Well Friends, camp happened. The interns planned it for months and it finally came and went. I’m happy to tell you that all involved reported it as a great success. Yes! The volunteers were plentiful and capable, the organization was great, the weather was decent, and most importantly- the boys were happy and loved and treasured for 5 whole days. It was great!
Like last year, the camp theme was the five senses. The interns set up bases around the territory of the institution ( a base for each sense), volunteers were matched up with boys, 1:1, and led by the boys’ interests they explored the bases each day. As added bonuses our team member Nina came and did massages each day, and for three of the days Dajana brought our horses for some horse therapy time. It was a really special time with a peaceful, smooth atmosphere. That’s not always the case at Romaniv!
Several of our friends and partners from the US came for the camp so that also made it extra special. Thank you to our friends from Hands of Hope: Suzy, Betsy, Phil, and Kevin for blessing us like always with your joy and love, and for your hearts of service. Guys- Phil and Kevin even deep-cleaned my kitchen! That might have been my biggest win of the week. Hehehe 😉 And thank you to Sarah and Sydney for choosing again to trek across the world to see us and just be with us. We love all of you and were so happy to spend the week together.
Last year at camp many of our volunteers were fairly new to Romaniv and didn’t have a lot of experience being there with the boys. It was so fun to see those same volunteers at camp this year after a full year of faithfully visiting the boys each week. The comfort and ease they exuded while with the boys made my heart full. It was obvious that when they go to Romaniv they are going to visit their friends. They know the boys intimately- their likes and dislikes, how to read their moods, how to help them when they are in crisis or just need a loving presence. What a blessing to have such faithful volunteers. I was encouraged just being with them.
There’s not a lot more I need to say. I’m just going to dump a lot of photos now and let them speak for themselves. Thank you to all who prayed for the camp. It was a blessing to all who were involved. ❤️
Yesterday was an absolute momentous day in Wide Awake/Dim Hidnosti history; the turning of a page, the beginning of a new chapter. A part of the story that seemed like a pipe dream all those years ago has become a reality and we are all in celebration mode because of it.
Yesterday Oleg was granted legal guardianship of Sasha by the court, and in that decision Oleg and Masha have legally committed their lives to Sasha, “till death do us part”. In reality, the court was simply recognizing the position of their hearts for more than a year now, but the legal binding of it is a weight that they have not carried before. It’s one thing to live as houseparents, but it’s another thing to legally bind yourselves to one of our boys for life. Now with joy Oleg and Masha pick up that weight of responsibility and continue forward along the path of bringing hope, love, and dignity to our boys. Jed and I couldn’t be more proud of them or more honored to walk this journey alongside them. ❤️
Masha and Oleg started the guardianship process almost exactly a year ago, hoping for a quick, speed-bump free process. Well, we live in Ukraine, so those hopes were squashed quite quickly. 😂 We live in the land of perpetual speed bumps and literal potholes. Court was supposed to happen last month and the three of us, Oleg, Masha, and I went to the courthouse as planned, but once there were notified that the judge was unavailable and they would have to reschedule. So yesterday we went to the courthouse with plenty of nerves and hopes that at least SOMETHING would happen and we wouldn’t just be put off again. Masha is pregnant and baby (their first) is due on June 15th, so we were all hoping to have the guardianship question resolved before the birth.
Our lawyer, who is actually a faithful Dim Hidnosti volunteer, spent a lot of time prepping Oleg for the hearing. There are often cases these days of men trying to gain guardianship of someone with a disability in order to escape military service, so the courts are quite suspicious of anyone coming with a guardianship case. Our lawyer advised us that it could be difficult and we should expect suspicion and hard questions. We understood the hesitation of the courts, but also felt a bit frustrated that we just want to do something good and right, and to have it met with suspicion would likely feel a bit sad and defeating. But we also really tried to just trust God that Sasha and Oleg’s lives are in his hands and prayed that His will would be done.
One of the differences with the legal system here is that jurors serve regularly for a certain period of time with a certain judge on every case. Beсause of that, the attorneys know the jurors ahead of time and become familiar with their perspectives on certain types of cases. Our lawyer was quite concerned about one of the jurors that would be on our case. He warned Oleg about her, the secretaries warned us about her…she was to be feared. Apparently her son serves in the military and she is very suspicious about and hard on anyone whose case outcome would include exemption from military service. Again, I understand her perspective for sure, but we knew military exemption was not Oleg’s ultimate goal in pursuing guardianship of Sasha, so we prayed that the truth would win and her heart would be soft.
