Like I said in the last post, amidst all the talk of war and surviving Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, it’s been quite some time since I’ve given you a good update on each of our boys. If you would like to see more frequent pictures and hear about what our boys are up to on the regular you can always sign up for our newsletter (form at the end of this post) or follow our team’s Instagram. But today I thought it would be fun just to let you know how each of our guys is doing and how you can pray for each of them, specifically.

You can find the first part of the update where I shared about Vlad, Boris, Ruslan, and Anton here.

Sasha, Yaroslav, and Vova are the newest members of the big Wide Awake Family and you probably feel like you know them the least. Back when the other 4 boys joined our fam I was active on social media and shared a lot about them. I really want you to know these three boys well too! They are so fun, precious, deserving, and wonderful. You would just love them if you met them face to face. I know it. They are impossible not to love. If you have any questions about any of our boys you are always welcome to write me! I love to talk about them to anyone and everyone. 🙂

Sasha joined our family in 2021, is now 16 years old, and lives in Side B of the duplex with Anton, Grant, and Lois the cat. Sasha (aka Sashulya) is the baby of the family (well, Sasha and Evie share that role…hehe). He is the youngest of our boys by a mile and is the cuddliest, most precious, sweetest, and squishiest ever. Everyone who meets him falls in love with his smile. When we were considering taking guardianship of Sasha we felt like the Lord told us that Sasha would bring us joy. That has been the truth. He had the easiest transition to family life and just brings us tons of joy with his singing and his wide smile that lights up his whole face. He thinks he’s smaller than he is and will try to climb you like a tree if he wants to be held. But, in fact, we are pretty certain that Sasha is going to turn out to be a giant. He’s growing like a weed and his huge hands and feet show no signs of that slowing down any time soon. He’s so big and just solid!

Sasha’s development is slow and he often seems to be in his own world. He’ll get fixated on a toy or a water bottle (his item of choice) and he’s a goner. But, some new developments are that he will now often turn his head when his name is called and when food is being cooked he’ll make his way to the kitchen in expectation. Those are big things! It shows that he is becoming more engaged in the world around him. Sasha is very musical and loves to sing. He can even count to 10! Now, he totally doesn’t know what numbers are or that he’s counting, but the team counts to 10 each day during yoga and he is repeating what he hears. He even does it with the same intonation as the team. It’s so cute.

Sasha loves cuddles, eating (I think he’s the neatest eater of our boys), his toys, old Soviet children’s songs, and being with the people who love him. We love Sasha deeply and are so very thankful God has put him in our family.

How you can pray for Sasha: Pray for Sasha to continue to become more engaged in the world around him. Pray for good control, or even healing! of his epilepsy. Pray for our team to have wisdom in how to best reach Sasha and teach him new things.

Yaroslav joined our family this past April, is now 27 years old, and lives in Side A of the duplex with Vova, Lesya, and Carlos the cat. Oh Yaroslav (aka Yarik, Yaroslavchik). Yaroslav gives us a run for our money, just like we always knew he would when we dreamed of getting him out of the institution. He is such a character! I think anyone who has ever visited the Isolation Hall at Romaniv remembers Yarik well. He is just someone that is impossible to miss. He is full of so much life, energy, charisma, and fire- you just can’t help but react to his energy. Sometimes I look at him and I just can’t believe that he is here with us and not at the institution. He was such a presence there!

If you’ll remember, Jed brought him and Vova straight out of the institution and to Germany where they were refugees with us in the church. It was a really miraculous story and I think that’s why it’s sometimes still a little hard to believe it happened. We don’t have official guardianship of Yaroslav and Vova but will start the paperwork process for that this next week. We’ll have a big celebration when they are legally members of our family, but in our hearts, they are already ours.

Yarik has grown and changed a lot since we brought him out of the institution in April. He walks so much better, it’s really incredible. He has good days and bad days, as far as mobility and coordination, but most of the time he is completely independent in his walking. He needs a wheelchair for longer walks, but around the house he is independent. He is learning, slowly but surely, about boundaries and the rules of how to live in a family, but he is sooooo smart. We know he’ll get it. He’s much smarter than we ever realized before. He understands cause and effect, consequences for poor choices, and all sorts of things. He likes “helping” in the kitchen and drinking coffee, but most of all he loves people. Yaroslav longs for love and attention. Like all the rest of our boys, after living a lifetime full of neglect and abuse, his need for love and attention is like a bottomless pit that will never be filled. Sometimes his attention-seeking behaviors can be pretty destructive and tiring to manage, but we know that his journey of healing has only just begun and it won’t always be like it is now. We have hope for his future.

