Land of the Cow

According to a recent informal survey, 90% of Americans we know say my wife and I are brave. The same percentage acknowledge that when they say "brave" to our faces, they are really thinking "stupid" in their heads.
"Brave" was by far the #1 answer/reaction when we told anyone we were taking our three kids and going to India for a couple of weeks to visit my sister and her family.
It ended up being a great trip, and I wanted to share a few of the more entertaining moments.

You know how it's funny to watch pharmaceutical commercials where the list of potential side effects is far longer and more terrifying than the symptoms the drug is intended to treat? It's not quite as funny when it happens to you.
I've always had a problem with motion sickness, particularly on long flights. I've never thrown up on a plane but I've been close a couple of times, so before this trip Missy wanted me to see a doctor about getting a prescription for it.
The doc ended up giving me some patches called Scopolamine, and I put one on a few hours before our 16-hour flight from Dallas to Dubai. (From there we had a 3-hour flight to Delhi and a 2-hour flight to Northeast India).
A few hours into the flight I started feeling quite weird. It wasn't motion sickness, but just a general uneasiness in my head and stomach. I got up to stretch my legs and quickly felt very dizzy and lightheaded. I stumbled in the general direction of my seat, evidently knocking over a flight attendant before collapsing into my seat. I lost feeling in my hands and feet and wasn't breathing well.
For some reason, the flight attendants thought I was having blood sugar issues (which I have never had) so they made me drink some sugar milk and eat a candy bar. I went along with that because it meant I got to drink sugar milk and eat a candy bar. They also hooked me up to an oxygen tank.
After a few minutes on the oxygen, the woman sitting next to me said, "Excuse me, but I notice that you have a patch under your ear. Is that a motion sickness patch?"
I said yes and told her the name but explained that I wasn't having my usual motion sickness issues. Then she asked if I had ever used this patch before. I said no.
She said she was a doctor and that she tells her patients never to take the Scopolamine patch for the first time on an airplane. She said the side effects I was experiencing were common and strong, so I should have taken the patch at home to test it first. Plus, the side effects are often diminished after multiple uses. Slightly too late for that at this point. Then she told me to go to sleep.
Lesson learned. I went to sleep for awhile before another, far less serious but nonetheless quite irritating side effect kicked in -- dry mouth. I couldn't get enough water. This lasted for a couple days after I took the patch off. I probably drank two gallons during the rest of our travels and peed about 57 times, but 45 minutes after one drink I'd feel like my mouth was a desert.

We made it to Delhi, where we were staying the night and began to get the full India experience. We had booked a Western-style hotel that advertised itself as being 15 minutes from the airport. Then we found out it was really 50 minutes from the airport. Then we got into a cab and it took almost two hours to get there.
I use the term "cab" loosely. This thing was more like a go-kart. My mom, wife and three kids were crammed in the small back seat, while I rode shotgun, literally sitting on top of the engine.
It didn't take long to realize that the cab driver had no idea where he was going, and he didn't speak English. It was hard to blame him for being lost, since there's no real addresses and most streets have no names. The "address" of the hotel (which ended up being really nice) was just a general area, "Precinct 21" or something like that. Once you got to Precinct 21, you just drove around until you found it.
Also, I was pretty sure we were all going to die that night in one of two ways. Way #1 was that Indian drivers are crazy!!! Each road is roughly the size of one-and-a-half U.S. lanes, but they drive at least three-wide. You have pedestrians, bicycles, motorcycles, cars, vans, and semis going both ways in these tiny roads with no lane markings or procedure. People just honk all the time. That meant they are coming and you'd better get out of the way. There are a few traffic lights, which are entirely ignored by everyone.
After driving around for 15 minutes or so, our driver pulled over and asked me to get out. He then lifted up my seat and poured water on the engine, which my buns could have told him was running quite hot. Then he continued driving, seemingly in circles, until we were out of Delhi and into the countryside. This is Way #2 I figured we'd die. Since I knew the airport was in Delhi and our hotel was in Delhi and Delhi is one of the most populated cities in the world, it didn't make sense for us to be in the middle of nowhere at any point of this cab ride. Six Americans and all their luggage at 1 a.m. in Delhi seemed like a pretty easy target. I figured we'd pull off and get ambushed. Indeed, the cabbie pulled off again. This time, he walked around to my side but just stood there for a minute. Then he poured some water on his face. Then he poured a little on his index finger and brushed his teeth with it. Then he got back in and started driving.
Finally, after wandering around for another 30 or 45 minutes, he pulled over and asked someone for help. We were at the hotel in less than five minutes. (The drive back to the airport the next day took 50 minutes).