So yesterday we arrived at the courthouse with plenty of time to spare and our lawyer gave Oleg some last minute instructions. Then we waited. And waited some more. We waited for an hour before anything happened- plenty of times for our nerves to fry. 😁 Then the judge came out, called the jurors into his office, they talked for 10 minutes or so, and came out of his office with a decision of YES! They didn’t even have a hearing and they didn’t even ask Oleg any questions. We were shocked and a little dumbfounded. Seriously??? Just like that???? What the heck even? But okay, if you say so! It was amazingly fast and hassle-free (read between the lines…not your usual Ukrainian government experience).
Afterwards, Oleg was sitting at a desk there in the hallway doing some of the finalization documents with the lawyer and the jurors came out of the judge’s office. That juror that everyone was afraid of and warned us about? She came up to me with tears in her eyes and asked if she could give me a hug. Apparently she had been out to our property once (I don’t remember her at all), remembered me, and knew about our work. 🤷♀️ Through tears she told us how important and valuable our work is. “Not just anyone can do that work but you somehow have super strength to do it. From the bottom of my heart I wish you long life and health so you can help more and more people.” She told us that many people can go fight in the war, but not everyone can do the work that we do and do it well. That is why she wanted Oleg to be able to stay with us and become Sasha’s guardian. Can you believe that??? Not only was she not suspicious, she was moved to tears by our work and believes that what we do is super valuable for the community. Well, if God is for us who can be against us? Am I right?
A beautiful and historical day was made even more special by the way God moved the hearts of men to fulfill his plan. Oleg and Masha’s decision is a sign to all Ukrainians that this is not just a work for foreigners. This is a work that Ukrainians can and should do. Decisions like the one made by the court yesterday are the ones that will change this country for the good.
We are so immensely grateful to God for how he consistently shows us that He is for us. This work and our boys are so important to him. Nothing will stand in the way of him completing the work that he has set out to do. We are so humbled and thankful to be along for the ride. ❤️
I am very happy to report that our Vlad has finally returned to us in Ukraine! For the past 2.5 years Vlad has been living with his grandparents in Oregon and last week he moved back home. Happy sigh. ☺️
At the end of our time as refugees in Germany, we realized that Vlad had quite a lot of anxiety about returning to Ukraine. He was pretty scared when the bombings were happening near our home (we all were!) and he really didn’t want to go home to the war. I don’t blame him! We started to think about what to do for Vlad so that he would feel safe.
We had long wanted to get Vlad orthodontic care. His mouth was a disaster- teeth were everywhere and no orthodontist in these parts was willing to take on Vlad as a patient. An orthodontist in Salem, OR had met Vlad a few years earlier and told us if we ever wanted to do orthodontics for Vlad that he would love to do it free of charge. We thought that was a super kind and generous offer, but knew it would require Vlad being in the US for an extended period of time and that just didn’t feel realistic at the time of the offer. But as we were preparing to leave Germany we thought maybe we could help Vlad to feel safe by keeping him away from the war for a bit, and also get his teeth fixed! We asked my parents if they would be willing to let Vlad live with them for a time and they said yes right away. What a blessing. Vlad ended up living with them for over two years. We are so, so thankful for that gift of love. ❤️
Vlad thrived in the US. He worked two days a week, joined an activity group for adults with disabilities, and became an active member of his church. He made friends and was loved by many people. To everyone in Oregon who loved Vlad and became his friend, thank you so much. He grew by leaps and bounds and we know that is thanks to the people who loved him and cared for him. He has grown more confident, more independent, and more fluent in American slang. 😆 Wilco Farm Store has lost its most loyal customer.
Now is the right time for Vlad to be back at home. The war is still happening, of course, but the rest of us feel more confident and have adapted to life at war. Life here is fairly stable at this time, and our team is in a great place to be able to welcome Vlad back with open arms.
Below is an interview with Vlad. He was very excited to show you all his bedroom and to tell you about his plans now that he is back home. He’s such a man! I think you’ll be surprised by the changes in him.