We dreamed of having Yarik in our family for years. I’m so thankful that dream finally came true!

How you can pray for Yaroslav: Yarik has pretty fragile health, so prayers for his health and physical wholeness would be appreciated. We recently did some genetic testing but are still waiting for the results. We want to know how to best care for his physical body and hopefully, we’ll get some answers in that testing. Please pray for Yarik and his brokenness in attachment. He is highly emotional and extremely dysregulated, especially when it comes to relationships. Please pray for him to have peace in his heart and mind, and to better understand the immense love God has for him.

Vova joined our family this past April, is now 27 years old, and lives in Side A of the duplex with Lesya, Yaroslav, and Carlos the cat. I am so so excited to share with you about our Vova (aka Vovka, Vovchik)! Vova is doing absolutely fantastic and his journey of healing over the past 8 months has been nothing short of miraculous. I am just in awe of God’s love for Vova. When Vova was in the institution we heard a rumor that he had Phenylketonuria (PKU), but the diagnosis was not in his paperwork. Once we took him out of the institution and I began to read up on untreated PKU and its symptoms, the more I was convinced that Vova was suffering from that disorder. The wait to get testing and help for PKU in Germany was months long and we ended up returning home before anyone there could help us, but FINALLY, in September we got the official diagnosis. To put it simply, PKU is an inborn error of metabolism that prevents the body from processing an amino acid found in protein. For someone with PKU, protein is toxic to the brain and when left untreated, the person develops a severe intellectual disability. Our Vova’s PKU was untreated for 27 years. 🙁 The only treatment for PKU is a carefully controlled low-protein diet and the introduction of medical food, which provides Vova with a form of protein his body can use. In the US and most other developed countries when a baby is diagnosed with PKU their treatment is overseen by a team of specialists: a doctor, nurse, and dietician. But here in Ukraine, there is a doctor…and me. She basically gave us a couple cans of formula, a list of foods Vova can’t eat, and a wish for good luck. Ha! Let’s just say that my learning curve has been steep. But, over the past 3 months, our team has worked together and we have Vova’s PKU under good control. I do the research and math, write his weekly menu, and go grocery shopping for his special foods. We hired our friend, Inna, and she comes once a week to the duplex to cook for Vova. She has to weigh everything as she cooks and then portions out each meal by weight. Everything goes in the freezer and then the team just consults the menu and pulls out his meals for each day. It’s the only way a team of people could accurately treat his PKU. It’s a lot of work, but it’s going well!

At first, I think the team was a bit skeptical, and I’ll admit, I was too. We knew that some of the effects of untreated PKU are irreversible, but we hoped to see some sort of change after the diet was started, even if it was small. It’s just impossible to know which aspects of Vova’s disability are caused by the untreated PKU and which aspects are caused by him living in Romaniv all those years. The only way to find out was to begin treating the PKU and watch what would happen. I didn’t expect much, but Vova is changing and it is miraculous to watch! He is making so much intentional eye contact. He is happier, more peaceful. A previous doctor told us he had cerebral palsy because he was so spastic, but the geneticist (our PKU doc) thought the spasticity was more related to his untreated PKU. She was right. His muscles are still tight, but nothing like they were before. Untreated PKU has a really horrid smell and the whole house just reeked of it. No more! Vova smells fresh and clean every day. Vova used to yell a lot- kind of like a singing yell, but super loud and once he started you couldn’t get him to stop. He would randomly start yelling in church, in the car, anywhere. Now he barely ever does that and when he begins you can sometimes get him to stop just by talking to him. Another major thing is that he has started to toilet train! He was fully in diapers and had no interest in the toilet before, but now he will go there himself! He needs help, but he shows when he wants the toilet. It’s unbelievable. He is like a different person.

I am so thankful for our doctor here who has come to truly care for Vova and is so helpful to us. There is a wonderful community of Ukrainians with PKU who have donated their extra formula to us to get us by until the government starts to provide it to Vova in the new year. Our team has done a great job of following instructions and being careful with Vova’s diet. It is truly a team effort and we are rocking it. I’m just thrilled and thankful that Vova has this opportunity to truly LIVE. It’s just great.

