Hello Friends, Jed here.

There are some big changes on the horizon for Wide Awake International, and I want to share those changes with each of the valued members of the Wide Awake Community. Kim and I are so incredibly thankful for your generous partnership and it’s important to us that every person who invests in this work is up to date on decisions we have made. 

If you have followed this work for a minute, you know that we Johnsons have been living apart for the past year and a half. We are still very much in love, but the needs of our boys have taken me to the US to help our son Seth get the medical, emotional, and educational support we just couldn’t get for him in Ukraine. Kim, our girls who are still school-aged, and Vlad have been on the Homestead in Ukraine with our team and all the other boys. As you can imagine, living on two sides of the Atlantic with no airport in Ukraine has been a big stretch for us. 

This year apart was a test to see if we could even get the support Seth needed here in the States. He has begun to thrive with the right counseling, medication, and an amazing school (GO SAXONS). We can see now that it is 100% the right choice to have him in the US as he finishes up high school. There is now hope for his future that was lacking when he was home in Ukraine.  

Seth isn’t our only son whose needs haven’t been fully met in Ukraine. Boris’ medical needs seem to be beyond the scope or desire of our local medical professionals. We’ve beaten down the doors of too many specialists to count and no one is interested in seeing Boris as valuable and treating him as such. For example, it was recently suggested by an orthopedic surgeon that we just amputate his foot rather than try to do corrective surgery! Bmo also struggles with severe gastrointestinal issues that need intervention. For years we have wanted to more deeply address these issues, but we knew we would need more time abroad than a summer trip to the US to truly help him heal. Vlad also has some medical issues that are not able to be addressed well in our city in Ukraine. 

That all brings us to the big change up ahead. After much prayer and seeking wise counsel, we have decided that it’s time for us to all be together as a family. Kim, Hava, Evie, and Vlad will be relocating to be with us in Oregon at the end of the summer and we are feverishly working to find a way for our son, Boris (AKA Bmo), to come with us. There are currently some legal barriers to Bmo staying in the US as he is not a US citizen, but in our minds, his presence is non-negotiable. He is a part of our family and he has to be with us. Our need to be together in the States as a family gives us the opportunity to seek medical care and rehabilitation for Boris, Vlad, and Seth- the first three boys that God brought into our family so many years ago.  

This is not a sneaky way of breaking the news that the Johnsons are transitioning back to the States permanently. Our home and community is in Ukraine. We plan to live out our days on the Homestead in Ukraine with our people. This is a temporary solution to give our boys long-term health and the best chance of bright and full futures.

The homestead in Ukraine continues to thrive. Masha, our new Executive Director who has been transitioning into this role for the past few years, is doing a fabulous job leading the mission and developing our work and our voice in the wider community. The new house-building project you funded is rapidly taking shape, and our Ukrainian fundraising team is on track to raise 10% of this year’s annual budget for Dim Hidnosti. Our other boys all live with wonderful Ukrainian families and they are loved, safe, and on their paths of healing. It’s an exciting time in the life of our work on the ground in Ukraine. It’s painful for us because life on the Homestead with our team and with our boys is our heart, but we really feel God asking us to say YES to this next step of finding health and healing for three of our boys in the US. Saying YES to the next thing has been our strategy all these years and were aren’t about to change the strategy now, just because the YES looks different than we imagined. God has been faithful for more than a decade now and we know we can trust him. 

The amazing Wide Awake community has walked with us through times of moving, adoption, guardianship, building, war, refugee life, resettling, and the current exciting time of growth for the team in Ukraine. This next YES is a pivot for us that we honestly didn’t see coming and we can’t make this transition without your ongoing support. Here is a list of ways you can support the vision of thriving families for our boys:

1. We need a doctor and medical institution to agree to oversee Boris’s medical care and rehabilitation as a charity case so we can request a visa for his travel to the US. If you know a gastroenterologist, a foot and ankle surgeon, an orthopedic surgeon, or a general practitioner who might be willing to help our Bmo free of charge, please let us know and we can get you the pertinent information about his health needs.

2. We are looking for a home in Oregon with four bedrooms and not too many stairs.

3. We need the finances to relocate the Johnson’s home base back to the US for this season and cover the costs of living in America, which as you can imagine are quite a bit higher than in Ukraine.

4.  We need the finances for increased travel for Kim and I so we can take turns making regular trips back to Ukraine to support the team. They can run the day-to-day work in Ukraine without us, but they still need our presence. We have to make traveling to the Homestead a priority while we are away. 

If you have any questions or would like to know more please email me at jjohnson@wideawakeinternational.org and I will be sure to get back to you. Thank you for continuing to walk this journey with us as we say YES to the next thing God is asking of us. 

May is the month for all the medical things to happen (or as many as I can fit into the schedule). It’s the month when my nurse hat comes on full-force and stays on for the whole month. It’s also the month when I feel like I basically live at our local clinic. It becomes my second home. 😆 This May is special because my friend Christina, also a nurse, is here visiting and has been my right hand lady during all the visits. Christina and I worked together on the pediatric floor of our local hospital in Oregon for several years before Jed and I moved our family to Ukraine. She has been a faithful supporter of the work all these years and finally got to make the long trek here to visit! Her timing was perfect and she and I have been quite the nurse team the past couple of weeks. We’re getting alllllll the things done. 💪

Ukraine has socialized health care, so while it’s possible to take our boys to the public clinics for (almost)free, we take them to a private clinic for most of their specialist appointments. In the public clinic the vibe is very institutional and every time we go there the boys show us with their bodies that they reeeeeally don’t like it. The smells, the paint on the floors and the walls, the sounds, the attitude of the majority of the personnel, is all reminiscent of the life they left behind. When we bring them into public clinics their bodies tense up, their negative behaviors ramp up, and we have found that, in most cases, the money we save by going the free route is not worth the negative experiences that generally occur in those appointments. There are good doctors to be found in public hospitals and clinics, for sure! But they are hard to find and the number of bad experiences we’ve had over the years has made me quite weary of the search. A couple of the specialists we see regularly are at public clinics, but most are not. It’s just not worth the heartache.