“We are not called by God to do extraordinary things, but to do ordinary things with extraordinary love. ” ― Jean Vanier
This final Advent video is about the love of a family. It is about a love that transforms. Oleg and Masha live on the Wide Awake Homestead as the houseparents of Sasha and Anton. They have chosen a life of community and sacrificial love. The transformation and healing of our boys don’t happen in the romantic, miraculous one-time event of taking them from the institution. No, the transformation and healing happen through the safety and security that come through all the mundane, daily things of life: coffee together in the mornings, cozy winter evenings on the couch, hundreds of meals cooked and eaten together, house cleaning, and trips to the grocery store. Healing happens for our boys when they know and feel safety and when they know and feel love. They were deprived of love for so many years and it is the greatest gift we can give them. Oleg and Masha have chosen to spend their lives loving our boys and that steady, daily choice is creating beauty and redemption. In this final week of Advent, let us love with our whole selves. Let us give of ourselves to people who may never be able to repay us in the ways the world would value, and then let the love of Christ fill us all. Merry Christmas! 🌟
Even in the midst of war, we are surprised by gifts of joy. We brought Yarik into our Wide Awake family during the first few months of war and he brings us immense joy every single day. He is Mr. Personality and always the life of the party. God plucked Yarik out of the institution and redeemed his life in a wonderful way, but none of us could have imagined the miracle that was in store for him in his new life. Get out the tissues because this story is going to make you cry tears of joy.
Ten years ago we introduced you to our friend, Boris. Now we would like to reintroduce him to you as our beloved family member. Boris (“Bmo”) has lived with us for 7 years now and is a known, loved, and treasured member of our family. We can’t imagine our lives without him. ❤️
Today we enter the season of Advent, the season of expectation. We join with people all over the world to wait expectantly for the celebration of the birth of the Christ. For our family, our team, our boys, it is a season of great joy. (if you’ve been around for a while you know we are always down for a celebration 😉) But we also recognize that we are in between advents. Christ has come, and he will come again. In the meantime we see glimpses of his Kingdom breaking through- but we also still see so much pain and suffering all around us. “The now and the not yet” of God’s Kingdom. We celebrate with our boys on the Homestead- cozy, warm, and surrounded by love. All the while knowing that an hour away our friends at the institution are enduring great abuse and neglect, living lives of isolation and pain.
The now and the not yet.
So we cry out for God to come and make all things right. And we hope. We hope for the day when all of our boys will be free. We long for that day with all of our hearts. And we hope with an active hope- a hope that puts one foot in front of the other working hard every day to make that future a reality for our friends.
Jesus, our living hope is alive and well with us on the Homestead, with our boys at Romaniv, and with you wherever you may be today.
We invite you to meet our dear friend, Misha. He is an inspiration to us to never give up hope. To keep fighting the good fight. To keep saying YES to the next thing.
I have been living in Ukraine for over a year now! The year mark was an opportunity to reflect more intentionally on my time here thus far.
First, I am so grateful that I get to be here. I’m so grateful that God said yes to the desire to live here that had been growing in me for years. After my first time in Ukraine, I just knew I wanted to return. Sometime around 3 years ago, that grew into a desire to live here for a season and be a part of the Wide Awake mission and community in a deeper way. But to actually get to live here?? Despite the distance, and the war, and all the other reasons this dream felt a little out there. It hasn’t been all sunshine and rainbows, and when I’m in the normal stuff of daily life, I can forget how magical it is that this dream became a reality. But it actually is pretty magical, and I’m so glad that I get to live this life and do this work.
So if it hasn’t been all sunshine and rainbows, what has been hard? If I can sum it up in one sentence: The hard part is the ways in which living here exposes all the faults and weaknesses that I had before I came. I read a missionary memoir (by Helen Roseveare) where she said that moving overseas to do mission work doesn’t magically make you a different, better person. You bring everything about who you already were to the foreign place, and I feel that 😅 The pressures of my life before were different, so I could avoid some of these weaknesses well enough to forget about them. But God works all things together for the good of those who love him, so it seems He is using aspects of life here to grow me in areas I’d been avoiding (or just oblivious to).
One area that seems to be a recurring theme in my life here is help… or self-sufficiency… so I suppose, pride. I came here to meet a need, to contribute to life on the Homestead, to be another willing set of hands. But there is a difference between a good desire to help and a prideful desire to only help while needing nothing from others. Giving help often feels good; it puts you in a position of power (whether you consciously acknowledge it in the moment or not). Being a helper is an identity our achievement-oriented culture celebrates. Needing help displays weakness; it puts you in a position of humility and is the opposite of being independent.
As it turns out, as much as I SAY that I desire community and interdependence, I actually really cling to being independent. I want to be in a position to give help, but needing help feels vulnerable. What if people think less of me? What if I don’t actually get the help I need? What if me being too needy leads people to reject me? Surely, I’ll be easier to love if I make no demands on anyone.
