Our travel dates are set. We will meet the twins on January 14.
We’ll visit with them in a supervised capacity during that first week, after which begins a month of bonding in which we’ll have temporary custody, spending 30 days with the twins in our Hungarian “home.” I am pleased with the peach house on the hill we found. Its gardens and vineyards will be frozen over during our stay, but we’ll take advantage of stomping around with no worry of damaging the flora!
Our teenage sons will travel with us for the first week, but given their school and extracurriculars, they need to return home. We’re grateful they will see where the twins grew up, meet the twins in their home country, and be able to tell them that they were part of the big adventure to go get them. We hope that this meeting will give the twins someone to look forward to seeing back home (in the home they don’t know yet). We’re thankful for family and friends who are making it possible for us to be gone so long by caring for our kids, our house, and our excessive dog population.
Costs for the trip are mounting, and we’re trying to finalize most travel plans this week: Our known costs include international airfare for 6+, lodging for 45 days, vehicle rental (a large van at this point!). We don’t know what the twins will need. Whether they come with suitcases full or just the clothes on their backs, we’ll need to be prepared for both. We plan to travel with some Hungarian language children’s books (yes, we could probably buy them there… but we need the practice beforehand!). Our total costs to date on the travel portion are about $13,000.
On this Giving Tuesday, we’re grateful for all who have supported us.
We have a special place in our hearts for this house on a Hungarian hill. This longing and love for a place we’ve never been is yet another picture of the gospel. And like the sunlight that makes this house shine in winter, we’re trying to be a warm and inviting light in a cold world. The twins aren’t old enough to express such things. Some dark days are bound to follow. While 45 days abroad is a testing endeavor for us. They are about to leave the only world they’ve ever known.
We’re sending the twins a book this Christmas, filled with pictures of our home, our house on the hill in the United States. Here, too, the light offers warmth and vision even amidst the dark and cold. We hope it creates longing and love for a place they’e never been. And if not, we mostly pray that in the years to come, they come to discover the longing and love for an unseen, eternal home.
“For we know that if the earthly tent which is our house is torn down, we have a building from God, a house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens. For indeed in this house we groan, longing to be clothed with our dwelling from heaven.” —2 Corinthians 5:1-2