How you can pray for Vova: Please pray for continued healing of Vova’s brain and body from the years of untreated PKU. Pray for a reversal of the harm it has done to his body. Please pray for Vova to grow in understanding of our love for him and God’s love for him and for him to learn to trust more. Pray that he would not be afraid.

Thank you again, for walking this journey with us. Thank you for loving our boys and caring about their lives. Thank you for supporting this work so that our boys could be free and live lives full of love. We are thankful!

We’re nearing the end of a doozy of a year and I realized, amidst all the talk of war and peace, I haven’t updated you on our boys in quite some time. This whole work exists because of them and for them, so I figured you might be wondering how they are doing! If you follow our team’s Instagram account or subscribe to our newsletter you have definitely seen pics of our fellows, but really good updates have been few and far between. So, consider this my end-of-year gift to you- part 1. We just have too many boys these days to try to write one big blog post about all of them. That’s a good problem to have! In this post I’ll share about Vlad, Boris, Ruslan, and Anton, and then in the next post, I’ll write about Sasha, Yaroslav, and Vova. Let’s dive in!

Vlad joined our family in 2015, is now 22 years old, and is living in Oregon Vladislav (aka Vlad, Vladik, Vladchik, Vlad the Builder, Vlad the Chicken Man) is doing fantastic! Many of you commented after his latest Youtube appearance that he was like a completely different person and I have to say that you’re not wrong. Vlad has grown and changed in ways we could have never imagined. When we adopted him 7 years ago he was barely verbal and whatever words he did have were barely intelligible. Now he is fluent in Ukrainian and English (and understands Russian) and is understood well by most people, most of the time. Vlad is crazy smart and crazy creative. We are so proud of the man he is becoming.

Vlad currently lives in Oregon with my parents. After our time as refugees in Germany, our Johnson family decided to make a quick visit to Oregon to see family and to do some Wide Awake business. Right before we left Germany to head to Oregon we had the idea to leave Vlad there for some time. Vlad has a lot of issues with his teeth and the structure of his mouth. Those issues have worsened drastically over the years and no one in Ukraine will even touch him. I get it- it’s a bit of a hot mess in there. There is an orthodontist in Oregon who years ago had offered to treat Vlad for free. We were thankful but knew we could never relocate our family to Oregon for the time it would take to treat Vlad’s mouth. But Vlad has grown, matured, and changed so much, we decided that he was ready to be in Oregon for his treatment without us. It kind of felt like a “now or never” moment. We asked my parents if Vlad could live with them, and they said yes! My mom just retired in May, so she has the time now to support Vlad that she wouldn’t have had before. I was able to visit Vlad there in November and he is absolutely thriving with my parents. We could never ever express to them how very thankful we are for their love and support of Vlad. It means the world to us.

In November Vlad began working in landscaping at a local company that employs people with disabilities. He only went to work once, then got sick, then visited us in Ukraine, but he arrives back in Oregon today and next week will get to begin working twice a week. He is loved by his church family and some of our friends back in Oregon. He is just doing great!! Also, his teeth are really changing. It’s exciting to see that progress. Vlad is happy, healthy, and thriving.

How you can pray for Vlad: Pray for peace in Vlad’s heart while he is away from us. He really does worry about us and our safety. He thinks about the war here and I know he feels a lot of emotions about it. Also, please pray that he would find friendship at his new job. I would just love for him to have a friend there.

