DAVID COMES FOR 6 WEEKS!

Dave and I decided to open our home this summer to David, age 9, from Belarus.  We saw this video:  

http://www.portcitychurch.org/missions/globally/belarus/

and it stayed with us all week long until we finally brought it up with each other and decided to go to the informational meeting at our church.  We both felt called to do this and we're so glad we did.  Our church brought over 23 kids and 1 chaperone!  David had been to Matthews, NC, last year but the family was not able to bring him back.  He fit in pretty well and it was definitely a great experience for our family.  He didn't know how to swim, but within a few weeks, he figured it out!  He loved the beach, pool and going to the movies!  He got along great with the girls and pretty well with Ben.  They shared a love of legos, the Wii and riding bikes, to name a few.  

His first morning with us.  His mom told me through an email that he loves drawing, so they did this for awhile the first morning.  

It also happened to be Father's Day!  These 3 have one amazing Dad!

We used Google Translate to communicate with David and it was pretty great for the most part.  It didn't understand David as much to translate Russian to English, but it worked the other way for the most part!

He loved Dave!

We went up to my mom's to see family friends.  I grew up with Jess and her 2 kids, Brendan and Colin, are on the left.  It was so great to reconnect!

My mom paid for a horse lesson for all these kiddos because David loved the horses when we dropped Maaike off for horse camp the previous week.  His older sister, Leontina, 10, was staying with another family and she came along with the 2 girls she was staying with!

Lexi, Maaike, Olivia, Ben, David, Leontina, Hannah

Maaike couldn't wait to come back for more time with horses!

David and Leontina.  Her English was so great so she was a wonderful interpreter for David!

We spent a lot of the time at the beach as well!

One of the surf groups in town held a free surf camp for all the kids from Belarus!  It was for 2 hours, Monday through Thursday evening and David loved every minute of it.

 Ben used a friends surfboard while we were there and really wanted surf lessons!   So that was my mom's birthday gift to him!

This is truly how the girls were most of the time with David!

We watched some of the world cup... hoping the Netherlands would win!

And just randomly, Lexi will sleep anywhere... in the middle of a room...

Ben turned 8 on July 10 and he had 2 birthday cakes also!  We invited our neighbor over on his actual birthday and Ben wanted to make sure he did the blowing out of his 1 candle.... one oversight I didn't think of...  oops!

Ben wanted a birthday party at the ice house again like he did 2 years ago.  We had a blast!  I didn't take many pictures at all unfortunately.

Lexi skated around with the skate sled all by herself!  It was a big step for her.

Maaike is past the skate sled stage and just goes along at her own pace!  She did great.  I didn't get any pictures of the birthday boy but he was all over the place!

Another group from church organized a tennis clinic for the kids from Belarus as well as all of our kids.  All 3 of my kids loved it!

We went to the park after with David's older sister, Leontina.  She was so sweet with my kids, too.

... if she's tired at the beach, she'll put herself right to sleep on a beach chair!...

David loved learning how to fish, too!

We did some blueberry picking, too.

And then had some ice cream!

I signed all the kids up for VBS and I stayed and volunteered in David's grade, since I didn't really want to leave him alone and they can always use volunteers.  We had a good week together and I think David enjoyed himself too.

We met Leontina and her host family at the aquarium one rainy day and had a good time.

Nana and Poppy came with us to the aquarium and were able to spend a few days meeting David as well!

The kids were outside playing in the rain and I snapped this just before Ben poured water on David's head.  He was pretty annoyed but I had to chuckle.

We went back up to Mom's house and met up with Laurelyn and Curtis for a few days.  We had a great time.  David loved everyone he met!

Our last activity before he left was a beach day.  We went up to Topsail and parked right next to a park.  So we parked it up and then walked over to the beach.  We had a great day!

These 4....

Our church really helped to support us.  They put in $400 for each family to help with the cost of the flight.  We had so many people who also helped us out.  People from church signed up to put together gift baskets for us ranging from toiletries to snacks to gift cards to beach stuff!  Another man who runs a kayaking business took a bunch of us kayaking for a few hours on a Saturday morning.  We had eye doctors, a medical Dr. come in on a Saturday and dentists all over town see these kids for free.  A couple from our small group gave us $100 to help us send David home with a suitcase filled with clothes, gifts, shoes, school supplies and money.  My mom's group got together and gave us gift cards to Target and a few places to go out to eat.  Other friends and family helped with supplying us with money to buy things for David, a bike to borrow while he was here, babysitting while I took him to the dentist and many prayers.  The generosity really touched Dave and I for sure!  It's definitely a financial commitment, so to have extra support was really, really appreciated.

And our 3, we pray, will be affected by this 9 year old boy from a country so far away with such a different kind of growing up than we are used to.