I know it sounds ridiculous when I put it that way, but I usually don’t have to hear that quiet voice deep inside. Life is loud.
And then I moved to Ukraine, where I am constantly finding myself in situations where I feel incompetent. I need help with things all the time that I could do independently in America. And whenever I think “Cool God, thanks for all the growth opportunities about accepting help, but I think I have finally learned this lesson now” something new happens to make me realize that I have most definitely NOT learned this lesson yet. 😂
Part of my role here is to be a house parent, to care for Yarik and Vova. And then I break my elbow and am in a plaster cast. Or impale my foot on a rusty nail and can barely walk. Or get a stomach flu over the weekend. I have had the most ridiculous, random injuries in my life here. And I’ve gotten sick what feels like an absurd number of times. Every time this happens and someone else has to carry something that I see as my responsibility or something I “should” be able to do, I once again get a bad attitude (i.e. guilt, resentment, frustration). Then I realize that I have not accepted being a frail mortal and that I still do not want to need help.
But we all give and receive help. That is actually by design, not because of a fault in the design.
And if we build an identity on being a helper, on always being self-sufficient and in a position to help others, there is a danger that we can look down with contempt on those who need help. Not intentionally. But if we revile needing help, how do we view others who need it?
So there is some slow, deep work happening in me in this area. It’s still in progress, although I’m hoping God chooses to work on this in my life without any more crazy injuries.
It’s been 4 months since I’ve shared this space with you. Can you believe that? It’s gone by fast, but it also feels like a century since I shared my heart with you.
When we first started this journey of “YES” that led us across the world to our life here in Ukraine it was very much the story and journey of our family. I shared the happenings on our blog, mainly just because blogging was “the thing” to do and I thought it could be kind of fun to try my hand at a public journal of such. I wanted a way to remember the process and also a way to fill in family and close friends in one bang. Killing two birds and all that jazz. The process, or journey, we started out on was an adoption journey. It was a personal, intimate journey for our family and sharing my heart and thoughts along the way was the only way I knew how to write. Over the years one thing led to another, which led to another, which led to us starting a non-profit, moving our family of 6 around the world, adopting Vlad, buying the Homestead property, taking guardianship of our boys, building the duplex…then war and refugee life and homecoming and horses and house parents and all.the.things. Over the past 12 years, this whole thing has become much more than our family’s personal journey and much more than my online journal of sorts. The writings here represent Wide Awake and Dim Hidnosti and there is so much more to be shared than my feelings about it all. 😆
And yet, I know that part of what has drawn people (and maybe you!) to this work has been hearing the personal perspective behind all the things happening around here. And because this work is not just my day job but also my family, my life, and the thing I believe I was made to do, it’s really quite impossible for me to tease out the personal from the organizational- even if I wanted to. I’m just, in general, a “heart-on-my-sleeve” type of person, so writing without getting too personal is just not something I’m able to do. That’s all fine and dandy when I’m feeling all fine and dandy, but it all kind of falls apart when I fall apart.
Over the years we have seen and experienced so much beauty, and we have also experienced a great deal of pain. There were the early years that were so exciting, but also filled with uncertainty and worry (especially about our kids. Remember how worried I was that they would never learn Ukrainian???). There was the huge transition of bringing the boys out and then the disappointment of realizing that they couldn’t all live with us forever like we thought. (By the way, what were we actually thinking, imagining that would work??? My word, we have learned a lot.) Then there was/is the war. The day we had to leave our home and take the boys as refugees in Germany was the single most painful day of my life. All of that I freely and honestly shared with you. I never wanted you to think this journey was all rainbows and unicorns, so I tried to be very honest about sharing the amazing and the heartbreaking. But over the past couple of years, maybe since the war started that honest, personal, and free channel of communication from me to you has slowly become harder and harder for me to access.
I can’t completely blame my “communication barrier”, of sorts, on the war, but I also can’t deny the part war has played in changing all of us to our cores. That time living away with all the boys in a different country was unbelievably challenging and traumatizing. I really hate to use that “T Word” because I’m aware it’s so overused and abused, but I feel like it’s a true way to describe that time. We left our home not knowing if we would ever be able to return. We then watched helplessly as our dear boys who had worked so incredibly hard, along with us, to come so far and heal so deeply and grow so much, slowly and then rapidly lose their skills and decline to such states that it became impossible to continue like we were in Germany. I don’t know if I’ve ever before or since felt such helplessness as I did in that time. I remember crying to Jed “I just don’t want this to be my life!” Rough times, Folks, rough times.
