Ahhh....We are HOME!

We pulled into our driveway about 6:45pm last night and were greeted with lots of hugs and kisses from the kids! I was worried Elijah would not want to come to us, but both he and Rachel (20 months old) gave us big hugs and smiles. It was funny, they kept staring at us with a big smile to make sure it was really us in person, not just on the computer through Skype. It was very cute! :-)

Our flights were all uneventful, which is the best kind of course. But, they were long...I kept thinking about how I'm going to bring Jonathan back by myself (Sarah is not coming back with me since the trip will be so short), but the Lord will work it out. We flew from Donetsk to Kiev on Saturday night and stayed in a hotel just a little bit away from the airport. We finally got into bed about 10:30 or 11pm, and set the alarm for 2:30AM. Yikes! Little did we know until the next morning there was a window open in the room behind a curtain, so the room had plenty of mosquitoes in that were buzzing around my head until shortly before we had to get up. Oh well...it felt WONDERFUL to sleep in our own bed last night and to take a shower this morning in water that it doesn't matter if it gets in my mouth or not. :-) I feel like a whole new person today!

Court Saturday morning went very well. "Court" over there consists of sitting in the judge's large office, not in a court room like it would be here. So, there was us, our most wonderful facilitator Vanya, the judge, the prosecutor (who couldn't speak Ukrainian very well Vanya told us later), the city social worker, the orphanage social worker/lawyer, and 2 witnesses. (Since Ukrainian is the national language, court and all official documents are all done in Ukrainian.) Most of it was a formality, and very few but easy questions. It's been a night and day difference with the questioning compared to last time since we now already have a child with Ds. There were no surprises, which was nice and we didn't learn anything new about Jonathan's history. Court was scheduled for 9AM, but I think it was 9:20 before we were asked in. We were out of there by 10:15 I think. We stopped by the birth certificate office on the way back to the hotel to see if we needed a spousal POA (power of attorney from Pat to me) to get Jonathan's birth certificate. Turns out a POA wouldn't work either, so we stopped back by the office at 3pm for Pat to sign some papers. Everything should be all set when we stop back on the 6th to get his new birth certificate.Yay for Vanya! We then called the taxi driver that had given Max his phone number (he has a newer car w/ AC), and he drove us down to Donetsk to catch our plane. It was a good, good day!!!

Thank you again to all who were praying for us! We can't thank you enough. The Lord is Faithful!!!

Isaiah 1:17 - "Learn to do right; seek justice. Defend the oppressed. Take up the cause of the fatherless; plead the case of the widow"