Home

We are home! Time for some sleep. We're so grateful for all the prayers and encouragement. Many thanks to Grammy & Poppy for holding down the fort here. Oh, I was so glad to squeeze those three boys. They were just as excited to hug and kiss us back.

Happy luggage helpers!

More Then We Expected

We spent a wonderful 4.5 hours with Irina today before saying goodbye. Much more then we expected! The pictures will have to tell the story because we depart for our shuttle to the airport in a little over 5 hours, so sleep is a must. We spent the day doing crafts, playing memory match, uno, cards, tic tac toe, looking at pictures on our lap top and playing Star fall ABC's on my iPod touch. A very special day!

 

 Irina and Anya and then Irina and Kristina. Kristina is being adopted by a family in Indiana. 

Her new family was in Ukraine last week for their first visit. 

Her classmates

I didn't take any pictures of our goodbyes. I just wanted to be in the moment. She was sad and hugged us for a long time before letting go. It is comforting to know we will be coming back soon to bring her home with us.

Progress

I don't have much to say today. It was a long day of driving around in the car, meeting with lawyers/notaries, visiting buildings, completing more paperwork, waiting, and some more waiting. After all our days of walking in Kiev, it felt too sedentary for me! I fell asleep in the car on three different occasions. We did get all of our pressing questions answered and did complete the necessary paperwork. Thank you for praying!

Angelina will soon submit our petition for our court date. We anticipate it will be at least three weeks before our court date occurs. So, as it stands now we hope to travel back to Donetsk in the middle of November at the earliest. Of course, we're praying for sooner because at the conclusion of that trip we'll get to bring Irina home for good!  Tomorrow, Friday, we'll go to visit Irina at the orphanage for a little before we say our goodbye's and begin our long trip home.

Here are some photos from our day today. The first five photos are from Gorlovka near our hotel. This area of Eastern Ukraine is a lot more soviet influenced.

 Then we were picked up and driven to Donetsk. In 2012 the UEFA European Championship Men's Football (soccer), also known as the Euro Cup, was played in Poland and Ukraine at 8 different stadiums. In Donetsk, they built a brand new stadium for the event that holds 69,000 people. We drove by there today on our way out of town. It is quite impressive!

Being silly!

I'm so glad to be here and thankful and humbled by how God has so clearly been present. I'm so torn because of course it will be hard to say goodbye to Irina, but I'm so anxious to get home to our boys! (Not to mention I can't wait to eat some of my homemade wheat bread and LOTS of vegetables.)

Hotel in Gorlovka

We stayed in the town of Gorlovka for two nights. (Wednesday and Thursday) 

We had the pleasure of staying in this hotel, which must be pretty new. It's clean and quiet. 

It only cost $55 for one night and that included a very big breakfast. 

The room consisted of three rooms. The bedroom below...

The dressing room above...

And the bathroom above... It is extremely comfortable and modern. It's hard to believe you are in 

another country until you step foot outside the hotel. The hotel appears quite fancy on the exterior compared to all the surroundings. Here are two views outside the hotel. 

The people we have met at the hotel have been very friendly. 

Even though nearly all the staff do not speak English, we have been able to manage just fine. 

Our Little Butterfly

I'm not even sure where to begin. I'm overwhelmed with thanksgiving. 

We arrived in Donetsk on Wednesday at 11:15am. We were delighted to be warmly greeted by our facilitator, Angelina, and her husband. They loaded our luggage and we began our two hour drive to Irina's orphanage in Nikolaevka, with a few stops along the way. 

We learned about a few bumps in our process on Tuesday that I'm not free to share. Due to that, we were prepared for a potentially difficult day. We were told that the only thing normal about a Ukrainian adoption is that you should expect the unexpected. Indeed that seems to be the case. The blessings of our day are a true testimony to the goodness of God. Perhaps the blessing isn't that the bumps were completely smoothed out, but the blessing is that God gave us eyes to see His goodness in the midst of it all. I could feel His hand upon us!