Finding doctors and therapists in our town that see our boys as humans, as valuable, and worth their time and effort has been a huge undertaking. I am not willing to settle for doctors who merely tolerate our boys’ presence. I need and insist on doctors who are willing to help, that have compassionate hearts and don’t see our boys as mere problems to be dealt with, but as people worthy of a dignified life. For starters, I look for doctors who will greet our boys and attempt to talk with them. If a doctor only looks at me in an appointment and acts like the boy (who is the actual patient) isn’t even in the room, then that doctor is not for us. Peace out. ✌️ If a doctor finds delight in our boys and shows curiosity and empathy, then we have found a treasure and will gladly pay the money to come back to that doctor again.

Over the years I have built a repertoire of specialists whom I trust and who know our boys, and over the past couple years I have been able to develop relationships with them. I’m thankful for those doctors who truly see our boys. Of course it’s a process and we still have to big-time speak up and advocate, but we’re getting there. Little by little the doctors are learning what it means to treat our boys with dignity, love, and hope. Let’s be honest, we are all learning together. 💙

Each of our boys has a “family doctor” (a general practitioner), but they rarely see that doctor because most of the time they are need of specialists. They are rarely sick, but they each do have chronic diagnoses that require yearly check-ups, at the minimum. We regularly see a neurologist, cardiologist, gastroenterologist, geneticist, ENT, and psychiatrist. The neurologist gets the most business from us, as each of our boys, except Anton, need yearly neurologist appointments. Our neurologist is a lovely woman who really delights in our boys. Man, it took me years to find her!! She remembers little details about them and laughs at the quirky and funny things they do. Every time I take one of our boys in she asks me more and more questions about our work. She’s truly curious about our boys and about our why. Last week she was lamenting to me about how sad it is that Ruslan didn’t get the care he needed as a little boy. She said “He has so much potential and could have been so smart. It’s such a shame that no one helped him when he was small.” Then she asked, without judgement but with genuine curiosity, “Why do you only take these men who have no potential? Why not take some kids who could grow and learn and change? It’s too late for these guys. Why them?” I then had the great opportunity to share with her how we believe that every person deserves to know the love of a family- regardless of his potential. We do see growth in our boys, but our work is very slow. I told her that no matter if they grow and change or if they stay exactly as they are now, we love them. Love is our why. She was baffled, but that’s okay. 😂 I’m so glad she asked. Now we just pray that the seeds the Lord is planting in her heart through our boys will bear some fruit.

Another great doctor in the repertoire is our psychiatrist. FINALLY, after years of searching, we have a psychiatrist who is relevant and smart, AND who understands our desires for the boys. He works in Kyiv, but we meet with him online. He understands that we want to help our boys become they best versions of themselves, and in order to do that they often need help from psychiatric medications. Other psychiatrists in our town have looked at our boys and literally said to me “What do you expect me to do? They are the way they are. There’s no hope for them.” It has felt hopeless and frustrating over the years as I knew our boys needed serious psychiatric help, but was unable to find it. The psychiatrist we have now is truly a gift. I’m soooo thankful that God brought him to us. I feel we can trust him and I see that he has our boys’ best interests at heart. What a win!

We are still in search of a decent orthopedic doctor, but I have one in mind who we’ll try next time the need arises. The last orthopedist we went to suggested we just amputate Boris’ untreated clubfoot rather than seeking further help for him soooo…yeah, needless to say we won’t be darkening his door again anytime soon.😱

Every spring I start by taking our boys, two by two, to a laboratory for testing. We don’t need a doctor’s order for blood testing. I just choose the tests I want for them and we pay for them. It would be free to do most of them at the public hospital, but like I said before, we’re willing to pay if it means we get kind, dignified, and efficient service. Public hospitals have very long lines and since we have to do labs early in the morning on empty stomachs, it is not the best choice for our boys by any stretch of the imagination. Their stress around institutional settings, combined with their stress around food, combined with their stress about needles is a recipe for disaster with a capital D. Trust me on that one. We have tried- and failed. The personnel at the lab we go to have come to know our boys over the years and the phlebotomists are very skilled and kind. I always bring another team member with me and most of the boys cooperate just fine. Vova hates blood draws and puts up a gigantic fight every time, so there needs to be at least three of us when we take him to the lab. But that’s an improvement! I used to have to gather five of us to take him to his blood draws just to help hold him down! When we take Vova for blood draws we all leave the lab worn out and sweaty, but having accomplished what we set out to do. Poor Vova. He is surprisingly strong! 😣

After the lab results are back I start scheduling the specialist appointments. We then take the boys two by two to the different specialties. I try as much as possible to schedule two appointments back to back so we’re not going into town for just one appointment. I bring another team member with me who sits out in the hall with one boy while I take the other into the doctor. Then if there are follow-ups of some kind I can bring them back alone. Any kind of imaging usually requires an extra set of hands for the members of our Wide Awake family who don’t understand the importance of lying still. 😕 Every year Yarik and Sasha have to have and EEG (a test that measures the electrical activity of their brains) and that day’s always a challenge. But, we do the best we can. 🙈

Besides the doctor appointments there is the medication ordering and distributing that needs to be done. Natasha, our office manager, orders the meds for the boys every month and makes sure we have a three month supply in storage in case of an emergency shortage. The assistants give the medications during the day and the house parents give them at night and on weekends. We have medication logs for each of the boys on the refrigerators of the homes where team members initial when a med has been given. We weigh all the boys the first week of every month and note the weight on the med log, as well as toileting habits and seizure activity. It’s important when working with mostly nonverbal boys and a big team with many moving parts that we document document document. I don’t want any health need to fall through the cracks!

