Aurora Family Hopes to Adopt Ukrainian Sisters with Help from the Community
Mark Van Slyke with his family proudly wearing t-shirts they sold for fundraising efforts to adopt two Ukrainian girls.
Most years, our family travels to Ohio for Thanksgiving. But, in 2014, we decided to stay in Aurora for the holiday. At our church that Sunday, a missionary from Ukraine came to speak about the orphans and orphanages in Ukraine and how we might be able to support them and her mission. She also had cards with the names and pictures of children in need of prayer. Having five boys, of course we took a card with two sisters.
Shortly after, we received an email from the missionary with more details about the sisters. The oldest, 13, was trying very hard to be a teenager, yet still protected her younger sister from the other kids in the orphanage. The younger sister, 10, was quiet, kept to herself and loved animals. The younger sister had been born in prison and has lived her entire life in an orphanage, along with her older sister. She also shared the belief that they were available for adoption. The truth was, they were, in fact, not available for adoption at that time. Because their absent mother still had parental rights, the girls lived in this orphanage unable to be adopted, even if someone had wanted to.
But, with the help of another friend in Ukraine, we learned that a final court date was set for April 2015 that would remove the absent birth mother’s parental rights and they would finally be able to be registered as orphans and thus finally adoptable. Due to Ukrainian law, the girls will be available for international adoption in October 2016.
Soon after we “met” the girls, I started researching just what it would take to adopt them. I scoured the internet for facts and procedures, as well as buying a (surprisingly) large number of books written by parents who had already adopted from Ukraine. After much prayer, thought, discussion and an argument or two, we decided in early 2015 that we would begin to pursue adopting these sisters.
We let the missionary know of our intentions and slowly began the long process of preparing ourselves to adopt. Though we kicked off our official road to adoption this month, in reality, we’ve been preparing for more than a year. Our preparations have included prayer, planning fundraisers, and securing a facilitator in Ukraine who will assist us while we are there. As you probably know, adoption is no easy, or inexpensive task. There are mounds of paperwork to complete and lots of support to raise, but, despite all of that, we are moved to do this. We believe in no small coincidences.
There are over 200,000 orphans in Ukraine. We hope that by October, there will be two less.
To hear more about our adoption journey or make a donation, you can check out our Facebook page Hope4Ukraine2 or email Hope4Ukraine2@aol.com.
We are currently collecting items for our BIG garage sale on Memorial Day Weekend.
Editor’s note: Mark Van Slyke is a 5th grade teacher at Freeman Elementary School in Aurora. I asked him to write about his journey after I found out that he was selling t-shirts to raise money for the adoptions.
