The vast majority of the time, Becky Boles has no idea what her young Russian guests are trying to tell her. During the two weeks they spend in her Lake Highlands home each summer, Boles and the children have to rely mostly on body language to get by.

“The older kids quickly realize that these ignorant Texans only speak one language,” Boles laughs.

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But there’s little time to worry about language barriers when an itinerary packed with Texas Rangers games, water park visits and ranch excursions is beckoning. These are rare opportunities for the children, orphans from St. Petersburg, so the Boleses and other host families see to it that every moment is memorable.

The two-week vacation is organized by Dallas-based Buckner Orphan Care International, which convinced the Russian government to let children visit annually. Boles discovered the Angels from Abroad program through Buckner’s magazine and immediately decided to sign on.

“When you see their pictures, it was pretty much a done deal for us,” she says.

For neighborhood resident Nancy Plotts, the decision to be a host was made after a mission trip with Buckner during which she toured a Russian orphanage.

“I came back just feeling like I wanted to do more,” Plotts says. “You’re in the orphanage a few hours, and you don’t really get a chance to connect with the kids.”

Buckner’s unique program gave her that chance. Like Boles, she hosted children during the inaugural summer three years ago, integrating a 10-year-old girl and a 12-year-old boy into her family of four. It was a learning experience; it surprised her to find out that their favorite activities included operating the dishwasher and laundry machine.

“And the Wal-Mart self check,” Plotts adds. “Oh my gosh – they love scanning and bagging.”

In the orphanage, Boles says, the children aren’t allowed to so much as pour their own cereal or turn a light on, so it’s exciting for them to do anything hands-on. But they also love normal kid activities, swimming being the undisputable favorite, though they have a hard time comprehending why their host families want to slather lotion all over their bodies.

“They do not understand the Texas sun. They fight it, and then they get a little bit red and they see,” Boles says.

Food idiosyncrasies also are inevitable. The Russian children love fruits and vegetables because they don’t get many in the orphanages. Boles couldn’t believe that when she served her young guests hot dogs and carrots, they went straight for the carrots.

But they also prefer spaghetti with nothing but salt and ketchup, and they take their eggs a little differently, as Plotts discovered with her 10-year-old girl.

“She was trying to describe the way she wanted it, and we finally called a translator and she was wanting it raw,” Plotts says. “We asked if that was OK, and she said, ‘Yeah, they eat them like that over there.’ I really didn’t want to give it to her, but I did, and I have to say after she ate it, she didn’t feel too good.”

Such adventures in culture last only a short time for the majority of host families, but for others, the two-week visit is only the beginning. This was the case for neighborhood resident Tiffany Wilkins and her husband, Garth, who became involved in the program during its second year with the hope of adopting a child. It turned out that their guest, 10-year-old Vladislav, was a perfect fit.

“It was like a courtship for us the whole time because we were so in love with him we would shake when we sat near him,” Wilkins recalls.

About a week into the vacation, the Wilkinses were able to ask Vladislav, whom they call Vlad, whether he wanted to be adopted by an American family. When Vlad told them he did, they asked if he wanted to be adopted into their family.

“He got really excited and said, ‘Da, da, da, da!’ which means ‘Yes, yes, yes, yes!’” Wilkins says.

It was almost a year before Vlad returned permanently – “I cried about once a week,” Wilkins says – but he has now lived in Lake Highlands for four months and performed well in White Rock Elementary’s English as a Second Language program, even surpassing some of his classmates in math. Wilkins wants Vlad to hold onto his native tongue and makes it a point to get together weekly with other families in Dallas who adopted Russian children, including some who grew up in Vlad’s orphanage. But her son is having no problems picking up English.

“Now he acts like he doesn’t understand me if I say something in Russian,” Wilkins says.

The family is still working through cultural differences, including some that are less obvious. One they encountered after Vlad arrived and their friends and family welcomed him with a seemingly endless supply of presents.

“He came to us and asked us, ‘What am I supposed to do with all of this stuff?’” Wilkins says. “We thought that was really funny because American kids just want everything, so we told him keep what you want and we’ll give away the rest.”

A few weeks later Vlad saw a mission brochure with a picture of a homeless man sitting on the street, and declared to his parents that he wanted to give the mission his allowance.

“They just know what it feels like to not have,” Wilkins says.

The children arrive in Texas for their vacation with little more than a backpack, crayons, a toothbrush and a change of clothes, but while here they are given clothes, toys, suitcases and even jewelry and purses that they can take back to Russia. Boles credits the Lake Highlands community for providing everything from pool passes and gift cards to dental exams and eye surgeries.

“This neighborhood has fed these kids, they’ve clothed these kids, they’ve offered entertainment – all we do is provide transportation and meals and love and fun,” Boles says.

Saying goodbye is always painful. Plotts remembers a day late in the vacation when her 10-year-old expressed her feelings the only way she knew how.

“They were leaving June 18, and we had a calendar up in the kids’ playroom with stick-on numbers,” she recalls. “She ran to the calendar and pulled the 18 off and said, ‘No!’ She didn’t want that day to come.”

A Dallas family later adopted the girl, so her story has a happy ending. But the outlook is grim for children who never find a family. The orphanages are clean, serve three square meals a day and provide “as much care as you can get in an institutional environment,” says Wilkins, who visited while in the process of adopting Vlad. But when children leave the orphanages between the ages of 15 and 17, most of them turn either to alcohol and drugs or to prostitution, and many of them commit suicide within the first year.

All the host families can hope is that the orphans’ encounter with a foreign culture will broaden their horizons, give them more self-confidence, and help prepare them for what lies ahead.

“These life experiences will just stay with them forever,” Boles says.