So that’s a quick snapshot of the medical care around here. It took many years to get a system down that worked, but I feel confident now that our boys’ health needs are being met well. Thank you to all of you who pray for our boys’ health. Please continue to pray for strength and health for them. Their bodies have endured a lot and they carry the impacts of their former lives in their bodies. And thank you to all of you who donate to Wide Awake and support us financially. Because of your donations we can afford to take our boys to doctors who treat them with dignity, love, and hope. Our guys deserve the best care we can find, so thank you for making it possible for us to search until we find doctors who truly see them. We couldn’t do any of this alone and we are so thankful to walk this journey with you!

Hi Friends!

It’s been some time since I’ve given you the lowdown on who lives where here on the Homestead. I know there are a lot of us here and even some people have similar names, so I can definitely see how things could get confusing. During our last board meeting for Wide Awake I told our Directors that I planned to make this post and even they were happy about it. They hear the names of these people every week and sometimes still find themselves confused about who’s who. Let’s get it all cleared up, shall we?

The Homestead Property. Our Homestead is about 4 acres of property located in a village not far from the nearest city. It takes about 7 minutes by car to reach the edge of the city, so we aren’t super remote. There is a major highway that goes all the way from Kyiv to the border of Hungary and our street is directly off that highway. We would love to be a little more out in the boonies, but this is where God has us, so we’ll just appreciate the convenience of it and try our best to continue ignoring the sounds of highway traffic. 😆

People have asked about our neighbors and what they think of us, our boys, and our work. I honestly can’t answer that. Our neighbors are, for the most part, pretty unfriendly and uninterested in what we do here. There are a few people who are kind and we have built some relationship over the years, but for the most part, our neighbors ignore us and our boys. Our kids have made friends with many neighbor kids over the years (especially Seth), so I know many more children than adults. It’s sad and I wish it was different, but after this many years I honestly just don’t really think about it anymore.

Offices, Out Buildings. Besides the homes, which I’ll write about last, there are several other structures on the Homestead that allow us to do our work.

1. We have three small, moveable offices buildings where our interns and office staff work. Two of the offices are small, one room units, and one is an A-frame building with a bathroom and kitchenette.
2. The barn, chicken coop, and animal enclosure are on the back of the property. In the enclosure are 2 horses: Gloria and Myshka, 2 goats: Suzy and Karen, and 12ish? chickens.
3. Near the animal enclosure is a big old shed/garage/whatever-people-decide-to-call-it building. In that garage are all the tools and equipment for building projects, bikes, an extra refrigerator, dry goods, camping gear, pool gear, sleds…all the extra stuff that doesn’t need to be in houses.
4. Right next to our house is a wood shop that Oleg and Vlad are currently remodeling to make into a nice area for the boys to do work projects. We have used it like that off and on for years, but Oleg and Vlad are working on it now to make it more accessible and organized. This month Oleg plans to restart individual project time in the wood shop for each of the boys!

The Homes. Now on to the part you probably care about the most. Who lives where and with whom? Let’s get to it!

Johnson Family Home. When we purchased the first parcel of land back in 2016 it was the parcel with our house on it. It was an old farmhouse with no indoor plumbing and a hayloft as the second floor. It was stripped down to the first floor walls and foundation and rebuilt into the beautiful home it is today. I love our house! It’s my favorite place and has been such a wonderful space for raising our family. Thank you to all of you long-time faithful donors who helped make this home what it is today. It’s truly a place of peace and comfort for all who enter.

Who lives there? All the people who’s last name is Johnson, plus Boris (aka Bmo) and Christiana. Bmo has lived with us in this home since 2017. We consider him one of our children, he just doesn’t have our last name. 🥰 Christiana is an American member of our team who was a house parent in the duplex for 2 years. Once her role of house parent was completed she realized her time here in Ukraine wasn’t quite done, so she decided to stay on until the summer. She is living with us in the meantime and we love having her! We also have three pets in our home: Bluebell, the 10 year old English Shepherd, Betsy, the 2 year old dachshund, and Lucille, the 5 month old Maine Coon.

Duplex Side A. This side of the duplex is called “Side A” because it’s the side of the building closest to the road. Our team here in Ukraine calls the different sides of the duplex by the last name of the house parents to remind ourselves that it’s a home, not just a work place. But for our purposes here, it’s easier to say “Side A” and “Side B”. Side A of the duplex was completed just before the full scale invasion began in 2022 and was used as a sort of Noah’s ark during the first several months of the war. Several mothers and their adult children with disabilities lived there and during those first couple of weeks we hosted more than 100 people who were fleeing west from Kyiv to safety. In the summer of 2022, after we all returned from our time in Germany as refugees our boys began to live in the home.

Who lives there? Yaroslav, Vova, and the Mosiichuk family (Ruslan, Nina, and Lia). Ruslan and Nina, along with baby Lia moved into the duplex last October. Up until that time we had had different variations of volunteers living with Yarik and Vova. All the volunteers were amazing! And now we finally have Ukrainian house parents, which we have seen from previous experiences is the best case scenario for our boys.

Duplex Side B. Side B of the duplex is the side closer to the horse barn. It was completed back in 2021 and was our first go at community living here on the Homestead. I think for that reason Side B will always hold a special place in my heart. It’s the place where our dream of more boys living with house parents on the property was realized. I love it.

Who lives there? Anton, Sasha, and the Semenyuk family (Oleg, Masha, and Dem’yan). Oleg and Masha were team members who got married in 2022 and then a few months later decided to be house parents and moved in with the boys. Dem’yan was born last June and completed the fam. Oleg and Masha have walked hand in hand with us along this journey for so many years and they are a great example of how to love our boys day after day. Masha and Oleg also have three pets: Bonya the cat, Richie the dachshund (our Betsy’s brother), and Lois the cat. Lois is actually the Homestead cat and has been with us since before the duplex was completed, but she eats at Side B and sleeps there on cold nights.

Both sides of the duplex have space for one more boy from the institution, so we are just waiting until the babies are a little bigger before bringing the next boys out. Please pray for us for wisdom and courage in that!

