Church Talks!

Yesterday, Alex & Kambree spoke in Church. 

This is Alex's journal entry today (before corrections):

Yesterday I gave a talk in Sunday everyone liked it. My lovely mom helped me with the talk. I talked and mom tiped. Twenty people said nice job on your talk in Sunday...

He ended with: 

I am grateful that I am there son.

They both did a great job and many people told me so as well. I had sisters who's eye's would water talking about Alex. I got a "Bless you for adopting that boy."  I had people walk up and tell me how confident and "well posed" Kambree was. She talked on agency and wrote the entire talk herself. I am so proud of both of them!
Alex's talk was a little biography of his life - and I even learned a couple new things about his side of the adoption story so I thought I'd record it here:

My mom told me talks are more interesting when they’re about the person that is giving the talk so I’m going to talk today about my experience with prayer. This is MY story but my mom did helped me type it up and with my sentence structure.

I was born in Dniproprotrosk Ukraine. When I was four my birth father died and my birth mother didn’t take good care of me so, around age five I was sent to an orphanage to live.

The first orphanage was the baby orphanage –where children live while they are under the age of seven- and they took good care of me but when I turned seven I moved to an older orphanage and they didn’t take very good care of me. I didn’t like living there but I didn’t know anything different. I just wished I could go back to my first orphanage. I didn’t wish for a family. I didn’t know what having a nice family was like.

When I was nine years old I was chosen to go on a vacation to America to live with a family for a few weeks and learn about America. I didn’t think much about what it would be like, I was just happy to get away from the orphanage for three weeks. I had just turned ten before I arrived in America in October of 2008.

I met my host family at the airport and they didn’t speak Russian and I didn’t speak any English but they seemed nice.

They took me home and I took my first bath  - we only had cold showers in the orphanage - and then they showed me where I would be sleeping. In a pink girly room.

The hosting program had many activities planned for all the orphans like swimming, horseback riding, the bounce house and the zoo but I didn’t really like the activities, I just wanted to go home and be with my American family. Some of the things I loved doing  with my American family were making and flying paper airplanes with Austin, playing Monopoly with Mom & Rylee, having a Nerf gun war with Austin and my sisters, helping Dad with projects around the house, eating corn dogs with lots of ketchup with Kambree, watching TV & playing video games.

My mom made sugar cookies the first day I was there and gave me some dough to try.  I had never had cookie dough before and I thought it tasted terrible, so I spit back in the bowl! 

I had lot’s of firsts during my trip to America, I rode a bike for the first time, I jumped on a trampoline, I went shopping, I tried lot’s of weird foods and I took a bath everyday. I didn’t like that. We only took showers once a week in Ukraine.

My new American parents sat down and talked with me through a translator and asked if I wanted to be adopted and be their son forever and I said YES! Only really, I said “da” because I didn’t speak English yet.

I had to go back to the orphanage while my parents did the paperwork and I was very sad because I wanted to stay here forever.

I was sure they would come get me but no one knew how long it would take and I had no idea how much longer I would have to live in the orphanage.

While I was in the orphanage a Christian lady would come on Sundays and teach us about God and the bible. She told us we could pray and our prayers would be answered. But she also told us that prayers are not always answered as fast as we’d like. She had been coming to the orphanage for years teaching us every Sunday but I had never tried to pray. I didn’t know what to pray for. The first time I prayed was after I got back from America. I prayed that my new family would come get me.  I kept my adoption a secret, I didn’t tell my friends or my teachers but after everyone went to sleep I would get out of my bed and kneel down and pray for my American mom to come get me.

It took four and half very long months for my parents to finish the adoption paper work and come to Ukraine. I was so happy to see them and I knew my prayers had been answered.

When I got home I learned English and after a few months  I was taught the gospel by the missionaries. They asked me if I wanted to be baptized?  And I said “YES!”  Not “da” because now I could speak English. I was baptized in October of 2009 just a year after the hosting program and I was eleven years old.

In March of 2010 I was sealed to my new family in the Salt Lake Temple and I felt that I was no longer an orphan. I knew I had a family forever.

I would like to bear my testimony……

That night Alex laid his head against me and informed me "Real mom's love their children. My first mom was not a real mom because she didn't love me. You are my real mom because you love me." Not really sure where that came from or why? But dang! I loved it!!