Boris joined our family in 2017, is now 30 years old, and lives in our home. Boris (aka Bmo, Borya, Borka, Beemchick, Beemchick my Weemchick) has been in our family for 5 years! I can’t even believe that, but it also feels like he’s just always been with us. We love our Bmo. This year has been a rough one for our Mister Man. I mean, who am I kidding, it’s been a rough one for us all. But Bmo has really shown us with his body how stressful, difficult, and confusing 2022 has been for him. Navigating war, living as refugees, and then entering back into life in a country still at war has been challenging for all of our boys. Their understanding of the situation is limited, and for the ones who are nonverbal, it’s even harder because we don’t know how much they do and don’t understand and we don’t know what worries they hold inside of them. When we lived in the church all together in Germany Boris struggled soooo much. Who knows? Maybe he thought that was our new permanent home. Maybe he thought “Well, I guess this is what our life is now…” He was very vocal about his frustration with life there and he regressed in many of his skills and abilities. It was really heartbreaking to see, and actually, his regression ultimately helped us make the decision to return home to Ukraine. His suffering was painful to watch and there was nothing we could do to make it better for him. So hard. Transitioning back to life here in Ukraine has been good for our Bmo, but it has not been easy. It’s not like we got back home, the switch was flipped, and he was suddenly back to his old self. If only. No, it has been a hard road of recovery, but bit by bit he is getting back to where he was before the war began. We’re still in a war zone though, so some of our struggles will remain until the war ends and we can truly begin to feel safe and secure again…whatever that may look like. It’s honestly hard to imagine feeling truly safe again, but even still, we pray for God to comfort Bmo and bring him peace in his heart. He has made great strides since we returned home in July. We just keep loving him and helping him to feel secure in his place in our home and family. Boris is a gift to our family and I truly can’t imagine our lives without him.

How you can pray for Boris: Please pray for Boris to have peace and calm in his heart and mind. He is sooooo stressed much of the time. He even shakes because of the tension in his body. He isn’t harming himself, but he is very obviously not at peace.

Ruslan joined our family in 2018, is now 35 years old, and lives in an apartment with our team member, Luda. I would say that out of all of our boys Ruslan (aka Rus, Ruslanchik) has grown and changed the most over this past year. It’s absolutely incredible to see how much he has matured! Rus really doesn’t like change, especially when it is unexpected. He is a big fan of routine and knowing what comes next. So, as you can imagine, we were quite concerned about how Ruslan would do when we evacuated to Germany. I am amazed to say that Ruslan did amazingly well in Germany, and he even thrived there. If you would have told me a year ago that Rus would sleep in a room with 7 other people and do just fine I would have laughed in your face. But he did! He slept with 7 other people in one room. He lived with 39 other people in the church and was mostly happy. It was truly miraculous. One massive saving grace was that in Germany Ruslan was able to work. A place that employs people with disabilities took Rus and Vlad under their wing and the two of them were able to go to work 5 days a week. I think if Ruslan hadn’t had the stability of the work he would have really struggled in Germany. It was such a loving, positive environment and Ruslan really thrived there. We are so thankful for that experience.

After we returned home to Ukraine Ruslan began working at the electrical shop where Vlad used to work before the war. Our friend, Dima, really believes in the value of our guys and dreams of providing more work for people like our boys. His team likes having Rus there and Ruslan feels so proud to have occupation. He is slowly learning how to do different tasks and Dima even makes up work for Rus, just so he feels that he is helpful and needed there. It’s really great. Ruslan works at Dima’s shop Monday through Thursday for a little over 2 hours a day. We are super thankful to Dima for loving Rus and providing him with the possibility to work.

Ruslan is fun-loving, and caring, and really loves to pray and go to church. We love him so very much!

How you can pray for Ruslan: Pray for Ruslan to continue to grow in wisdom and to truly know that he is loved.

Anton joined our family in 2018, is now 34 years old, and lives in Side B of the duplex with Grant, Sasha, and Lois the cat. Our precious Anton (aka Antoshka, Antoha, Antonchik) has gained so many words over this past year! When we first took Anton from the institution he could say one word, the Ukrainian word for “God”. If you asked him who loved him he would answer “God”. Over the years he has learned to mimic a lot of words that people say and sometimes repeat after them, but this year he has begun to say a lot of words independently! It’s really great when he can express his wants and desires and we can only hope that his verbal skills will keep growing because I think better communication is key to helping Anton when his emotions are too big to handle. He is a high-emotion dude and in the past, any negative emotion would be expressed in anger. He is now able to sometimes express sadness too, which is a big step!