Building 7. The newest parcel of land was purchased just last year and had an existing old farmhouse on it. We call it “Building 7” just because 7 is the street address. Much like our home, it needed to be stripped down to walls and foundation, but is on it’s way to being the next and final home on the Homestead. It’s a smaller home and will have space for house parents and two boys. At this point we are planning for Max and Lesya to live there with Ruslan. They currently live with Rus in a house close to town, so we are looking forward to the time when they are here in the village with us. Once they are settled there they will be able to bring another boy home to live with them and their two cats, Bella and Carlos.

Dajana’s House. Dajana is our team member from Germany who cares for the horses and does horse therapy with the boys. Until last October she was a house parent for Yarik and Vova on Side A, along with Christiana. After moving out of the duplex she decided to build herself a small modular home on the back of our property so she can continue to live in close community with all of us here on the Homestead. Her project is in process and hopefully will be completed this spring! In the meantime she is living in the A-frame office building with her two dogs, Buddy and Lilo.

So there you have it! That’s all of us and all of our many, many animals. So.many.animals. 😂 I absolutely love living here on the Homestead. There is always someone nearby to talk to, help if you need it, or just be present for companionship. The work we do isn’t easy. It’s not a 9-5 job, but a complete lifestyle. I can’t imagine doing it in isolation! We are so blessed to have the gift of each other.

If you have any other questions about our Homestead, ask away! I hope this helped you get more names and faces straight in your head. Thanks for loving us and for caring about our lives here with our boys. We could never have built this beautiful community without your support. 💙

Wishing you sunny and peaceful skies,

Kim

If you want more a visual, here’s a video tour of the Homestead.

Today’s newsletter is brought to you by me, Kim! 👋

Love in Action 

“Love in action is a harsh and dreadful thing, compared with love in dreams.”
– The Brothers Karamazov
________________

Hi Friends, 

The season of Lent began last Wednesday, and it’s really doing a number on me! Things are coming up that the Lord lovingly wants to deal with inside of me and I’m thankful, but…it kinda hurts a little too.

Lent is an ancient Christian tradition of fasting, prayer, and alms-giving for the 40 days leading up to Easter. It’s a time to set your priorities straight, to recognize the areas in your life where you have gone astray, and to prepare your heart for the big day of days- Resurrection Day. I appreciate the call to live more intentionally, to put aside some things and to say no to myself a bit more. And God is always faithful to meet me in those moments. I think he finds great joy in our deliberate efforts to say no to self and yes to him.

This week I wrote some thoughts on the blog about “Love in Action”. I’ve been thinking lately about loving without needing something in return, about the beauty of a hidden life, and about a longing to be content with just the gaze of our loving God- without a need for the gaze of other humans. I hope it encourages you this Lenten season. Saying YES is beautiful and also sometimes hard. But we are never alone on the journey. How beautiful is that? 

Wishing you sunny and peaceful skies,
Kim

Thanks from Vlad (and me)

Thank you to everyone who sent a congratulations note to Vlad. I read every single one to him and he was soooooo happy!  He was giggling and clapping and just couldn’t get enough. He got tons of messages from you all and as a mom, I want to say thank you for loving my son. Thank you for taking the time to tell him you are proud of him. Your words are very valuable to him and to me. 💙

Now that the roads are a little bit better and it’s not so bitterly cold we’re back to our weekly cafe visits! It’s important to get the boys out and about, and also for people in our city to see our boys and interact with them. We love our weekly coffee dates!

1. Vlad and Baby Lia
2. Tanya, Tonya, and Ruslan playing a card game

Have a great week, Friends! We’ll see you again next week, same time, same place. ☺️

BeLOVE[d] 🇺🇦

“Love in action is a harsh and dreadful thing, compared with love in dreams.” – The Brothers Karamazov

The season of Lent began last Wednesday, and it’s really doing a number on me! Things are coming up that the Lord lovingly wants to deal with inside of me and I’m thankful, but…it kinda hurts a little too.

Lent is an ancient Christian tradition of fasting, prayer, and alms-giving for the 40 days leading up to Easter. It’s a time to set your priorities straight, to recognize the areas in your life where you have gone astray, and to prepare your heart for the big day of days- Resurrection Day. I appreciate the call to live more intentionally, to put aside some things and to say no to myself a bit more. And God is always faithful to meet me in those moments. I think he finds great joy in our deliberate efforts to say no to self and yes to him.

Each day in my Lenten readings there is a passage from a novel called The Brothers Karamazov, a take on the story of the prodigal son. The passage that was chosen today hit me like a ton of bricks. It really spoke to me, so I thought I would share it with you. In the passage a woman is talking with a priest about how to live a life of faith, how to know that her faith is real. He answers her that to live a life of faith is to live a life of “active love”. Here is her response to his call to active love:

“‘In active love? There’s another question and such a question! You see, I so love humanity that- would you believe it?- I often dream of forsaking all that I have, leaving Lise, and becoming a sister of mercy [a nun]. I close my eyes and think and dream, and at that moment I feel full of strength to overcome all obstacles. No wounds, no festering sores could at that moment frighten me. I would bind them up and wash them with my own hands. I would nurse the afflicted. I would be ready to kiss such wounds.”

“It is much, and well that your mind is full of such dreams and not others. Some time, unawares, you may do a good deed in reality.” [the priest talking there]

“Yes. But could I endure such a life for long?” the lady went on fervently, almost frantically. “That’s the chief question- that’s my most agonizing question. I shut my eyes and ask myself, ‘Would you persevere long on that path? And if the patient whose wounds you are washing did not meet you with gratitude, but worried you with his whims, without valuing or remarking your charitable services, began abusing you and rudely commanding you, and complaining to the superior authorities of you (which often happens when people are in great suffering)- what then? Would you persevere in your love, or not?’ And do you know, I came with horror to the conclusion that, if anything could dissipate my love to humanity, it would be ingratitude. In short, I am a hired servant, I expect my payment at once- that is, praise, and the repayment of love with love. Otherwise I am incapable of loving anyone.'”