Another barrier to my sharing has just been the fact that I was, honestly, a bit burned out with sharing the story. Gasp! Truth bomb. Hehe. I mean, I’ve been sharing this work and this journey for 12 years now and I just felt tired. I felt uninspired. I felt like, although the work obviously, is just as important to me as the day it was birthed 12 years ago, I just didn’t want to talk about it anymore. I wanted to live it and savor it and love it as much as I do, without trying to figure out creative ways to describe it. I guess it was just a case of good ol’ fashioned burnout. And I’m so thankful to Christiana for lifting that responsibility from me during our sabbatical so I could just rest. What a gift!
And not to be a Debbie Downer, but there is one more barrier to communication between you and me. That one includes my kiddos and dignity and the whole jumbly casserole that comes out of life and ministry and work and family all being a mostly combined entity. To me, that jumbly casserole is the best ever and I wouldn’t trade that life for the world. But it does make communication a bit hard to splice out.
When we moved to Ukraine our kids were young and it seemed like they were little extensions of my body. Their joys and pains were easy to see and understand, and in those early days of life in Ukraine, I was feeling a lot of those same joys and pains so it was natural to share them with you. Our family unit was like a little island here in Ukraine and we felt and experienced all the things together. Now most of my children are teenagers and sharing their joys and pains online with people who don’t even know them doesn’t feel right or even related to what you come here to read. So there is the need to separate some of the Johnson family sharing from the greater Homestead family sharing.
But, there is a but. You know that our family is an adoptive family (several times over), and adoption has always been a big part of our heart. We heavily and successfully advocated for the adoption of foster children and many children from Ukraine before we moved here and then for several of our boys from Romaniv. I believe that adoption is God’s heart and a necessary act of love in this broken world. Children were made for families. Adoption is important and necessary, and also, adoption is incredibly painful and difficult. That is just the reality. Anytime a child is removed from their biological family there is pain, no matter the age of the child. Add in a history of substance abuse and the pain grows.
We moved to Ukraine to bring people with disabilities into family and to create a model of family and care that can be replicated by others around the country. There are many reasons why institutions like Romaniv exist, but one big reason is because of the lack of social safety net for families who have a child with a disability. There is a huge lack of qualified therapists and mental health specialists. The schools are not prepared for children with special needs and most schools have zero idea of how to actually work with children who can’t learn in the way that is expected and have zero plan for how to successfully educate those children. We see the final outcome of the lack of social safety net in our adult men who have come from the institution into our Wide Awake family, and we have experienced the effects of the lack of social safety net in our own family with one of our adopted children.
To parent a child with special needs in Ukraine is to fight the good fight on your own. There is no team brainstorming. There is no person telling you what they recommend you do. There are no provisions made. There is no support. All of these things you have to find on your own or create on your own. We have been doing this for our child for the past almost 11 years, and it has taken all that I have to give. I can’t tell you how isolating and painful it is to try everything and give everything and feel that at the end of the day, your family is alone in this fight for your child and there is no safety net if you should fail or make a wrong choice or miss a thing, or if you should have known better but just didn’t because you have never seen or known of another child like yours. To parent a child with special needs in Ukraine is to go at it completely alone and pray that at the end of the day, it will be enough.
I haven’t shared as much with you recently because I have been elbows deep in my own journey of parenting a child who desperately needs more than we can give. Our child needs what can only be found outside of Ukraine, but we know that God has us in Ukraine for that very population. It hasn’t really hit me until just while I’ve been writing this that this must be how all the mamas of our friends with disabilities must have felt over the years. We need for our children what can’t be found in our country. And we wonder how things would be different if we had the resources that others have. We do our best but feel at the end of each day that we are failing and pray that God will cover it all. Hope can be hard to find at times. We can only trust that God loves our children more than we do and that He will give us the wisdom we need when we need it.
So, wow, maybe this got a bit rambly (is that a word?) I just wanted you to know where I’ve been; where my head and heart have been. Praise God the work here continues, more beautiful than ever. Our team and our boys are thriving, even during these dark times in our country. Because of the amazing and steady work of our team I’m able to take more of a backseat from the day-to-day work of Wide Awake/Dime Hidnosti to focus on our child. I’m incredibly thankful for that.
I’m back, feeling a bit more refreshed and ready to share with you again. With Jed and Christiana’s help, we’ll continue to keep you in the loop on all the things happening around here. There is never a dull moment around here and we are honored to walk this never-dull journey with you.