Germany was pretty rough on our Antoshka. Our living situation was basically like a mini institution and he absolutely did not thrive in that environment. It was no surprise to us that he struggled. Actually, I’m pretty amazed he held it together as long as he did! I didn’t really talk about it publicly, but in May we ended up sending Anton from Germany back to Ukraine to live with our team members that had remained here at the Homestead. Anton was struggling so hard and his aggression was growing and growing. He basically became a 1:1 and since there were so many vulnerable people living all together and no way to isolate him, there was just no way for us to keep people safe. It was actually a really tragic and impossible decision. We felt we had no option. We had to remove him from the church, but there was nowhere for him to go but home. Oleg and Maxim, two of our team members, were living here at the Homestead so Grant drove Anton to the border of Ukraine where Oleg met them and took Anton home. Although we felt we had no other alternative, it ended up being the best decision ever for Anton. We knew our guys could keep him safe and if things were to go bad here they could easily put him in the car and drive to Western Ukraine. We didn’t worry about his physical safety, but we definitely worried about his emotional state and how he would feel, being separated from all of us. His understanding is really limited, so we knew he would be super confused and sad. But, Oleg and Maxim did a great job with him and actually, once Anton was back here we knew it was just a matter of time before everyone else joined him. We are his guardians. We knew we couldn’t stay a couple of countries away from him for long. He just gave us the kickstart we needed. 🙂

Since returning home Anton has done fairly well. He has his good seasons and hard seasons, but overall I would say he has had more good times than bad times. He is surrounded by people who love him dearly and he knows it. He is happy, healthy, and growing and he is very precious to us.

How you can pray for Anton: Please pray for Anton to learn to care for others. Pray for him to learn to express his emotions without aggression toward others.

Thank you for loving our boys! I know much of the growth they have experienced is because of the faithful prayers of the people who love them. They are all on journeys of healing and we are so honored to walk beside them and to be their family. Thank you for helping to make their freedom possible.

It’s been a while since I wrote an update about all our boys, right? I tried valiantly, for a while, to do the prayer team updates once a month, but I got a little burned out on that. It just ended up being too much. So…it kinda fizzled. Sorry about that. 🤷‍♀️ I’ll make it up to you now with an update about each of the boys you love so much. As you’ll see below, they are just doing really, really well. We are thankful that right now all of our boys are happy, healthy, and thriving.

Vlad. Can you believe our Vlad is 21 years old now? He’s officially an adult, so he’s working hard at learning how an adult should behave and taking on more adult responsibilities. Vlad has taken on the responsibility of caring for the goats along with the chickens and I have to admit that I get a good chuckle watching him try to wrangle them into the yard at night. It is a sight to behold and probably the only time you will ever see Vlad angry at any living being. 😂 He still goes to work at the electrical shop 3 days a week for about 4 hours and it’s going “okay”. There are good days, and not so good days. Vlad has the most wonderful, kind, patient boss, but it’s still a challenge for him to stay focused and motivated at work without mom or dad there to keep him in line 🤦‍♀️. I hope he can keep his job, but he’s going to need to rise up to the challenge if he wants to keep working. We’re also searching for the balance of what kind of work can challenge Vlad so he can grow, but also work in which he can be successful. It’s all one big experiment.

Physically, Vlad is doing great. We decided to wait until next winter to being working on his orthodontics back in the US. Right now he is needs a lot of support from us and it just doesn’t seem like the right time for him to be so far away. We’ll see! He is generally happy and thriving. The other day he brought me his Christmas list that he wrote out himself. It was written in a mixture of Ukrainian and English and it just made me smile. He is such a joy and we are thankful that he is our son.

Boris. Our sweet Bmo is doing so great!! He really is growing and changing right now. He has started to communicate more and more of his needs and desires and I think that brings him joy- when we understand him. He mostly communicates by bringing us the thing he wants (like a cup when he wants a drink, or his blanket when he wants to sleep), but he also will occasionally use cards. It’s encouraging to see him trying to communicate. He’s also using the toilet more frequently with great success. We are all super happy about that!

Boris is still med-free and self-harm-free. We stopped giving him meds at the beginning of last year and I’m pretty sure he hasn’t hit himself even once. I’m still in awe of that miracle. I never dreamed he would have a life without hurting himself. He has been laughing a lot lately and is just generally really happy and content. The past couple of weeks he has been vocalizing more too! It’s so strange to hear consonant sounds coming from his mouth. What if someday he speaks!? 🤩

Ruslan. Rus is still living with Luda and her son, Nazar, in an apartment in town and it is great. Luda is really the perfect person for Ruslan and they do so well together. She gives him a lot of independence and he is thriving in that. He is growing and maturing, emotionally, and is all-around happy! Of course, he still has his moments when trauma rears its ugly head, but he is growing in that. He is better able to handle unexpected changes in plans and negative emotions. The team has been working hard on that with him.