Wow. Let that sit a moment. Does ingratitude from others dissipate my love? Do I love others with a payment in mind? Praise, thanks, notoriety, fame, warm fuzzies… do I need those things to be payed to me so that I have the strength and will to love others? I want to say no, but I know that’s not always the truth. I want to be thanked. I want to be recognized. I want my good deeds to be noticed. I want my hardships to be recognized and seen and I want to be understood. It’s may be gross, but it’s reality.

The priest has a long answer for this woman, but here is the part that stood out to me:

“..love in action is a harsh and dreadful thing compared with love in dreams. Love in dreams is greedy for immediate action, rapidly performed and in the sight of all. Men will even give their lives if only the ordeal does not last long but is soon over, with all looking on and applauding as though on the stage. But active love is labour and fortitude, and for some people too, perhaps, a complete science. But I predict that just when you see with horror that in spite of all your efforts you are getting farther from your goal instead of nearer to it- at that very moment I predict that you will reach it and behold clearly the miraculous power of the Lord who has been all the time loving and mysteriously guiding you.”

___________________

Love in action is the day after day choice. Love in action is the hidden life. Love in action is waking up every moment and making a choice: to speak kindly, to be patient, to hold the hand, to gently wash the body, to try again to understand, to cook the next meal, to have compassion, to have a beginners mind. Love in action has no stage. Love in action will not be understood by the world. But the Lord sees it all. He watches with a loving gaze and a full heart.

Most of our boys can’t thank us. They don’t understand the comforts and ease we “give up” to live life with them. They don’t understand that it’s not always easy for us and I don’t think they can comprehend that sometimes our life of service feels like just one sacrifice after another. But that’s okay. They don’t need to say thank you. They don’t need to understand. We are called to love them and it is enough to know that Jesus, the one who matters, sees it all.

Let us hear the call this Lent to live lives of love in action. Let us put aside the need to be seen and understood and simply serve others with love that can only come from the One who is Love. Let us not just dream of living lives of love, but to actively pursue love. Say yes to the next thing and take the step. Our God who sees all and knows all will meet us and guide us and his gaze is enough. ❤️

Wishing you sunny and peaceful skies,

Kim

Today’s newsletter is brought to you by me, Kim! 👋

---

What Would You Like to Know?

Hi Friends
Kim here, coming to you from the land of snow and ice. So.Much.Snow. I can’t even with the snow. I know it’s good for the soil and blah blah blah. But I would just really like it to be done now. Can we be done now? 😆
Anyway, enough of my belly achin’. Thankfully, everything is going fine around here. Boys are healthy and happy, the team is working well, two out of the three Dim Hidnosti vehicles are back up and running, the houses are warm, and we pretty much always have electricity! We are blessed and I have no doubt that God is watching over us. So many people in Ukraine are truly suffering in unimaginable ways this winter, so I thank God every day for his hand of protection over the Homestead. I pray we never take it for granted.
_______________
Enough about me, now I’d like to turn to you all. I was wondering what questions you might have for us. Although we are passionate about our work and realize it’s life-saving and necessary, our work/life here isn’t a novelty to us. It’s just our every day life, so it’s hard for me to guess what you might like to read about. Do you have any questions? Is there a part of the work you don’t understand? Is there a topic we have touched on that you would like to hear more about? Are you curious about a certain boy or about an aspect of the boys’ daily life? I would loooooove to hear any and all of your questions or suggestions for newsletter topics. I want to write about the things that are interesting to you, so let er rip! You can send any ideas or questions in a reply to this newsletter. 
Thanks!

Wishing you sunny and peaceful skies,
Kim

1. I know this is poor quality, but I think it’s just so cute! A few of our staff: Tanya, Natasha, Tonya, and Luda on the bus on their way to work. 💙
2. Bmo- sitting on a couch, cozied in, chewing on a blanket- just how he likes it.
3. Yarik and Oleg having some sled time. At least the snow is good for something! 😉
4. Ruslan loves the babies. Here he is with Dem’yan (who is enjoying the experience slightly less…)
5. And here is Rus 7 years ago with baby Evie. He has always loved babies. It’s sweet.

---

New Team Member

If you donate to Wide Awake you’ve already seen the news, but I wanted to share with the wider community that we have a new member of the Wide Awake team! We have been in need of a donor relations assistant for a long time (like forever). It’s always been a challenge to communicate well with donors from across the ocean, but we sort of managed the best we could. Then the war started, then our family had to be separated, and the need become more glaringly obvious than ever. We simply can’t give our supporters the communication and thanks they deserve when Jed and I are stretched so thin. Finally we are in a place where we can add a person to the team who can be a touch-point for all of you.

I know I say it here all the time, but I really do mean it from the bottom of my heart: we simply could not do any of this without you. To all you donors who have stuck with us on this crazy journey, thank you so much for being so gracious to us over the years. I know our communication with you hasn’t always been the best and we really want to change that. 💛

All that said, I would like to introduce you to our new donor relations assistant, Addie! If you’ve been around here for a while then you will recognize Addie. She is our oldest daughter and a university student in Montana. Addie has been a part of this work ever since it was just a crazy dream in our hearts. She grew up here, on the Homestead and she understands our vision and values. 
Here’s a message from Addie:

Hi! My name is Addie, you probably know me as the second oldest Johnson kid. I’ve been a member of the team my whole childhood but now I have stepped back onto the team as the donor relations assistant! I am so excited to be back and I figured I would do a little introduction.
As some of you may know I have been in Montana the past couple years for college. I am an English major in my junior year and I aim to get my doctorate and become an American Literature professor. I love to crochet, watch movies, and play bass with my band (just like my dad!). I also take after my mom with my love of coffee, puzzles and reading. 
Please write to me and say hello! I would love to get to know all of you. If you have any questions related to newsletter signups, contact information, or other communication things I’m your gal. Either way I can’t wait to hear from you!