Well, I’ll start out by apologizing for the radio silence. You haven’t heard from us recently, but for good reason, because we’ve just been so busy doing everything! A couple weeks ago dear friends from the US arrived to spend time with us and the team and last week our team put on a camp at Romaniv for our boys there. It was, as the title implied, my most favorite camp EVER. What can I say? It was perfection. The week was peaceful, deeply joyful, memorable, and just good. So so good.
It had been several years since we’d put on a day camp at the institution. I might be wrong, but I feel like the last time was in 2017…the summer before we took any of our boys out. That was a long time ago!! I’m thankful that God turned our focus back to our boys there because this camp was really needed- by them, and by us. Any time we can spend extended periods of time with our friends at Romaniv is good for them and for us. We learn more about the boys and they grow in their trust of us. Our love for them enlarges and deepens, and they have a whole week filled with love, hours of complete safety, one-on-one attention, and all the doting we can muster. It’s a win-win on many levels.
The theme of the camp was “The Five Senses” and our interns set up stations around the institution where our boys could go and experience the different senses. Each boy had his own volunteer and the goal was not that each boy would visit each station every day, but that the volunteer would pay attention to what the boy was interested in and be led by his interests. If a boy just wanted to stay all day at the music station and relax there, maybe even fall asleep, so be it! It was a very loose program where the individuality of each boy could be noticed and celebrated. I loved and appreciated that. We also had two volunteers who did a program each day for the nannies. They had tons of fun with them and I hope the nannies really felt special and seen.
Each day we had 25-28 people heading out to camp to bring our boys joy. Several new volunteers joined us and experienced life at Romaniv for the first time. They all did great! The vast majority of our volunteers were teens and it was just an absolute joy to see them delight in the boys. They could have been doing anything with their free summer days, but they chose to give a week to our precious friends and that was a real encouragement and injection of hope into our team. My mama heart was bursting as I watched our son Ezra lead the camp with the other interns, and our daughter, Havalah volunteer each day. New volunteers were partnered with Hava so they could learn the ropes of Romaniv and how to communicate with the boys. I so enjoyed watching her be an awesome example of love that others could follow. Our little Evie spent the week with us at Romaniv too and it was her first time to be there since she was a baby. She’d been begging us to go “to the boys” for at least a year, but I wasn’t sure she was ready. She’s super comfortable with our boys here and our friends with disabilities from the city, but our boys are her family. She’s never known life without them! All their noises, their unique movements, and quirks are normal to her. Romaniv is muuuuuuuuch different. But, we decided to give it a go. When we first arrived she was scared and started crying, but after a few minutes of reminding her that they were just like our boys at home and that she just needed to get to know them, all was great and she loved it. The boys were fascinated to see a little girl and she became quite a popular figure around camp. I don’t think she minded that one bit. 😉
On each day of camp, a few of the boys with their volunteers would go in the van to town for ice cream and a walk in the park. The boys behave so differently when they are out in town! It’s really fun to see who is curious, who is quiet, who gets excited…and we are very thankful to the Director of the institution for allowing us such freedom with the boys. He is a fairly new director, but we have known him for many years. He is supportive of our work and really gives us free rein to try new things. We had many years when that was not the case at Romaniv, so we will never take his trust for granted. What a gift!
The last day of camp was extra, extra special because we brought two of our horses! Now talk about a new sensory experience; that was the ultimate. Dajana and I loaded them up bright and early and staked out a place for them in a field near the institution. Then the team would bring us a few boys at a time and the boys would “meet” the horses at whatever level they were at. For some boys, just leaving the territory of the institution and being in a new place was enough sensory input to last the day, while some wanted to pet the horses, and some even rode! Our horse, Mishka, was an absolute rock star. She was so patient and could not have behaved better. Melody, her 11-month-old foal, just came along for the ride, so Mishka wouldn’t be alone. But she also behaved nicely and is shaping up to follow in her superstar mom’s footsteps. That was only the second time we’d taken any of the horses in the trailer and the first time we’d taken them soooo far, but they did amazing and it was a total success! We hope to do it again before the summer ends.
All in all, we considered this camp a huge success. Thank you to all of you who prayed for our time there. It was just wonderful, for the boys and for us. They ingrained themselves a little deeper into each of our hearts. They reminded us again why we are doing this work and inspired us to keep moving forward, to not grow weary, to not grow complacent, but to keep saying yes, pushing, and fighting till each and every one of them is free.
