January 19, 2000

Family formed at first sight
___By Russ Dilday
___Buckner Baptist Benevolences
___HOUSTON--Tim and Amanda Flynn knew Russian orphans Katya and Ksoosha were their daughters--before they were their daughters.
___The Flynns had gone through Buckner Adoption and Maternity Services' international adoption process, filling out paperwork and completing in-home studies. The Houston couple only had to wait to be matched with a child from Russia.

JUST LIKE GOD INTENDED, the Flynns--Amanda, Tim, Katya (left) and Ksoosha--are a Texas family. The girls met their new mom and dad in a Russian orphanage. (Photo by Russ Dilday)

___A photo album and videotape were made of two sisters, ages 7 and 9, to show the Flynns. That video, viewed early in 1999, most affected Tim.
___"My memory is of the video tape and seeing live people," he said. "You could see they were bright girls, watching their little hands do things with the physical therapist."
___They also recognized something else about the pair. "We knew they were our daughters," he recalled. "My first thought was protection. I wanted to know how quickly we could get them out of there. There was one point in the video while watching Ksoosha building this block thing. She started it, but didn't know how to make it right, and she started crying. Her mother could not watch the tape past that point."
___Now, months after their adoption, Amanda said she and Tim have come to realize "God intends the children you're supposed to have, whether he gives them to you biologically or through adoption."
___God's intentions for the Flynns to become parents through Buckner began in 1998 with a prayer, she reported. "We knew we weren't going to be able to have children biologically. We've been married 16 years. I was praying about it and said, 'God we're happy, but if you want us to have children, you're going to have to lead us.'
___"I got the clear impression that he said, 'You've already been led.' I remembered an e-mail from a friend. Out of the blue, she said that if we 'ever wanted to have anything to do with adopting, Buckner is a wonderful agency.'"
___She researched "every possible option" before selecting Buckner as the adoption agency. "I narrowed it down to Buckner and one that's closer with a higher placement rate, but what really sold us on Buckner was that it wasn't just, 'Here, take a kid.' ... Buckner does so many follow-up projects and ongoing missions. We wanted to be part of Buckner."
___"Buckner tries to get all the information they can" about children, Amanda explained. "They had us look over every material available. Everybody when they start out thinks 'one baby,' but we liked the idea of taking two of them. We didn't specify anything. We didn't care. If you have them biologically, you don't know. They're both extremely bright girls."
___Tim urged others considering adoption not to overlook older children. "At age 16, Russian orphans are thrown out in the streets. These are sweet kids who may not get a chance because everybody wants a baby. Their only crime is they're not babies. Don't let that be a barrier."
___The Flynns cited God's leadership in the girls' lives in moving them to adoption. Katya, now 10, and Ksoosha, now 8, had been admitted to the orphanage three years prior to their adoption by their father. The pair were in a home where the father was supposed to have beaten them and their mother died from alcoholism.
___The year-long adoption process ended with the Flynns flying to Russia for a

KSOOSHA and her new father, Tim Flynn of Houston, practice English with flashcards.

"presentation"--a meeting between prospective parents and children--and an adoption hearing with government officials.
___At the presentation, adoptive parents still may reject the adoption, but the Flynns agreed the presentation only confirmed Katya and Ksoosha were theirs.
___"When they made the presentation, Tim said, 'You notice Katya looks just like me?'" Amanda noted. "Part of why we knew it was right is that we felt God would let us know if it was wrong--and there wasn't anything we could see that was wrong."
___Although Ksoosha "was 8 years old, you can't be prepared for how tiny they are because of the lack of nutrition," Tim said. "She was just a little bitty thing with a great big smile."
___"The first thing I said was, 'Give me a hug, please,' and she hugged me and called me Mama," Amanda remembered. "It was a wonderful moment. She felt like my child, she smelled like my child, but you could feel all of her bones."
___Months after their adoption, Amanda said, the girls have adapted well to a family and to American life. "They're kids; they adapt easily. Chicken fingers was something they adapted to quite readily."
___That doesn't necessarily mean the girls--and their parents--have not had to adjust to a different lifestyle. "The first time we went to Sunday School, they froze up," Tim reported. "They thought we were dropping them off at an orphanage, that they'd done something wrong. So, for the first three weeks, we stayed in Sunday School with them."
___The two also are adjusting to school, and each has an English vocabulary of 500 to 700 words. "They love being in school," Tim said. "We knew it was the best thing for them. Katya ... has the family she wanted, a dog and a cat. Then she gets to go to school. We went to pick them up at the end of the day, and they were so excited about the friends they made, the things they did and being on the playground."
___"They were so spun up about school," Amanda added. "It rated on the kid-o-meter somewhere between Christmas and fuzzy kittens."
___Another adjustment is to a more affluent American lifestyle, including daily luxuries many Americans would take for granted. "They'd never had a bath before," said Amanda. "They would have either a cold shower, or they sat on the edge of the sink and had water dumped on them. Shampoo? They washed their hair with a bar of soap."
___They've also adjusted to having toys. "When we were leaving, Katya said, 'I want my doll,'" Tim said. "It was a picture of a doll. That was her doll. Now they have Barbies and love to play with them."
___Ksoosha's favorite toy in Russia was "her fingers," Amanda said. "When we first got her, she kept holding her hands up and wiggling her fingers, and we did it back to her. She loved it. We called it 'spider fingers.' The translator asked her about it. She said it was her only pet."
___"When you get (to the orphanage) and you're faced with, 'Here's a picture of my doll' or 'spider fingers,' it hits home," Tim observed.
___With the adjustments have come the "thrills" of parenthood, he added.
___"We wanted to show them a new world, to see them interested and opening up. That's happening, and it's a real thrill to watch that happen."
___"What I enjoy the most is going someplace and holding their hands, having them there with me, knowing they're my daughters," Amanda added.
___The "best part of being a dad," Tim said, is experiencing fatherhood. He said that responsibility hit home for him during the girls' medical examination in Russia.
___"The doctor's name was Boris. At the end of the exam, he said, 'I've got an extra piece of information only for the father.' I'm thinking: 'Oh, no. Maybe there's some sort of sexual abuse in their past.' But he said, 'What I would recommend, when you get to America, is to buy a machine gun, because these are very pretty girls, and you're going to need it.'"
___

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