Ruslan loves meeting friends for coffee. When he goes to a cafe he always orders a “cappuccinko”. 😂 He is so super social and I love watching him at church, how he walks up and greets all the different people he knows. Such a man! I’m really proud of Ruslan. He is making great strides and brings us a lot of joy and laughter. In the past, my relationship with him has gone through some difficulties, but God has brought a lot of healing to my heart and I’m so thankful that I am in a place right now where I can just delight in Ruslan. He is a precious gift to our family and our team. 🥰

Anton. Antoshka is talking up a storm! In the past, Anton has really only spoken we have asked him to, when was repeating after us, or when he was angry. But right now he is in a season of exploding vocabulary! He is talking on his own accord and saying things we have never heard him say before. He’s singing a lot too, which usually is a sign with him that all is well. He’s in a really good place these days.

Back in the late summer, early fall he was really stressed and had lost some weight. He was looking pretty skinny and just not healthy, in general. But, over the last two months, he has gained 12 pounds! Anton really shows us his emotional well-being through his body- his skin coloring, his weight. So a chubby Anton is a happy Anton. And that makes the rest of us happy too. 🥰 Anton is taking more “responsibility” for Sasha and will even take things away from him if he knows Sasha is holding something he’s not allowed to have. The other day I was in the kitchen at the duplex and I heard Anton yell “Sashaaaaaaa!!!” I ran to the bathroom and Sasha was trying to climb into the (empty) bathtub while Anton was trying to stop him. Big brother was watching out for Sasha. 😊 This is huge because in the past Anton has really only ever seemed to care about Anton. The fact that he is watching Sasha and interacting with him like that is actually a big step for Anton. I’m proud. ❤️

Sasha. Oh Sasha. He just brings us all so much joy! I remember back when we first decided to pursue guardianship of Sasha, we felt the Lord speak to us that he would bring joy to us all, and that has totally been true. His transition to family life has been the easiest of all the boys- by a mile. He was just ready! He is the cuddliest, sweetest man-child (😆) ever. Often Sasha is in content in his own world, but as time goes by he is more and more willing to engage. He responds to his name now (sometimes) and will follow some simple commands. Sasha loves to cuddle, sing, run, spin in circles, play with water bottles, and grab everything in sight that he’s not supposed to have. 😉 He also really loves to eat, but I think that goes without saying. He is a 15-year-old boy, after all and he’s growing like a weed. He’s about to grow out of all of his pants and has gained about 25lbs. since he came home to us in May. 😱

Sasha has epilepsy and when he came to us he was on two medications: one he took twice a day and one he took three times a day. Now, six months later, he takes only one of those medications, twice a day. Woot! The neurologist is happy with the changes in Sasha’s brain activity and now that he is on less medication he is more interactive and alert throughout the day. Sleep is sometimes a bit hit or miss, but mostly fine. We are just so incredibly thankful that Sasha is in our family and we all adore him. He is a gift.

Thanks to everyone who prays for our boys. It is such a joy to share how they are developing and changing. Sometimes it feels like we struggle with the same things over and over, month after month, year after year, (because we do…😜) but when I sit down and write out an update like this I marvel at how much they really have grown! These are not little children we are talking about! Besides Sasha, these are grown men, yet they still change and grow. They have so much to overcome every single day, but they do it. They allow us into their worlds and they let us love them. And then they love us back. I know I’ve said it a bazillion times, but I just can’t even begin to imagine our lives without our boys. They are God’s gifts to us.

If you follow our team’s social media accounts or if you’re subscribed to our newsletter you already heard the wonderful news that Sasha is home! I’m finally getting around to writing about it in this space. Two weeks ago we got to bust him out of the institution for good. It was a long road of documents and jumping through too many hoops, but that’s all behind us, and our Sasha is now safe and sound in his forever home. We are so relieved and thankful. Thank you for all the prayer support along the way.

Sasha lived with his mother for his first 11 years and then was removed from her care and placed in the institution. I remember the day he arrived at Romaniv. He was so beautiful! He looked so innocent, so full of life. We were all devastated to see such a precious soul sent to such a dark place. He was affectionate, sought out eye contact, and could even sing songs; it was obvious that he had been loved. We knew his innocence wouldn’t last long, and sure enough, over the following months and years, we watched him quickly decline and turn into a shell of his former self.