We arrived at Irina's orphanage at around 1:30pm. The area was very remote. The houses nearby were tiny little shacks with fences around them. Here are some pictures of her orphanage. It is made up of three buildings: the dormitory, cafeteria and the building that houses the administrative offices and school. 

This is her dormitory. Irina's room is on the second floor. 

This courtyard is where the children play. That small building may be where they eat?? I'm not sure.

This is the end of the building that houses the administrative offices and classrooms. 

When we arrived, the children in Irina's school class were outside playing. The children all came running over to us and Angelina. They know Angelina and love her. The children crowded around us clearly hoping we brought them goodies. We have seen pictures of a girl named Katya, one of Irina's friends. She came over to us and said, "Luke, Ethan, Aaron." We were blown away. She knew who we were and she knew all about Irina's new brothers!! It breaks our heart that now another one of Katya's classmates will be leaving her at the orphanage. Katya asked if we could host her. (Through a translator) Anyone want to host her? I can get you the information. :)

Katya

The children were calling for Irina and she came running. She gave us both hugs and then grabbed each one of our hands and led us into the director. As we were walking in, she spoke quickly in Russian to Angelina. "I prayed very hard last night to God for Mama and Papa to come and that's why they're here." 

We got to be with Irina for the next four hours. Much more then we even expected! Irina flitted about like a little butterfly. It was as if 10 months hadn't even passed since we had seen her. The only way we could tell the passing of time was her long hair and that she was a little taller. As she did when she was here, she was quick to grab my camera and take pictures. We'll need to work on that, but I was glad it was her taking pictures of the director and not me!

The director informally interviewed us asking why we would want to adopt Irina when we already have three children. Then he permitted Angelina to let us take Irina off the orphanage property. Wow! After a little more waiting around, we piled into Angelina's car and headed to the next town to find lunch about 20 minutes away. Oh what a treat to be squished in the car with Irina between us!

We ate lunch, went to the city council and then made our drive back to the orphanage. Irina was so delighted to show everyone the photo album I made for her of her room, the boys and other family members. She was quick to hug us and hold our hands. We even got to call the boys on the way to lunch so she could say hello. She was grinning from ear to ear while the boys each said hello and said their names! Priceless! I wish I had thought to capture a picture of that. 

Heading in to city council with Angelina

              

snuggling up on my shoulder

Views from the car

 A man trying to gather his cows, many of which were on the road in front of us. Don't worry, our driver didn't slow down. He sped up, honked the horn and swerved around them!

Irina asked for dessert at lunch and instead we bought a cake for her to bring back and share with her 12 classmates. She was thrilled! We had the cake cut and bought plates and spoons. Here she is carrying her goodies into class. 

We then had to say our goodbye's and make our approx. 2 hour drive back to Gorlovka where we are staying in a hotel. Sadly, we will be so busy taking care of paperwork and other things to complete the adoption (part of those bumps I referred to) that we will not get to see Irina on Thursday at all. Her orphanage is just too far from the closest hotel. We will get to see her again for a one hour visit on Friday before heading back to Donetsk for our flight to Kiev. We are so grateful for the time we had to soak up her joy and to see first hand that she is indeed happy to be adopted by us. 

Thank you for praying! Please pray for smooth completion of all our paperwork tomorrow and the opportunity to ask Angelina all our many questions. 

"Give thanks to the LORD, call on his name; 

make known among the nations what he has done.

Sing to him, sing praise to him;

tell of all his wonderful acts.

Glory in his holy name;

let the hearts of those who seek the LORD rejoice.

Look to the LORD and his strength,

seek his face always."

Psalm 105:1-4

Anticipation

We had another lovely day. We walked around the city for about 5 hours with a 40 minute break for lunch. I loved exploring and seeing the different architecture. I am so schedule oriented and life at home runs more smoothly when we keep to a schedule. However, the past two days have been so open-ended. Meandering about following whatever road looks interesting. It has been so good for me!