The Indian culture is fascinating. Everyone knows the cows are sacred, but there are all kinds of animals all over the place over there, just wandering around amid millions of people. We saw goats, pigs, chickens and donkeys just roaming around. They belong to nobody.
India is largely Hindu, so there are thousands of gods everywhere that people worship. The crazy thing is that in a third-world country with extreme poverty, the gods live in luxury. Near my sister's house there's a massive marble temple with two gods inside. It was probably three stories tall. Outside the door was a big bell you were supposed to ring to wake the gods up before you went in to worship them. Within yards of this idol mansion, hundreds of migrant workers lived in small huts with dirt floors and no electricity or air conditioning, eating almost nothing besides rice and vegetables.
Aside from spending great quality time with my sister and her husband and watching her three kids play with our three kids, this was the best part of the trip, just being immersed in the culture and getting an appreciation for their daily lives.

There is a fairly new Western-style shopping mall close to their house, and that provided quite a bit of entertainment.
The people there haven't quite gotten the hang of elevators and escalators yet. When we walked to the escalators for the first time, my brother-in-law Matt said "Watch, I guarantee we'll see some people who have never seen an escalator before."
Sure enough, we didn't even have to wait. The people right in front of us stood, staring at the escalator and then back at each other, trying to figure it out. Finally, one of them took the leap of faith and screamed in excitement when they started moving down.
A different time, we were going down in the elevator, and it stopped one floor above where we were headed. When it stopped, there was a man on the other side whose nose was basically pressed against the door. He couldn't have been any closer to the elevator without being in it. The doors opened, and he just kept standing there. We motioned for him to come on, but he just stared at us. Finally, the doors closed, almost trapping his nose in them, before it continued downward. I almost died laughing.
We went to the Subway at the mall, which was slightly different than an American Subway. Of course, there were no beef products (the meatball marinara is my favorite), so we had to try something different. I ordered a pepperoni melt, then was told it would cost extra to toast it, which would seem to be the only way to put the "melt" in pepperoni melt. Then when I asked for lettuce, tomatoes and veggies, I was told no. All I got was pepperoni and cheese. I asked if I could pay extra for veggies. The answer was no.

The first full day we were in India, I went to play basketball with Matt and some of his friends. I was extremely jet-lagged but figured it would help get me over that. So we start playing, and as usual I'm jacking up 3-pointers without really warming up at all.
My first three shots were airballs. Like, not even close. I know I'm no Ray Allen, but I usually don't embarrass myself on the basketball court. It's the only sport I consider myself halfway good at.
The next couple shots barely grazed the front of the rim. I was a little surprised but figured it was just the exhaustion. My head was still a little dizzy from the Scopolamine and jetlag. One of my teammates said, "You're going to have to shoot it harder." I said thank you, I realize that.
After the first game, which we lost thanks to my horrible shooting, the same guy says to me, "You know this is an NBA 3-point line right?" I did not know that, nor did it ever cross my mind while I continued bombing treys. I think I was able to get my overall 3-point percentage into double digits before the end of the day.

 There were a lot more great memories, but I've written enough for now. If Allison or Missy remember something else that should be added I can just tack it onto the end. Like I said, we had a really great time and it was an experience to remember. I'm glad we were "brave"!

Myra

It's often the most unexpected things in life that end up providing the biggest blessings.
That's certainly the case in my life as it relates to foster care.
Foster care wasn't even on my radar until a few years ago. I spent the first 25 years of my life terrified at the thought of having my own kids, much less taking care of someone else's. Even after meeting and marrying a woman who grew up in a children's home, I still never considered the possibility that I'd end up doing it.
Fast forward to yesterday, when I woke up and groggily sauntered into the living room. The first thing I heard was Myra (the girl on the left in the above pic) saying "Daddy. Daddy. Daddy. Daddy. Daddy." I looked and she was hanging upside down from her grandma's arms. When we made eye contact she burst out laughing. A couple hours later many of our closest friends and relatives came over for a party to celebrate the fact that we have officially adopted the precious sweetheart I now can't live without.

