Same, but different...Names, Families, and Friends

Same, but different. As Natalia and I have worked on her math and writing, she is having to unlearn many of the things she has done for years. We use the same alphabet and numerals, but with some differences. Her number one looks like our seven. Her number nine looks like our lowercase letter g. Her letter J makes a Y sound. There is no letter W or Q. E and I are tricky. Think about it, how do you know the difference between a capital letter I and a lowercase letter l ? You recognize a typed lowercase "a" as well as the kind of "a" that we print. Lots of information to take in. How did we ever learn to read and spell in English?

Words that Will already knows. Thanks for the loan Gennie!

I pray for our children that they will be able to adjust with ease as they step into our culture, language, and way of doing things. So far they are adusting beautifully. We showed them our Latvian adoption documents. As far as the courts are concerned, I am Terina Vilhoita Deivisa married to Endru Ficpatriks Deiviss. (Andy's name is even written two different Latvian ways in the same document, but Natalia says that's a typo.) So, when we had them practice their American names, there wasn't any issue at all. "See? My maiden name, Wilhoit, is Vilhoita in Latvia. Your name, Vilnis, is Will in America." In practice, though, all the names are floating around. Andy goes through them all. "Will! Vilnis!..." I prefer the diminutive, Vilnie, when he is acting like a small upset kindergarten boy. (Like when his sister got honey on her bread and he didn't. "Look, Vilnie, it's right here.")


We do this too in our country. Think about it. Tommy grows up to be Tom, but his birth certificate says Thomas. We will introduce him as "Will" to American friends, but don't expect Natalia to start calling him something different. Natalia is just a one letter change since American would mispronounce her name as Natali-JAH.

They don't use middle names here. Our adoption attorney has no idea why Vilnis had two last names. We assumed Kastello was a middle name and are keeping it, but it may have been something like families who hyphenate their kids' last names.

So, as far as we can tell, the name change thing is not a big deal. A much bigger deal is leaving everything and everyone they know behind. Natalia has something like a Facebook account here and has been emailing her school friends goodbyes. She showed us pictures of her "old" (foster) families. I am praying especially for her that God would surround her with caring new friends at church and at school, so that she will not grieve that loss for long. Families of rising fifth grade girls, be watching out for us. Will is still young enough that he goes with the flow over big things (like moving to America), but loses it over little things...like "It's time to leave the park now."

Thanks for praying with us over things both large and small.

Wonder what our new names in heaven will be? (Revelation 2:17)