Catching Up

Well, wow!  Sorry for the long lack of updates! It's been just a week since we met Grace, and in some respects, it seems much, much longer. What a week it's been!

Our visits with Grace have been going pretty well. We've seen some behaviors we expected to see adopting an older child, but that is ok. We still love her all the same! I've seen her interact with other children and she is very gentle with them for the most part...unless she wants to be on the swing at the same time and then there may be a bit of a shove...totally normal. :-)

On Tuesday, we had the extreme pleasure of being able to visit with Elijah's biological family. It is always such a blessing and honor to be with them. Mama Tanya spoiled us with so many gifts. We are so grateful for Elijah to have this relationship with them (through us). I grieve that Jonathan and Grace will not have that with their birth families, but that is just the way it usually is over here. So, thank you Mama Tanya for making the huge effort you did to come and see us and for all of the beautiful gifts you brought for us and the children.

We have court date! Woohoo!!!  God did the miraculous and our MAF (most awesome facilitator) was able to get all of our paperwork gathered to submit to the SDA on Wednesday. Unfortunately, the SDA now takes 2 weeks to process their consent that we need for court. (It used to only take one week.) So, court will not be quite as soon as we had hoped, but there is still a fairly strong glimmer of hope we can be outta here by the end of the year and the New Year's shutdowns.  We were so thankful the orphanage director and Social Services were so easy work with in getting our paperwork gathered in just a couple of days.

Let's see what else..right now I'm not actually not "home" but in Krivoy Rog visiting Max!  Check out his website at http://truehopeukraine.com.  I know I've blogged about him several times. He really is the "real deal" and his ministry is making the difference in the lives of 1000s of children, teens and adults.  He said right now is a very stressful time as the nights are getting colder and the kids from the streets need a warm place to sleep. Hmmm...what was the last thing you worried about? After this weekend, I hope to do a single post about Max and his ministry and ways you can help.

Early Wednesday morning, Pat and our MAF traveled up to Kyiv to return our rental car and submit the documents. Yes, every adoption brings something new for us and this time it was a rental car! And yes, Pat did drive in Kyiv!!  Are you impressed? You should be! LOL  It is no easy feat, but he did great!  Our MAF did most of the driving though and it was indispensible in going back forth between the city she is living in and the city she was born.  Anyway, we decided it would be best if Pat went home to be with the kids for Thanksgiving, so he totally surprised them on Thursday afternoon!  They were shocked!!! How fun!  :-)

So, I'd appreciate the prayers as I go it alone for a couple of weeks. I feel very safe and with only one visit per day, I'm home several hours before dark. I'm not concerned at all, but a little extra prayer support doesn't hurt.

This week, I'm looking forward to meeting up with a Canadian missionary family - you know, that speak English. :-)

I'm so very, very thankful for our caregivers at home. Even with Pat home, we will still need help during the day for school and what not. We could NOT have done this without you! Thank you so very much to the O and G families!!!

Thank you everyone for your prayers, love, support and encouragement. We deeply appreciate it!