a useless endeavor to me when a murmur of another trip to Russia was in the air.  The thought of another Russia trip made many of us quite excited.  As time progressed in the spring we sat on the edge expecting word, however we finaly got an e-mail from Mike, the associate pastor, saying there would be no summer camps that summer.  The camps were a secondary ministry of CHC and the hope was by using the camps, churches would eventually move towards sponsorship of individual orphanages and transition homes.  Summer 2005 they wanted to implement that plan. Some slight details of a possible different trip was spoken of however it never came to pass.

As spring turned to summer I graduated high school and found my schedule opening up a quite a bit more which is when my first tangible lead came about.  My friend Sara had been talking online with Anastasia, one of the translators, and she mentioned me to Anastasia and before I knew it I was in a msn conversation with Anastasia- my first reconnection with Russia.

From Anastasia I was able to not only practice my Russian but she was able to find an orphanage she believed to be the one my kids were at.  Immediately I typed out a message for her to deliver to them.  A few weeks later I saw her online and she said she was able to get around to delivering the letter.  I was so excited to finally have some communication again with the kids.  Weeks passed and no response…then months.  It started to become apparent that there would be no response back.  Although I gave Anastasia the most information on hand I began to think that the orphanage was the wrong one.

As I had greatly enjoyed the trip to Russia and still had a heart for the people, I began to seek out what the next step in my education should be.  I desired to still return to Russia one day and also really enjoyed working with youth in the US. So, in the fall of 2006 I left for Multnomah Bible College.  I had no idea what to expect but knew it was the next step that God had for me.

Sign for Multnomah

From 2006-2009 I went to Multnomah and progress on the search seemed to slow to a stand still, however, every time I started to doubt if I was to return to Russia God would give me something that week that would help in either my learning of Russian or in my search for my kids orphanage.  One such connection was my friend Karen Mead that I will speak about during the next post. Perhaps one of the best contacts I discovered in my search.