God's Blessings

We're coming home in THREE days and I am thrilled! On Thursday, we got the call from our facilitator that Irina's Ukrainian passport had arrived in Donetsk. What a happy Thanksgiving surprise! It is unusual for it to be completed so swiftly (three days!). We had three things going for us. One: God's mercy. Two: Your prayers. Three: We kept Irina's name short and sweet for her birth certificate and passport. We choose not to give her a middle name yet. We just couldn't decide.

Irina's passport will take the overnight train to Kiev on Sunday. Let's hope it gets a compartment all to itself and doesn't have to use the bathroom. :) We will finish up at the US Embassy on Monday and were cleared to book tickets for Tuesday. 

Thanksgiving evening, we were joyfully trying to find flights for all six of us for Tuesday 12/3. I was so happy to see the light at the end of the tunnel. With it being the holidays, our travel agent was out of the office. On our own, the tickets we were finding were FIVE times the price of the tickets we purchased to travel to Ukraine. $$$$ With that information, Darin and I decided that we may need to prolong our stay and wait for more affordable rates. Many of you prayed for us and we were blessed again with more answered prayer. What an incredible ride. To God be the glory! 

We spoke with the emergency hotline travel representative yesterday and he found us 6 humanitarian tickets at the price we were expecting to pay. (And our seats are all together!) Praise the Lord!!! SO, as of one hour ago, our tickets are booked. We arrive in the United States on Tuesday, December 3rd.

You have to understand how amazing and unlikely it is that we are returning in two weeks. I have followed the stories of many other Ukrainian adoptions and ALL of them have spent much longer in country on their second trip. I just can't understand it. Our facilitator told us to expect to be in country until December 20th! Let's pray that there are no unforeseen glitches at the Embassy on Monday. God can do more then we ask or imagine. 

For those of you local to us, you may know about the tradition to welcome adoptive families at the airport. We're not sure how Irina will react to the hullabaloo, but we'd like to invite you to come welcome us. If you're interested and want to be kept in the loop about our exact arrival time and possible delays, send my friend an email. ( alifogarty@gmail.com ) We're asking for non-family to greet us at the base of the escalators. We're not going to linger for very long at the airport because we'll be eager to get home. 

As we finish up our last two days here (Sunday and Monday), please pray for continued safety and bonding with Irina. We are seeing more toddler behavior (which is textbook) and more varied emotions from her. Pray that the Lord will give us guidance in how to reassure, comfort and extend her patience. She is very eager to go to America. She carries around photos of her new bedroom and keeps showing it to us. She told a man in the marketplace yesterday that she is not Ukrainian, but she is American. We intend to preserve her heritage, but I think it will take a little time for her to understand why that's important. For now, she is eager to start fresh and leave the past behind. 

Please pray for the boys as well. Although we had many joyful moments today, there were also tears. They are very ready to go home and get back to normal… or at least establish our new normal. When we talk about it being our last opportunity to be in Ukraine, Ethan reminds us that if God calls us to adopt another child we'll be back. Yikes! Let's take it one step at a time, please! 

Thank you for praying!