How did we get here? Like I said, my wife grew up in a children's home, where her parents modeled God's love by having about 10 foster kids under their roof at any given time at Cookson Hills, a Christian ministry located just on our side of Arkansas border in a town called Kansas, Oklahoma. My church growing up had supported Cookson Hills, but I had never visited until I started dating Missy in college. It was definitely cool and touching to see kids who in most cases had zero advantages or hope outside of Cookson thrive in the loving environment there. The mass-produced food they ate didn't taste good, their clothes were donated, and they had just one TV for the household of 12, but the support network there made all the difference in the world to those kids.
It took me five years to get around to marrying Missy, and another three for us to settle into our careers and move from Lawton to Oklahoma City, where we wanted to live permanently. When that happened and Missy brought up the idea of foster care again, my normal reaction would have been to say no. It doesn't take a lot to stress me out, and we already had a kid. But something inside gave me a peace about it, and it felt like the right thing.
So we went through 10 miles of red tape to get approved, which took almost a year, and then we dove right in. Way, way over our heads. It was only a few days before Christmas 2012 when we got a call about three children who had been in an extremely traumatic situation and needed a place to stay for the holidays.
We said yes and took them in for about 3 weeks, but in no way were we prepared to provide them what they truly needed. We had no experience with kids older than Addison, who was not yet 4, and no time to prepare a house that needed to expand from three to six occupants. More important, we were not equipped to help them emotionally deal with the traumatic event that had shaken their lives, and since it was the holidays it was hard to find professional help.
Nevertheless, God is good. Our church, Draper Park Christian, had so many families willing and able to provide Christmas presents, food, clothes, diapers, etc. (The kids arrived with nothing more than the clothes on their backs). I know the kids could feel that we loved them and were trying the best that we could. And of course, Addie was a sweetheart who made fast friends with all of them.
It quickly became apparent that this would not be a good fit for our family long-term, and in mid-January 2013 they were placed with a relative. I believe we were the right family for those kids for that amount of time, even if it was an extremely stressful three weeks.
At the end of January, we got a call asking if we would be interested in taking a 3-month-old girl. This seemed like a much better situation for our family with one problem -- we were set to move into a new house on Jan. 31. We asked if it was possible for the girl to be temporarily placed somewhere else for a few days. They asked if we could take her on Feb. 5. So we moved in and took Myra five days later.
All she ever did was smile. She only cried when she was extremely tired or extremely hungry. The rest of the time she just kept a huge smile on her face, with an occasional chuckle. Everyone who met her commented on her joyful demeanor.
We -- especially Addie -- fell in love with her from the first day. I tried to guard my heart a little, knowing that the state had a right to remove her from us any day. In fact, that's the goal of foster care, to reunite the child with a parent or relative. But in this case (and in about 50% of all foster care cases), that wasn't able to happen. Soon, we received the great news that we would be allowed to adopt her.
When she came to us, she had five names (one first name, two middle names and two last names). Four of them were spelled differently in different documents the state gave us. We decided to keep her first name, give her our last name, and for the middle name we combined the middle names of both of her grandmas. Myra Alisue Franklin. Although the adoption process took far longer than we would have liked, all Myra did was smile, and on March 25, 2014, it became official.
Two weeks after that, we loaded Myra on a plane to India to spend a couple weeks with her aunt, uncle and cousins, the first of many great adventures we will share with her as our beloved daughter.
Today, Myra is almost 19 months old. She is walking all over the place (especially wherever she's NOT supposed to be) but still has that perpetual smile on her face. She loves to point, give kisses, say "aww man" and play peek-a-boo.

I've tried my best to describe the huge blessing Myra has been. Even though we had another child of our own since getting her, our family would have a huge hole if she weren't a part of it. She brings so much already, and I can't wait to see what God has in store for her future.
I know foster care isn't for everyone, but I would strongly encourage you to pray and think about whether it's right for you. There are so many kids out there who have done absolutely nothing wrong, living in a state shelter and waiting for someone to take them in.
Our lives were forever changed by one of them.