Here’s Addie’s email: addie@wideawakeinternational.org
I’m so glad she has officially joined the team and I hope you will feel free to reach out to her with any of your questions or concerns. She’s ready for you!

---

Birthday Girl

Just a quick note to let you know that our sweet baby Lia turned 1 year old this past week. I remember last year, asking for you all to pray for God to spare her life and look at her now! Thank you for joining us in prayer for our special baby girl. We love her so much. She brings us all loads of joy. 🥰
PS: Fun Fact- Addie and Lia share the same birthday! 

BeLOVE[d] 🇺🇦

Hellooooooooo! Long time no see. I’m emerging from my study cave to chat with you all and it’s a welcome excuse to give my brain a much-needed break. So, thanks for that. I have a big exam coming up in February for my Functional Medicine studies and all the time I spent Christmasing is kind of catching up with me. But here I am, so let’s get to it!

On Tuesday we had our semimonthly assistant meeting here on the ol’ Homestead and the discussion we had there has been rolling around in my head ever since. Masha leads the meetings and she is often bringing us back to our organization’s values of dignity, love, and hope. It’s impossible to talk about our values too much. They must be always present in our minds. We’re humans and it’s way too easy for us to veer away from them, so we talk about our values always.

Masha was presenting some scenarios to the team and asking them to look at them through the lens of our values and share which value was lacking in the scenario, and how we could do things differently. She asked us to put ourselves in the place of the boys and think of how we would feel in the situation. We talked about issues like modesty, personal privacy, the way we talk to the boys or the words that we choose to use. It was a good reminder to never allow ourselves to place ourselves on a level “higher” than the boys- to not just do things for them or to them, but to do things with them. Dignity always. Love always. Hope always. We can never talk about it enough. I know I fail every day so I reeeeeally need to constantly come back to our values.

As I’ve been mulling over that conversation I keep coming back to the idea of what it is to truly be known. It’s the longing of each of our hearts, to know and to be known. It’s the longing of our boys’ hearts, even if they can’t verbalize it. Of course it is! The longing to be truly known by others is part of what makes us human. We were created with the desire to be loved and known first of all by our Creator, and then second , by other humans. We long to be understood, for someone to truly “get” us. Our boys want to be understood and “got” just like the rest of us. And the more we as a team strive to deeply know our boys and understand them, the more dignity, hope, and love naturally flow from us.

In that meeting we recognized as a team that in our comfort with our boys we can sometimes lack love or dignity in the way we speak to them. And after years of living together we can get used to the boys the way they are and forget to hope that they could continue to grow and heal. It’s like with any family- the ones you love the most sometimes get the worst of you. And like with most families- your family members tend to be the least likely people to recognize changes in you or even allow changes in you. They see you through sibling or parent-tinted glasses that are very difficult to remove. Here on the Homestead we can also be guilty of wearing glasses that are tinted with the mundane. There is beauty in the closeness and familiarity of family. It’s beautiful how well we know our boys and how close we feel to them. But that closeness, while providing love and security, can also sometimes lack dignity or hope. The fight to keep our hearts right and to keep a beginner’s mind is real. But we are choosing to fight for it because our boys deserve all the dignity, love, and hope ever.

---

When we first took Boris out of the institution eight years ago he was full of emotion. Allllll the emotions were present and accounted for. He had moments of great joy, but also plenty of moments of frustration or maybe sadness. He was loud and expressive and over time we began to learn what his different sounds and expressions meant. Bmo doesn’t speak, so I can’t say with certainty how often we got it right or wrong, but we had beginner’s minds and tried to become as fluent in Bmo-Speak as possible. I’d like to think I’m fairly fluent at Bmo-Speak at this point; maybe even at Native Speaker level!

Bmo’s way of expressing himself and his emotions has ebbed and flowed over the years of life together. There have been periods of time when Bmo was the loudest person in the house, and then stretches of time when he didn’t make any sounds- happy or sad. We recently weaned Boris off of medication we had given him to prevent self-harm because the stretch of silence had gone on for too long. Bmo needed the medication when the war first started and we had to move as refugees to Germany. That whole experience broke Boris in a way, and it feels like he has never fully recovered. He lost many of his skills he had worked so hard to gain like toileting and dressing himself. He began to hit himself again and he was so emotionally disregulated that he would just run up and down the halls of the church screaming and unable to stop himself. For his own safety and security we began to medicate him again, but the trade off was that we lost a part of our precious Bmo. He retreated into himself and almost all of his positive communication went away. Our relationship devolved into him only wanting contact when he was asking for a need to be met and me meeting his needs. It didn’t appear that he was interested in any other kind of interaction. It was sad, disappointing, and honestly very exhausting. I think I lost hope that we would get our happy Boris back. I wondered if he was gone for good.

Then in December I decided to try weaning him off of his med. He seemed fairly stable, emotionally, and I decided to just give it a try. I don’t know, maybe God gave me a crazy moment of hope, or maybe I just got tired of the status of our relationship, but for whatever reason, I decided to give it a whirl.

The last month of Bmo being off meds has been a roller coaster for him and for the rest of us here on the Homestead. He started off being quite disregulated and screaming A LOT. I was out of town for a couple of weeks and the team began writing to me “Bmo is screaming all the time…what do we do??” He was quite unhappy, to put it mildly. But over the past week or so since I’ve been back I’ve seen glimpses of the old Bmo returning to us. He’s starting making his happy “beeping” Bmo sounds when I tuck him in at night. He’s making his loud, in your face, laugh/yell when he’s excited. He’s doing the Bmo “happy trill” when it’s time for his shower. Sigh, music to my ears. Sure, there is a heck of a lot of screaming in the mix as well, but I’ll take the screaming if it means I also get the beeps and the trills and the hums.

