This afternoon some of our older kids were hanging out in the kitchen talking....Jonas and Cate were playing a game they used to play in the orphanage. They had played it in the orphanages and interestly Cate is from Izmail and Jonas is from a different region and city called Donetsk. We had a huge bag of Tootsie Rolls and they had collected the wrappers. They would put their piles down and then do the rock,paper scissors game to see who goes first.... then they would hit their piles and how many wrappers flew off was what they got... the person with the most wins.... they shared that only the orphans played this game... of course it was always played with pieces of trash ...well sometimes with money when ever they had any.This conversation led to others about their life before in the orphanages... which when they happen these conversation are always spontaneous and very insightful to me... actually as we talked, more and more of the kids came in and had things to share.... most of what they shared was not positive... Jonas and Caleb were talking about when they each packed a backpack of their own things when we picked them up... Jonas was encouraging Caleb to steal some of the clothes from the general bags of clothing for all kids.... and for some reason Caleb never found his backpack ... they are certain a teacher took it . Jonas had his and it had an interesting collection of things ( a pair of jeans, an old robe, pieces of paper, underwear, a lighter he was a smoker if you remember...) then the other ones shared that they were allowed to take their own possessions with them and some like Leah said the teacher just took all of hers and told her she would not need them.... then they shared what some of the teachers had said to them...

When we would pick up Leah for our visits she would be crying... she hated this one teacher. Leah said she was pressured not to be adopted and told ," That they would take me and cut me up and take my organs and throw it to dogs... stuff like that." Jacob shared that one of his teachers was a Veteran. She would tell us stories of when you get adopted," I know a boy who was adopted... and how she read in the newspaper they chopped him up in a factory and killed him." Cate was encouraged not to leave...,"Just stay here... because the teacher was going to use her for working." Caleb was told, "Americans adopt and kill you and will use your body for other people." They told us a bunch of stuff to change our minds because we are going and they were not.... Thank God my kids were smart enough to see thru this lie and they said yes they wanted to come home..... It makes me wonder the Hell that these kids lived thru...and I am so amazed at how dear and precious they are even when some jealous and selfish adults have been in control of their lives before they get to us....