The underground mall system is still so fascinating. We found 3 different underground malls. This large dome was in one of our pictures from yesterday. We had no idea when we saw it that underneath was the courtyard/eating area of the mall. 

(There was another McDonald's, Baskin Robbins, McFoxy (?) and other Ukrainian eateries.)

There are lots of fountains and statues. Today it sprinkled a little bit, 

but not enough to pull out our umbrella. 

Another fountain, statue and the wall of glass is another shopping mall 

with escalators taking you to three different levels of more shopping. 

There are cars and people bustling about. We noticed that there is a large population of men and women under 40. 

Women are very fashionable with their short skirts, or tall high heeled boots. I don't know how they walk with all the hills, cobblestones and steps to go up and down to the malls/metro. Men are mostly wearing black leather. 

When we went out this morning the temperature was probably about 56 degrees. It was crisp and refreshing. 

By late afternoon, it had dropped significantly and I felt chilly for the first time. 

The weather channel said it felt like 41 and I believe it. I might have to take out my hat and gloves. ;)

Such good quality time together! I'm so thankful.

We collected our paperwork this afternoon at the SDA without any trouble. We depart early tomorrow morning for our flight to Donetsk. It's going to be tricky to get up so early since we are not fully adjusted to the time change. 

And finally, we are at the point of the trip we have been anticipating all along! I'm not nervous yet. :) Between 5-7am your time Wednesday (12-2pm here), we will be arriving at Irina's orphanage. That is when things could get a little more difficult and/or emotional. We will have the opportunity to hear more of Irina's history, see the conditions in which she is living and finally get to see Irina! Please pray for our day tomorrow. Pray that our reunion will be sweet, that we'll have appropriate expectations and that we'll continue to see God's blessings no matter what we encounter. 

I am hoping we'll have internet in Donetsk, but I'm not sure. If I'm not able to update the blog, it doesn't mean that anything is wrong. ;) I may have to wait until we return home. We shall see... If I'm not able to update you, please pray that we get to see Irina on Friday (in addition to Wednesday and Thursday). It's not confirmed that we'll get to do that. Lastly, please pray for our safety on our return flight. Many thanks to all you prayer warriors out there. Your prayers are felt!

Sight Seeing

St. Andrew's church

Inside St. Andrew's. It is not in use, but only set up as a museum.

The view from the church of the city of Kiev.

This area is set up primarily for tourists. Lining this street is vendors selling their traditional Ukrainian souvenirs. 

Many of the streets are cobblestone. Drivers park everywhere including on the sidewalks. 

St. Sophia's

 Another view of St. Sophia's

St. Michael's

St. Michael's

The Golden Gates of Kiev is a landmark of ancient Kiev and the 

gateway to the ancient city of Kiev. It is now a museum. 

This is right outside our apartment.

 This is near the center of Kiev. Little outdoor restaurants and food stands everywhere. 

Do you see the golden arches? There are two McDonald's in Kiev. 

This is the  Dneiper River. On the other side of the river it looks like beaches. 

Very strange to see fall leaves on the beach. 

See this zipline guy? We saw several people zipline across the river. Looks like fun!

Really enjoying our day together!

I bet two weeks ago this was gorgeous with full fall colors. It's still pretty now, 

but I can imagine what it looked like in the peak of fall. 

This is a very clean city, but we haven't seen one trash can!

We see these signs everywhere. Google translate says it is a notary. 

I wonder why there are so many? Probably 2 or 3 on every street. 

Under the main street in Kiev is this amazing underground shopping area. This picture doesn't do it justice. Many little shops selling phones, food, and trinkets. Then you descend two more flights of steps to this huge shopping mall with all the brand name retailers. (Nike, Addidas, Gap, Tommy Hilfiger, etc.) Amazing. And surprisingly, it doesn't smell funny considering it is so closed in. 

All you smell is pastries and donuts.