A couple years ago a social worker asked us to help find a home for Sasha, and since we knew we were creating forever homes for people just like him, it seemed obvious that he should be the first boy to come live in the duplex as soon as it was ready. Jed started on documents, Max and Morgan picked up and moved their whole lives to Ukraine, and the duplex was made into an absolutely beautiful home, all so Sasha could know love and be free. And FINALLY it is a reality. As I’m writing this he’s on his way to a swimming pool for the first time. He loves water, so I’m guessing he’s going to be pretty excited. 😊

Because Sasha’s history is different from the rest of our boys, having lived with his mother for so many years and having obviously known love at some point, we were hopeful he would have an easier period of adaptation. And so far he has! Also, he is just now 15, and the difference between taking a 15 year old out of an institution and a 30 year old is not small. His brain is more pliable. He is more flexible. He seems to learn more quickly. Yes, we are in for a marathon, not a sprint, but the head start of him being younger is a pretty big deal.

When Sasha first came to us he was afraid of everything. He resisted any transition to a different activity or a different location in the house. He was afraid to lay down to sleep and paced in his room till all hours of the night. On the first night, it took three of us to change his diaper because he was just so afraid. He didn’t really want to be touched. But he has already grown so much! It’s pretty miraculous how ready he was to be loved and cared for. He is so affectionate. He loves hugs and kisses and when he is sad he wants to be held and comforted. He is feeding himself- slowly, but safely. He smiles and has started to make some sounds. He is easily overstimulated and is pretty food-obsessed, but overall, he is really doing amazingly well. I think his development is going to explode over the next several months. It’s so fun to watch him open up and show more and more of himself.

Sasha is under the legal guardianship of Jed, but he lives in the duplex with Max, Morgan, and Anton. Max and Morgan could not be a better fit for Sasha. They love him so much and from day one they gave their hearts away to him. It’s clear that Sasha cares for them and feels safe with them. It’s just so beautiful!!! They are so attuned to Anton and Sasha and their moods, their needs. Max and Morgan are all in and they are doing a fantastic job. It’s a really wonderful thing to be able to trust them completely with the boys’ care. We are nearby if they need us, or if they have questions, but we don’t worry for one second about the boys because we know they are in capable, loving hands. I really can’t express how thankful we are that God brought Max and Morgan to us. What a gift!

Probably the biggest struggle we’ve been working through since Sasha came home is with Anton and his emotions about it all. Anton has big, big feelings, and any negative emotion is expressed with anger. It’s his go-to and he really hasn’t ever known another way. He’s had tons of transition over this past year and we expected that adding Sasha to the mix would be difficult for him. Sure enough, last week he really struggled with anger and aggression. Max and Morgan were super attentive and patient, we changed our schedule of assistants to give Anton more stability, and it seems like he has begun to turn the corner. Over the weekend he even showed some sadness with tears and crying. That’s something we haven’t really ever seen with Anton. It was super encouraging to see him working through sadness with tears instead of anger and aggression. If you remember, please pray for our Anton. He doesn’t want to hurt others, I really believe that. He just grew up his whole life in an environment where anger and aggression were the main modes of communication. Learning a new way takes time, but we won’t give up on our boy. He is learning. Please pray for Max and Morgan too. They really want to keep Sasha safe, and constantly being on the lookout for Anton’s mood shifts can be really exhausting. Pray for them for peace, wisdom, and perseverance. This work is certainly not easy. Worth it? Yes. But easy? Noooooooo. 😳

Lately, I’ve been struck by how wonderful it is to have the gift of time with our boys. We are in no rush for them to meet some sort of developmental milestones. Of course, we want to encourage them to meet their full potential and we want them to have as much independence as they are capable of, but we are in no rush. We have the rest of their lives to help them learn. The most important thing is that they are safe and they are loved. As long as they are safe and loved- and they know it, then we have met our goal. My favorite thing is to look out into the backyard and see Anton on the swing, Sasha playing with a ball (or eating grass…🙃 ), and Bmo just enjoying sitting out in the sun. They are free! They are loved! They are valued and surrounded by people who truly know them and see them as individuals worth fighting for. Life with our boys is a gift. Sometimes it’s really hard, but a lot of times it’s really beautiful. What an honor to be the ones who get to show them love. What an honor to be the ones with whom they feel safe and at home. We are blessed to have our boys and I really can’t imagine a life without them.