I know I can contribute much of the change in his disposition to him being off meds, but I also see how my attitude change plays into the mix. I’ve been asking the Lord to renew my love for Bmo. I’ve been asking for new hope, new patience, new tenderness. I need to see Boris with fresh eyes, to take off my exhausted-caregiver-tinted glasses and blink a few times. Bmo deserves a mom who allows him to change. He deserves to be “gotten” as he is now, not as he has been for the past almost 4 years, and I don’t want our closeness to lead to loss of dignity, love, or hope. I love Bmo deeply and he deserves to be known and loved by me as he is today.

Our Father in heaven never gives up on us. We fail over and over again, but he still chooses to use us to serve our boys. It’s seriously humbling. May God grant each of us the courage to seek to know others and to let ourselves be known by them. May we allow the ones we love space to grow and change without our judgement or family-tinted glasses, even if we feel hopeless. I think the journey of knowing will be worth it.

Hi Friends!

Here’s the link to this week’s newsletter: https://mailchi.mp/e50320719c89/wide-awake-int-massage-on-the-homestead

Wishing you sunny and peaceful skies,

Kim

Today’s newsletter is brought to you by Christiana ❤️

Just a taste of life around here

This week, I left Romaiv mad. It was a pretty typical day at Romaniv, but I fumed for nearly 30 minutes as I drove our team home and then finally broached the topic with another team member. It was better than keeping it bottled in and ready to explode, but I was still mad by the time we arrived home. 

I was mad about everything. Every last stupid, unjust, inevitable, avoidable, unintentional, deliberate, gosh darn thing that I had seen that day. Nothing too out of the ordinary, but for some reason yesterday the ordinary absolutely pissed me off. I will not sing the full Song Of My Complaint (10 Minute Version), but just to give you a taste:

They recently did significant renovations in isolation hall (perhaps I mentioned this, as we were unable to visit for several weeks while this was happening) and now the hallway, where most boys spend most of their days sitting or slowly wandering, is clean, fresh, new, and… off limits. Apparently, it is a very high priority not to let the boys mess us the newly painted white walls. Prior to renovations, there might be a few boys in their bedrooms if they were sick (or the higher functioning boys who live in isolation hall sometimes just prefer to be there), and perhaps a few boys in the day room (which has evolved over the years but currently has padded walls and floors with a few stackable discs of the same padded material and a yoga ball laying around). The rest of them, the majority, would be in the hallway. 

Now obviously, I do not like the idea of our friends spending most of their days sitting on benches in the hallway. But when I walked into isolation hall, through a pristine hallway, and then was hit by the scent and heat of all the boys crammed onto the floor of the day room, I nearly lost it. I went immediately to open the window, but the small part that can be opened already was open. The door had to remain shut because otherwise several boys would try to get out of the room into the—now forbidden—hallway. There was nothing I could do to make the situation any better. I had literally just come from a conversation about this issue with the director, where he had explained that they had hoped to paint the walls of the hallway with paint that was washable, but had run out of money and now could not do so. He pointed out that he had allowed the boys to be in the day room (which was in it’s way a concession because it had previously been off limits when it was new), and said that he would think about our concerns. 

Our friend who was not in that room was tied to his bed. The last several times I’ve been there, he has been tied in bed, and we haven’t been allowed to take him out because he was “having a bad day.” This could mean so many things… seizure activity, sickness, recent self-harm, knocked out on drugs for one reason or another (even just thinking of the list of possible reasons is infuriating). Instead of untying him, lately I’ve just had to sit next to him while he remains tied up in bed, and I hate that. I can see such an obvious decline in him from when I first met him 8 years ago, and yesterday it hit me that if he stays at Romaniv, we are just going to keep watching him get worse until he dies. But his parents still have parental rights, and we’ve never yet been able to take guardianship of a boy from Romaniv whose parents are still in the picture. How do you convince people who don’t really know you that they should let their son come and live with you? Unless that happens, there is a good chance we will just watch him continue to lose skills and have an increasingly worse quality of life until he dies a totally preventable death.

There’s a taste of why I was so mad on the drive back from Romaniv. 

Then I got back to the Homestead. Home. And I sat at our table, in our open kitchen/dining room/living room with vaulted ceilings and natural light and fresh air. As I ate leftovers of a delicious Ukrainian dish that the assistants had made with our boys from lunch, Vova came over and sat down at the table, because he likes to be with people now. Then the assistants sat down to chat, and they helped me fix a message I was trying to write in Ukrainian. Soon we were joking together about a Ukrainian word that Dajana and I didn’t know how to use correctly in context. Yarik started feeding off the building energy as we hung out and joked together, and then somehow we were all yelling like Tarzan and one of the guys was play wrestling with Yarik. When I reluctantly moved upstairs to get some work done while the assistants were still here, I could hear one of them singing a sea shanty and Yarik commending the song choice 🤣 And the anger had faded.

Our home isn’t perfect. It’s a bunch of imperfect people living life with boys whose disabilities and trauma can be heavy. But it was so healing for me in that moment to be home. Home where our boys are loved in word and action. Where I can leave the house knowing that the boys will be treating with dignity and I don’t need to worry about them while I am gone. Where so many of the things outside of our control at Romaniv are just so delightfully…manageable. Life here isn’t perfect (or sometimes even easy!) but it is so good.

If I find it healing to be back at the Homestead after spending part of a day at Romaniv, what about our boys who lived there for years and years? I think and hope that the healing they experience here is much greater, even as it is slower and more rocky.

Often we talk about one benefit of everyone regularly going to Romaniv being that we maintain a soft heart for our boys at the Homestead. Remembering where they came from, what they endured, gives us the patience and compassion we need to bear with them in love when things are difficult. But I’m also noticing that it puts us, in some small way, in parallel with them and their journey. We are not untouched by our time spent visiting the institution, although coming face to face with that darkness affects us all in different ways. We mourn, grieve, get angry, or get numb. Then God meets us in our weakness to provide what we need, to restore and to strengthen us. Our boys are needy, but so are we. We can relate to them not as superiors capable of doing more, saying more, handling more, but as equals who also experience hurt and are in need of healing.

