“GKC Family, we are back from our month in India and we brought precious little Hosanna home with us!
Our trip was not without hurdle as we had several delays on the paperwork, but God was with us and we ended up returning home just in time for Brandon to return to work from his approved leave period. At one point, they were telling us we would have to wait an additional 15 business days (3 weeks) before we could apply for her passport, which was impossible given Brandon’s work arrangement. But we prayed hard and had many praying along with us and the Lord moved mightily. We were able to get the passport in only about 5 business days. There were many miracles in the paperwork along the way. When she failed her TB skin test, we thought she might have to stay in India for treatment for 12-15 days, but then the x-ray showed that it was a false positive; her lungs were clear! I just can’t say enough about how the Lord worked things out for this adoption.
The biggest miracle was seeing this scared little girl begin to come alive and happy when given love and nurture. She cried and grieved to leave the orphanage, but then she clung to new mommy and began to enjoy receiving love. She ate and slept fairly well, just like any other 3 year old. She really enjoyed when we took her to the zoo. She loved being taken shopping and we bought her plenty of clothes, shoes, hairbows, toys, etc.
We were told in her medical report that her special need was that she had severe hearing loss and was non-verbal. Almost as soon as we took custody of her, we realized that was not true. She could hear Brandon and I talking and would turn her head to follow the conversation. She began to look when we softly called her name. She perked up and looked when she would hear us crinkle wrappers of food. She seemed to understand what we were saying, and she quickly started using signs that we taught her. We thought she could hear just fine, but we kept that to ourselves. In India, the healthy babies are reserved for those of Indian descent. Only special needs children are open to foreigners. If they knew that she could hear perfectly fine, they might not have let us have her!! I believe God must have picked this child just for our family and then caused her to be misdiagnosed just so we could get her. We somehow, miraculously, got a healthy, intelligent, energetic little girl. It shouldn’t be possible. Only God. Hosanna, is indeed, non-verbal, but even after only a month of being with loving parents she is starting to say a few words. She knows over 30 signs, will say about 4 words, and does a whole lot of baby babble. We expect this language acquisition to continue to develop quickly.
We cannot begin to tell you how thankful we are for all of you who gave, bought, followed, and prayed for our adoption!! My prayer is that you were drawn closer to Christ by following our journey and that each of you will pray about how you can be involved in the world wide orphan crisis. Whether that be choosing to adopt yourselves or finding other ways of supporting orphan care and adoption. There are so many waiting children all over the world.”
Love, Eleanna and Brandon Burke