If you have experienced hurt and are in need of healing today, you are not alone. I know some really brave boys who are learning that people can be good. Who are considering that the messages of worthlessness they received for years might not be true. Who are fighting to leave behind the cycles they learned in response to terrible things that should not have been done to them. Who are waiting on the Lord to restore all of the years that the locusts have eaten. And those boys aren’t doing it alone, because we are right there with them. We are also asking God to redeem what was broken. You are welcome to join us.

Wishing you sunny and peaceful skies,

Christiana

Today’s newsletter is brought to you by Christiana ❤️

Carpe Diem… Carpe Carpathians! 

Well ya’ll, we have returned from the Carpathian Mountains, our first team trip/retreat since the start of the full-scale war. And for me, my first team trip ever! There were a lot of reasons that it didn’t make sense to travel the last few years (starting with everyone just being grateful to be back home after their time as refugees in Germany… no one wanted to go ANYWHERE). But we also want to live our lives as normally as possible, and the time felt right. We were ready to pack up our boys and team and make the 7 hour trek to the region of the Carpathian mountains that stretches across southwestern Ukraine. (Okay, it actually took us 11 hours on the way there once you factor in all of the bathroom breaks and various stops 🤣 But we managed the trip home in only 8 hours, so we were getting back in the swing of traveling with our boys) 

I’ll admit, as excited as I was to see the Carpatians for the first time, I had a bit of trepidation as I looked forward to this trip. It was the first time Yarik and Vova have slept anywhere other than their own beds since coming home from Germany. How would they handle the change? It was my first attempt at anticipating what to pack for a 6 day trip with them 😜 and figuring out how to manage Vova’s diet while traveling for more than a meal or two. Also, three of the English speakers on our team were not able to come for various reasons, so my communication landscape was going to be a bit drier than at home. (Side note: I am so spoiled/blessed to live with Dajana, who a) speaks a second language constantly when the two of us are together, which allows me to speak my native language and b) speaks Ukrainian better than me and thus regularly bridges the gap for me when I don’t fully understand something. God has been kind to me in this way and also I’m impressed by how Dajana adjusts with grace to the language needs of others) 

Anyway, the Carpathians were AMAZING. The boys did great at handling the stress of being outside their normal routines and in a new place. The team was awesome, and everyone worked together to give the boys a great vacation and other team members time to relax and have fun, too. It was good to be together in a beautiful place and just organically build our relationships with the boys and each other. My soul (and everyone else’s) got a good dose of mountains, which doesn’t seem like a big deal until you are surrounded by mountains and feel that mountain sense of awe… and we live in a totally flat place. The trip was just a gift, and I’m grateful that we were able to go. 

1. Vlad, Nina, her daughter Evangelina and son Seriozha, Ruslan, & Evie 2. Anton 3. Maxim & Natasha  4. Ruslan & Jed 5. Dem’yan (repping his Dim Hidnosti shirt which reads “Dim Hidnosti/House of Dignity, a place where the heart is at home”)  6. Vlad 7. Lesya, Anton, Valya, Vlad, Tonya, Vova, Yarik, Ezra, Masha, Christiana  8. Vlad, Tanya, Anton, Maxim, Ruslan, Valya, Evangelina, Evie, Vova, Christiana, Nina, Seriozha, Lesya, Yarik

From my perspective, here were a few highlights of the trip: Our friend Maxim, whose mother has asked Jed to become his guardian after she passes away/is unable to care for him, came with us on the trip, and his mother was able to come too! She is elderly and had never visited these beautiful mountains in her own country, and said it was a dream of hers to see them before she died. Being able to include them both was such a joy.  We took the boys on a trip to a ski resort town, where they rode up a ski lift to the top of the mountain. For most of them, hiking would be neither accessible nor particularly enjoyable, so this was a perfect way for them to experience nature and have their own mountaintop experience. Also, riding a ski lift was it’s own exciting activity for the physical thrill seekers in our crew… and a chance for some others to be brave 😉 Everyone who went up loved being on top of the mountain. The pool at the hotel became our natural gathering point. While we rotated between being officially with the boys or free each day, I loved seeing everyone gravitate towards being together when they were on the grounds of the hotel. For our team, this is their work, their livelihood. So to see in these kinds of moments that it is not just their work, but also their joy to spend time together with our boys is sweet and meaningful.  We have 4 women who’ve joined the team after their young adult children were already working for Wide Awake… so we have a growing contingent of the team around the same age whom I affectionately refer to as “the moms.” Watching them living it up on vacation was so fun, and often hilarious. I’ve seen some of them get in the pool with our boys before, but watching them excitedly go down the hotel slip-n-slide on their day off (or host parties in their rooms after the boys were asleep, or go swimming in the canyon, etc.) was another level.  I can’t resist a little psychology moment: the moderate stress for the boys of being away from home and doing new things out of their normal routine is perfect for where all of our guys are at right now in their healing journeys. All of them have been home and stable long enough that this was a “just right” level of challenge to stretch them in healthy ways. To experience that stress surrounded by people who know and love them, then to experience coming back home, is truly therapeutic. 

1. Valya and her son, Maxim (Valya is not a smiler, so it’s difficult to know when she is having a great time 😉) 2. Our team members Valya and Natasha. (I’m telling you, the moms were living their best lives. Yes, that is a medal for summiting the mountain) 3. Vlad, Yarik, & Jed on the ski lift 4. Nina, Maxim, Natasha, Seriozha, Andriy, Anton, Valya, Tanya, Vova, Irina, Boris, Valya, Vlad 5. I can’t even see who all is together by the pool. A lot of us 🤷‍♀️ 6. Ruslan 7. Lesya & Ruslan (side note: it was super sweet seeing Ruslan with Lesya. They’ve known each other for years, but there is a subtle shift in how Ruslan relates to Max & Lesya now that they are his house parents)  8. Anton & Nina

My summary review of our trip: 10/10 would do again 😉
Wishing you sunny and peaceful skies,
Christiana

BeLOVE[d] 🇺🇦